27 November 2004 - Marty's Birthday
Every day here is a whole new paradigm. One day we see our first berg, and it is a moving and exhilarating experience. The next day we see several dozen; by the evening we are in the ice. Before I have time to write about it, we see our first penguins and seals, and then the seas calm and the sky becomes blue and the entire landscape transforms into something completely new and wonderful. The plans for the voyage change on a daily basis. Before I can post them on the web, the helicopters start transferring personnel from Casey (which is still over the horizon) and the helicopter ops keep up all intrigued for the rest of the day - because the helideck is closed, we all head right up into the point of the bow to look out over the scenery, and this is a new vantage point because up until now the seas have been so rough this area was always coursing with seawater and has hence been off-bounds. We stand hanging over the bow like figureheads watching the ice slabs disappear under the nose of the ship. Undersides of bergs sparkle resort-blue in the sunshine and clear, cold water. We are called back inside for training, or science presentations, or logistical meetings. When I decide to sit and write, I catch a glimpse out the porthole of an amazing clear silent sunset. I put on my thermal gear and head out to the deck. Emperor penguins are sitting on an ice floe nearby doing not much at all. I photograph them and the full, yellow moon. I look at my watch and it's midnight; the sky is still salmon-pink and I have to draw the curtains tight to sleep. I wake up with the intense glare of white, desert-intensity sunlight; I look at my watch; it's 3 am. I get up at 7:30 for breakfast, and it's straight into more training, including an emergency muster, and a tour of the engine room, as well as yoga and a talk on kayaking in Tibet, and a Space Science group meeting in the bar. Now I must post something to the web and I have no idea where to start.
Firstly: the summary of operations. This summer the Australian bases (Casey, Davis and Mawson) have expected the air support of two CASA-212 fixed-wing aircraft. These planes are being relied upon to transport people between stations, as well as to take field parties and gear out into remote locations. The planes, however, are not ready, and there is still considerable uncertainty as to when they will be arriving in Antarctica. Until then, many people are stranded at places they would rather not be. As a result our voyage, which was meant to head for Davis Base only, has visited Casey first and has picked up 23 expeditioners who will be taken to Davis. The transfers were done yesterday by helicopter; none of us ever stepped off the ship or saw the continent, let alone Casey station. After the op was finished last night we set a course in the direction of Davis and Mawson; today a decision was made to visit Davis first, then Mawson. The principle reason is that the sea-ice is decaying near Davis, and the later we arrive at Davis, the worse is the chance that the ice will still be firm enough to unload over the ice. If we have to unload by barge things will be significantly more troublesome. So: we're expected to arrive at Davis on Monday, where the ship will stay for four days - and then I'll be at my home for the summer.
Now: Other Stuff. In order to try and cram as much in as I can, without being tied down to the tedium of chronology, I'm falling back on abecedarianism: random thoughts in alphabetical order.
aurora australis - referring to both the Southern Lights and the icebreaker ship I'm travelling on. The dual meaning has led to me having quite a bit of unwarrented photographic jealousy. Several times now I've spoken to someone else with a new camera (the Australian Antarctic Division puts a lot of camera salesmen in business each summer), and heard stories like, "I got a really nice shot the other day of everyone standing looking at the aurora." I've immediately thought, wow, quite a bit of technical work would go into setting up a photo capturing both a long-exposure shot of the southern lights and a photogenic foreground element of people viewing it; how come everyone else seems to be able to pull this off and not me? It took a full day for me to realise they were just talking about the departure, taking happy-snaps of their family in front of the ship's stern etc.
bridge - the bridge is a cool place to hang out, so many people often do. It's a big wide carpeted area with large square windows all around, gyro compasses mounted in domes on pedestals, a comfy important-looking chair to sit in if you get there early enough and hog it, several pairs of binoculars lying around for general use, and access to the outside deck from both ends - so it's nice to duck out, take some iceberg pics, duck back in when you're in too much pain from the cold, warm up, duck back out, etc. The crew are brilliant and friendly and are happy to sit back and chat about the radar displays, the nav charts, how the ship works and so forth. The only time the bridge has been shut was during helicopter activity. It feels not so much like we're passengers, but like this is our home. In fact this is close to the truth - the Aurora Australis is not actually licenced to carry passengers at all; therefore our technical designation is 'assistants to the crew' and as such we have to do appropriate extra training.
