Arr. I just got back from a 13-hour hike through the Vestfolds Hills with Damon, Darren and Adam and my feet feel like little puffy sacs of blood. It was hard work just standing on them while I had a shower afterwards to wash away all the sunscreen grime and dirt and silt and sweat. Now I am lying in bed. My muscles are buzzing like hot television static from the knees down. It feels GOOD.

We left the base just before 9 this morning and walked all the way along the south edge of Lake Dingle, Lake Stinear, Deep Lake, Club Lake and up to Lake Jabs - about 14 km away from the base as the crow flies. (You can check the area out on a map: you'll need this one and this one.) We got back home at ten o'clock in the evening. The weather was absolutely beautiful the entire way and the scenery was stunning - the sky was blue and sunny and summery with linear, feathery wisps of cloud coming out radially from a point on the horizon like god-rays; the moon was feather-light above the hills; the snow drifts were white and gleaming; the ice on a few of the lakes was fresh and blue; the hills became ragged and alpish and awesome as we progressed west; the ground was jewelled in sparkling quartzes as always; the landscape was a crazy assemblage of strange odd-bod rocks as always. I am falling in love with the Vestfolds in a thousand small steps; every time I walk into them another quiet part of them bewitches me. Like this time, the beautiful silty beaches on the south shores of Club Lake and Lake Jabs - and the strange sensation of coming over a rise and seeing the movement of waves across a lake, after having walked for a few hours in completely motionless, lifeless hills -

BUT you don't want to hear all that boring guff about pretty scenery blah blah blah. So here's the bits about decomposing penguins, and sunbaking in Antarctica, and disgusting snot habits and all that sort of thing:

ten thousand year old penguin carcasses
We arrived at the south beach of Club Lake to find it strewn with gaping, ghastly sun-bleached carcasses of penguins and seals. Holes in their rock-hard dried skin showed white, skua-picked vertebrae and ribs. Big empty eye sockets of baby seal husks stared outward horribly and their jaws were frozen in rigid, toothy grimaces. The slopes were white with sulfurous powder that made the area smell volcanic and rotten. Why were there so many perfectly preserved carcasses there? The best guess we have is that, amazingly, these things are thousands of years old and are relics of when the sea level was high enough to come right up to that point. The sulfur is likely to be gathered there from eons of atmospheric deposition on the ice sheet. You walk through areas like that feeling like your footsteps are vandalism.

dead angel wings
We found a pair of snow-white feathery wings lying on the ground, connected in the middle by an intact skeleton. It was a dead Snow Petrel - the skuas pick the carcasses clean but leave the wings. The effect was a kind of strange heaven/hell hybrid - the pristine angel wings flanking a death's-head and dusty bones.

home-made hovercraft
Adam told a story about some Winterers he knew who had decided that they would build a hovercraft at Davis Base over the winter. One of the tradies on base didn't think it was a safe or good idea so he resolved the issue by backing over it with a truck. Q: how the hell do you build a home-made hovercraft using materials on an antarctic station over winter?

sunbaking in Antarctica
When we got to Lake Jabs we lay on the silty, sheltered beach and felt the sunshine warm us. It felt just like a real summer's day. We put on more sunscreen and stretched out on the sand. Damon said, "You know, the way this feels, I could be lying on a beach in Australia right now." And then, after a pause: "Except, of course, that I'm wearing a Gore-Tex jacket and a beanie and gloves." Darren said, "We really need more blizzards here. My family doesn't want to see photos of balmy days like this."
Adam and I went for a walk to the top of the hill while Damon and Darren napped in the sun.

lakes of battery acid
Deep Lake is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world. As far as I understand this is due to salt, accumulated in the ground from when this land used to be under the ocean, leaching out into the water. I put a fingertip in the water as we passed and touched it to my tongue. It stung like battery acid. Seawater is absolutely no comparison.

closest approach to the core of the earth
Another remarkable thing about Deep Lake is that its surface is 50 metres below sea level. This is the closest I have ever been to the centre of the earth. Adam said that last summer he was in a chopper that the pilot flew right down along the surface of the lake - so he has the awesome privelege of being one of probably very few people who can say they've flown in a helicopter below the level of the ocean.

disgusting snot habits of past Antarctic summerers
Stories were told about a geologist of previous years who had many strange traits. Firstly, he seemed to move in geological time - walking almost in slow motion, talking slowly and blandly, taking five minutes to unlace a shoe and so on. Secondly, he brought back several hundred kilograms of rocks from Antarctica to Australia for analysis - the whole Green Store on base was full of these flour-tins of his samples on which he had marked in large letters his name and the word ROCKS (after which the inevitable graffiti was scrawled: "yes he sure does" etc). Lastly, and perhaps most impressively, he had his own special method for de-dripping his nose when out working on the ice shelf - he would slowly stick out his tongue, slowly curl up the tip, and slowly lick the drips away. This, apparently, was very disconcerting during mealtimes.

Sunbaking on Jabs Beach

It is possible to sunbake too long. Let this be a warning.