While we were away at Zhong Shan the CASA planes arrived - a great source of joy to those whose science projects have been relying on them, but too little, too late for others whose projects have been cancelled or cut short by their late arrival. They've been delayed by accident (someone drove a truck into the back of one of the planes not long before we started traning in Tassie) and by regulations (the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, coincidentally also abbreviated to CASA, requiring new safety tests to be passed late in the game) and by weather (for weeks, the planes sat on the runway in Hobart waiting for the temperature to diminish by one degree, or the winds to swing around in just the right direction, or to calm down by the right amount). Now they are here and things are noticably different. There are only about 50 people on base at the moment - the number of field parties has increased a lot now that people can reach the Amery Ice Shelf and surrounds a lot more easily. This means that at meals there are often entire tables with noone sitting at them - things are a lot quieter.

Also: the Race to the South Pole has officially begun, as of the new year. Davis Base is racing Mawson and Casey to see who can chalk up enough k's on the treadmill, rowing machine or exercise bike to get to the South Pole first. Today I went to the gym for the first time this year and ran a few k's. I have worked out that if I keep up my exercise at this rate I will arrive at the Pole in about July 2016.

The most exciting event was the arrival of the first elephant seal on the Davis beach today. Yesterday he was footling around in the waves but never really committed himself to the sand; this morning I crawled out of bed and looked out my donga door to see him lying on the beach like a big fat sausage. He's a young one - you can tell this by the fact that his nose hasn't yet grown into a strange trunkish proboscis, and by the fact that he is not yet as big as a truck. Adult elly seals are the largest seals in the world and can grow up to four tonnes! When they rear up to fight, their nose reaches higher in the air than a person's height.

Dave, one of the plumbers here at Davis, appeared on the beach when a few of us were down checking out Elly. He was wearing his surf lifesaving gear. The smile he is wearing as he stands in the water, in the photos below, didn't stay on his face long after we took the photo - the water was probably -1 degree, and the air temperature was about 3. All the little blocks of ice in the water tinkled as the wavelets lapped back and forth around his feet. Pat made a film of him rushing out of the surf yelling at Elly, "Excuse me sir - back between the flags. Between the flags! Just trying to make the beach safe for the little guys." [Pan from Elly seal to a penguin, floating right behind Dave on a floe.]

Not long afterwards, a chopper sling-loading a quad bike flew overhead, Elly grunted, stretched, and sloped off like a one-tonne caterpillar towards the ocean.

We expect that the beach will soon be teeming with smelly, itchy, agro male elephant seals. Non-breeding males (i.e. juveniles and retirees) use the beach to moult in the summer. They lie around scratching their skin off and fighting while the rest of the seals hang out in their usual home in the sub-Antarctic - probably at Heard Island.