cold, survival of - we were made to watch this ridiculous 70s instructional video called 'Cold Can Kill'. Looking like a Monty Python parody of itself while taking itself very seriously, it was full of scenes of hypothermic male adventurers dressed in natty polo-knits being brought cups of tea by nurses in petite frilly uniforms while the camera zooms in on the nurses' breasts and a newsreader-voice says, "Remember, his friends knew what to do, and saved his life. Would you?"
dying - Andy the Field Training Officer (or FTO) gave us a lecture on sea ice, which turned into a spiel (which Andy seemed to be quite enjoying) about all the ways you can die in Antarctica if you don't know how to read the ice. Apparently the moment you lose concentration, you will find yourself floating out to sea on pack ice with three days' food ration and no hope of rescue for several months. Assuming, that is, that you haven't already stepped off your quad and fallen straight through the ice / fallen through the ice trying to save your friend, who has fallen through the ice / cut your hands to shreds trying to haul yourself out of the ice / lost all your limbs to frostbite / died of hypothermia because all your dry clothes were in your friend's pack, who fell through the ice trying to save you / etc.
engine room - I put my name down for an engine room tour yesterday, and we were taken around in groups of five. I'm not the most familiar person in the world with the workings of an average engine but this was nonetheless amazing. The power of the ship is enough to keep a small town in business and the prop shaft it turns is bigger than a dinner plate and runs half the length of the ship. The engineer told us how the ship works: the hull is designed to ride up onto the ice and use the weight of the ship to break it. Then the broken chunks are directed into the propeller so that it mulches it all up and leaves a nice clear channel behind the ship. This is so that, should the ship get stuck, it will have a clear path to reverse and drive up to ram the ice again. The ship is double-hulled and has two dual tank systems with one tank at port and one at starboard; one of the pairs drives water from side to side using a computer-controlled system which calculates how much to slosh the water to stop the ship rolling too much in rough conditions. The other system is used to artificially rock the ship when it is stuck in ice, to help loosen the ice and free the ship. Water purification is by distillation, and by reverse osmosis for human use.
fud - today we girls were given our fuds (or Feminine Urinary Devices), for practice use in the showers before we hafta use them in the freezing conditions of deep Antarctica. A fud is a little moulded funnel with a spout that girls can use to pee standing up in conditions where dropping your daks to urinate would mean instant death from cold (see dying). Hooray! The text on the packet says: "Freshette has been all over the world, from the North Pole to Antarctica, used by women who dare to drem, who dare to be themselves... We invite you to join us." Dare to drem? Nowhere on the packet does it give instructions on this strange and necessary 'dremming', but I infer it is a diuretic.
geomagnetic shenanigans - due to the fact that the Earth's magnetic field does not align with the planet's axis of rotation, at Davis Base the difference between true north and magnetic north is a whopping 79 degrees. As a result, my compass now is telling me that the ship which is carrying me to Davis Base in Antarctica is currently heading NORTH. (The ship itself navigates by GPS but as a backup they use gyro compasses which of course don't have any of these problems.) Also, because the magnetic field of the earth hits the surface at such a large angle at this latitude, the FTOs tell us that the compasses the AAD uses in Antarctica are actually weighted at one end of the needle, so that they can swing freely when you hold the unit flat in your palm.
humpbacks - we saw our first whales today (now the 27th) - a pod of humpbacks. We were woken by a call on the intercom from the bridge, and we couldn't have jumped out of bed and chucked on our clothes any quicker if they'd said the ship was sinking. They were quite close to the ship and were moving along like dolphins, just with more inertia.
insulting terminology - The first time I heard the term 'boffin' used to describe an Antarctic scientist was in the following context: "The Antarctic Division now has a policy to not use the term 'boffin' to describe Antarctic scientists, as people have in the past found it insulting." (This was at our 'workplace harassment' talk at the Bronte Park field training week in Tassie before departure.) Since then every scientist has prided themselves on describing themselves and others as boffins. Boffin! Boffin! Boffin!
jolly - this is the term used for any off-station activity that is not connected with your own work. Going on a jolly means going hiking or quadding or boating and staying in tents or in any hut that's not currently being used by scientists (and other such outings), but can also include volunteering to help with other people's projects in order to hitch a ride to whatever cool place they're headed to on the day. NOTE TO ANY SCIENTISTS HEADED TO THE VESTFOLD HILLS, INTERESTING ISLANDS, OTHER BASES OR ANYWHERE IN CHOPPERS OR PLANES: I am able to hold a clipboard, take samples, use a corer, carry packs, count penguins and other such helpful tasks, or will be sure to learn aforementioned skills on the trek/flight out to the site. Pick me! Pick me!
knots - we had a second rope-care and knot-tying session today: figure of eight, sling knot, alpine butterfly, that one with the rabbit and the tree, trucker's knot, cat's paw, clove hitch, tent-rope knot, etc. The two best ones were (1) the alpine butterfly, a good knot for either shorting out a bit of damaged rope or creating a good three-way junction, which you remember by the violent and bloody mnemonic: "With two twists in a bite of rope, make a man with a head, guts and legs. Reach up between the man's legs and grab his head. Pull his head through his legs and shove it through his guts and out the other side. Then wrench his legs apart and rip his head out." Contrast this to the mnemonic for another knot, which goes "The bunny rabbit comes out of his hole, goes around the tree and pops back into his hole again." (2) The Yorkshire Bow. Where has this knot been all my life? It's a bow you can tie in your shoelaces, like a normal bow but with an extra loop or two in there, that will not accidentally come undone, unties by simply yanking on one aglet, and negates the need for those hard-to-undo double-knots. It was funny to see a class of us sitting in the ship's lounge being instructed how to tie our shoelaces. The training in the AAD is very thorough.
literature - I was talking to Geoff, the doctor who will be wintering at Mawson, about what reading material we've chosen to take south with us. I was explaining how I've taken a lot of expansive, meditative literature about sublime landscapes and introverts in isolated, barren places and so forth. And also how I'm now thinking that once I arrive in the landscape itself, I've just realised that I'll probably want to read anything but that kind of thing, so I might be in trouble there. Geoff's taken stuff like 'Bachelor Kisses' by Nick Earls. At the moment I've abandoned Moby Dick and am spending my vegetative time hanging out in the lounge folding origami and chatting, often half-watching whatever b-grade movie is being played on the tele in the background, like Dave or the dodgey 80s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
modular origami - I have made a 90-piece buckyball and a 70(?)-piece snub cube. NERD! People seem interested so I think I might have an origami night at base some time and teach people a few patterns and shapes. As yet I dunno how I'm going to cart them off the ship without crushing them. Originally I was going to assemble them at base, but impatience got the better of me.
neverending jar of chocolate biscuits - in the corner of the mess, underneath a starboard porthole, is the morning-tea corner which is always stocked and open. You're free to make yourself a cup of tea (herbal, blackcurrent, earl grey, english breakfast, irish breakfast or regular) at any time - or, if you prefer, you can also help yourself to a coffee (plunger or instant), or a milo, or a hot chocolate (they've got that delicious stuff that looks like a tin full of chocolate curls). There's a microwave and a griller there so you can toast yourself something too, like rasin toast or crumpets or croissants. It's a permanent snack-attack corner. The most amazing thing, though, is the three big jars of biscuits that are always kept topped up. Mick, one of the field training officers, was telling Clare and I over lunch about how he did a presentation to his daughter's kindergarten class about his first season in Antarctica. He said they ooh-ed and aah-ed over the pictures of the penguins and stuff, but the thing that made them all really sit bolt upright was his story about how the chocolate biscuit tin was magical and never ran out. So now they all want to go to Antarctica too.
onboard living guidelines - here is an extract from the eponymous notice attached to the wall above the desk in my cabin, where I am typing this: "When using the restaurant at all times, please remember you are onboard a SHIP and it does move about (ROLLS) so place everything you use back where it belongs so that it does not end up broken or smashed on the deck (floor)." Note the helpful clarification of technical nautical terms for us landlubbers (IDIOTS).
penguins - several penguins have been spotted floating past on ice floes, waddling in that awesome comical my-pants-seem-to-be-falling-down-around-my-ankles kind of way. The adelie penguins (named after the wife of some French Antarctic explorer) flap their wings around in the air when they hustle about - it's really cute. The emperor penguins are more dignified and just stand around a lot and do nothing, then occasionally one will lie on its belly and loiter for a bit, then he'll get back up and do some more standing about. The closest penguin I saw was a single adelie on an ice floe that the ship was heading directly towards. I was standing on the bridge and saw him kind of go into a panic and start running in circles before he thought to waddle at full speed towards an edge of the floe. The side of the ship obscured the berg just as it got crunched to smithereens and we couldn't see what happened to him. I imagine he's now regaling his mates with his amazing story of near-death at the hands of a huge freakish red rumbling iceberg.
quarantine - Shaun the environmental officer posted a notice on the white board a few days ago: "Help save Antarctica from aliens: quarantine station, E-deck wet lab, Friday". We all dropped in during the day and scrubbed our hiking boots with weak bleach solution to get rid of any seeds or organisms that could potentially be introduced to Antarctica, and we vacuumed out our bags and detached seeds from the velcro of our jackets and so on. There have been a few problems in Antarctica with introduced species: Casey is currently suffering from a fly infestation, which came in a batch of eggs from South Africa; some time in the near future the main building will be evacuated for a few days while it is fumigated to try and get rid of the problem.
red red red! - The Aurora Australis is painted bridge to keel and bow to stern in glorious, brazen RED. This is to give the ship ultra visibility in the ice. When I was a kid I always thought that when I got my first car I would make sure it was bright yellow or pink or something really loud and bold and maybe even a little grotesque. Now that I am on this lary ship I feel like I'm living out a childhood fantasy. It is for sure the best ship in the world!
science - technically the entire Antarctic program of every nation in the world exists to support the scientists, sorry, boffins. Realistically it is a lot more political; everyone's really just staking out a territory in case the rules change and it's a mining free-for-all, or all the world goes into nuclear winter and Antarctica is the only non-radioactive place left, or whatever (use your imagination). Until then, though, it's a continent ruled by nerds. Science case study: the Science of the Yellow Building (which is the room, or donga in the Antarctic dialect, that I'll be in at Davis): Clare is a UK PhD student studying small critters in the saline lakes in the Vestfold Hills, and is currently reading a paper called Protist taxonomy: an ecological perspective in case that means more to you than it does to me. Kath is a 22 year-old PhD student from Sydney who will be heading out into the deep field for about two months in order to set off explosives on the Amery Ice Shelf, from which she will sound the deep structure of the ice and ocean floor - she's already done this once before, and she's responsible for the two red crates of explosives that have been chained to the front of the ship this entire trip. Anya is a geologist who is heading even deeper field to look after a big experiment she's been running for a while now, consisting of quite a few seismometers located all around the Amery Shelf, from which she is finding out amazing stuff about the inner layers of the earth, why it is that Antarctica is so geologically quiet, and what really went on with Gondwanaland. I am probably the person who knows least about what they are doing, and I'm in Antarctica to do some maintenance on other people's equipment and as such (combined with the fact I am still an undergraduate) have only a tentative claim on the title of boffin.
tibet - Chris gave a talk on his kayaking adventures in Tibet this evening. When he's not a field training officer with the Antarctic Division, he works as a guide in Tibet, taking high-paying clients into remote picturesque locations for adventure holidays. When he's not doing that, he's paddling rivers near Everest Base Camp that no white man has ever travelled before, etc. He showed us a picture of a Tibetan camp which looked very untouched by civilisation, and then told us that many of them nowadays have solar panels sticking out the roof (so they can operate the blenders to make hot butter tea), and he's also seen yaks with satellite dishes on their backs. So.
UV - The ultraviolet here bites. This is partly due to the thin ozone layer overhead. I will probably return to Australia with brown, sunburnt cheeks and nose, a sunglasses outline seared into my face, and a body as white as the underbelly of a fish. So I look forward to that.
view - there are plenty of beautiful vantage points on the ship - the bridge, the deck on top of the bridge (as long as you don't mind your face being frozen painfully), the figurehead-point on the bow from where you can watch the ice disappearing under the ship (calm weather only), the helideck etc - but the absolute best is the porthole in the tea-making corner in the mess. This is because you are down in the fifth deck of the ship thinking about nothing but how nice you will feel after you have had this cup of tea, and certainly not expecting to look up as you get a spoon of sugar to see a brilliant white iceberg float past glinting in the sun as a little Adelie penguin flaps his arms and waddles to the edge, and hence being all the more delighted and awed when you do.
wee and poo - Human waste in Antarctica is turning into quite a fascinating issue. Every day you learn something new and exciting about it, whether it be the astounding new personal technology in that area (see fud), or the hierarchy of preference of where you are allowed to wee in the field (from most preferable to absolute no-no: ocean, tidal crack, glacial crevasse, ice pit, stony ground, inland lake), to how you carry your poo back to station (in something called a 'dead dog' bag, mixed with plenty of talcum powder, and allowed to freeze as much as possible - this is because you may under no circumstances leave your poo in the field). For instance: did you know that for every 1000 kg of food that is flown to and consumed at a remote field site, 250 kg of poo is flown back to base for processing? See - it's fascinating stuff. On a different note, we had a station meeting in the mess today about the waste-water treatment situation at Davis, which is seriously busted. The treatment system there is old, past its use-by date, inconveniently housed (in a shipping crate with an access hole cut in the roof), an OHS issue, is suffering from constant power failures, all the good bacteria have died, and the 'processed' waste was such poor quality that it may as well have not been treated at all. So after many problems keeping the thing operating, it was bypassed some time in the last year and now all the waste is pumped straight out into the ocean, near a beach where seals come quite regularly. Nonetheless this situation is still within the guidelines set by the international Antarctic environment treaties!!! When asked about the long-term plan, the environmental officer said it's up to the decision makers at the AAD as to which has the highest priority for funding: removing all the old asbestos-infested buildings at the site, fixing up the very shoddy summer accomodation, completing the partially-built new living quarters (currently on hold), or fixing the sewage system. So it looks like we'll be having a stinky summer if the winds blow in the wrong direction. And: we are all a little worried, if the state of the accommodation we summerers will be staying in is so bad that fixing it might take precedence over installing a working sewage treatment plant.
x-rated literature (kind of) - One of the things I've taken down south with me, to keep me occupied between calibrating this and rewiring that, is a Mills and Boon manuscript I've been working on with the hope that it will make me a lot of motza (under a pseudonym, of course). M&B is a publishing company that churns out hundreds of crappy women's romance fiction titles every year, all of them formulaic (180 pages, sex scene in the middle of the book, very few characters, hero introduced in the first four pages, absolutely no mention of drugs, they always get engaged/married at the end, yadda yadda yadda) and in my opinion they are one of the most insidious form of subjugation of women in existence in Australia today - because they teach that a woman has no higher goal in life than to find a husband; because they teach unrealistic expectations; because so much importance is placed on a woman's appearance in them, blah blah. Also: I thought that they were shoddily written, and anyone could write one. So I decided to try. My first manuscript, "Dangerous Chemistry" (see the sneaky nerd reference? See it? See it?), made it right to the final level of assessment last year and was rejected with a kind letter of improvements required: (1) more sex required, (2) less character development required, (3) less characters needed, (4) less focus on the heroine's professional life desired. So this summer I aim to rewrite the manuscript with all these things in place. I have, as research material, brought two M&B books south with me. They are hidden very very carefully. Going through the checkout at Big W with them was embarrassing enough, let alone being discovered with them at an Antarctic research station full of guys with big beards.
yoga - I went to one of the informal yoga classes for the first time this afternoon. After not ever having done yoga before, I muddled through an hour of being a cat/tree/serpent/dog, and walked out feeling like primeval earth-goddess in touch with heartbeat of universe. Cool.
zzzzz - Due to it never getting dark for us this whole summer, sleeping well is a big issue - not only personally but as a safety concern. We've had a seminar on how to manage fatigue, how to develop sleeping routines, and how to do relaxation exercises to fall asleep. The insidious Antarctic sleep-deprivation effects have already started: the twilights here are so beautiful that I and a half-dozen other people have been staying up until very late every night in order to watch and photograph them. As a result I am quite tired. However, considering that I slept constantly for the first three or four days of the voyage due to seasickness and medication effects, I figure I am just reclaiming my due.
If you are reading this weblog, please please send me an email or sign the guestbook and let me know. I need all the encouragement I can get to keep going with it.
Thanks Marty for posting these while I am restricted to limited emailing on the ship!