I’m back in Australia now; this particular adventure is over. And I’m facing the journal-writer’s familiar quandary of taking a break from writing, and then having so many things happen that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to write it all down. I think that in the last night at Davis Base I learned more about living in a small, isolated community than in the previous three months, and during the two weeks back on the ship I became much firmer friends with the people I had been living and working with. And then there’s everything else to relate: the last glass of wine on the donga doorstep, X drink-driving and rolling the buggy on the beach, the final farewell party, the rush to get to the ship, the flares to send us off, the pleasing lack of seasickness, the last time spent watching penguins porpoising through the water, the 24 hour Scrabble competition, the ship lassitude (if I was lucky I’d wake up in time for the 4 p.m. screenings of League of Gentlemen in the rec room), the illegal vodka parties, the videos of kayaking in Tibet, the sleazebag American marine scientists, the bizarre monster hauled up from the deep on the water-sampling apparatus, the Field Guides’ Union, romance, breakups, love found, love rejected, the infinite ocean, the lovely mitten-warming heat of the foreward searchlights, the aurora, the first real night sky for months, producing the newsletter This Week On The Aurora, seeing the first strange guano-stained crags of land come into view, pulling into the wharf at Hobart alongside the Vasily Golovnin, having a hotel room to myself, bumping into AAD people every hour of every day in the city, and having no strange Gemmell-style revelations except a feeling of overwhelming sadness at the anonymity of the city, and surprise at how much noise there was, and the (it seemed) incredibly noticeable, wet, pungent and welcome smell of plants pervading everything.

Now I take a breath and go back to the last few days at Davis.

The day that I visited the penguin colony on Magnetic Island was Saturday the 29th of January. The ship was scheduled to depart on the 14th of February – in two weeks’ time. However due to the logistical fiascos related previously, we now had no idea when it was coming. The rumours were flying: it’s coming Tuesday. Then: it’s coming Monday. Then: Sunday. Every mess room conversation was the same: ‘Have you heard the latest? It’s coming tomorrow. Have you heard the latest? It’s coming yesterday.’

And so forth.

It wasn’t just a mess room joke. The implications of the schedule being brought forward were very large. Entire science projects were jeopardised, then finally cancelled. PhD projects were killed off. Millions of dollars wasted; months of time spent for no use. Teams were pulled out of the field with no time to retrieve any equipment: the Amery group buried theirs in caches on the ice shelf; other multi-million dollar GPS systems, on loan just for the summer from the US, had to be left out possibly for the entire winter. Claire, Rachael, Belinda and I cancelled the ‘all-girls’ jolly we’d been planning – a several day hike right out to the ice shelf and back. The entire mood of the base changed: everything went really quiet as everyone spent all their time working frantically late into the night. Several furious emails were written by researchers and sent to the AAD. As for us, it looked like our magnetometer was going to be irretrievable, left out on the plateau for another year, after which it would probably be lost forever.

With impeccable timing, the ABC ran a news story in the midst of all this saying that the director of the AAD had been given an Order of Australia medal for doing such a wonderful job organising the logistics for the summer. To make an unintended yet perfectly ironic point, the story ran together with a picture entitled “The CASA Aircraft” that actually showed a Twin Otter, as well as a terrible misquote from seismologist Anya that praised the CASAs for taking her to her remote site (that trip was actually cancelled due to CASA stuff-ups), and didn’t at all mention that on a different CASA trip the plane broke down and she was stranded at Rofe Glacier for four days wondering where her next sheet of toilet paper was coming from. The article of course got written up in the last issue of TWID (This Week in Davis – the local tabloid done by Ash) but it didn’t even need to be lambasted; it was reprinted word for word and allowed to speak for itself.

This, of course, wasn’t the end of the logistical problems. After all the problems with the ship Vasily Golovnin (you may remember the stories from previous posts about it almost running out of fuel, then possibly being diverted to Freemantle or Singapore on the way back, etc) it had been decided that the ship would proceed to Mawson and the Hobart as planned. However, recent news from the ship revealed that after beetling around Mawson for a while, with a lot of Mawson’s fuel and food on board waiting to be delivered, they realised that they weren’t going to be able to get through the ice because they were running out of fuel, and barging ice is fuel-intensive. So they gave up and went back to Hobart. This, in fact, was the main reason for bringing our voyage forward: the Aurora Australis would pick us up early, taxi us back to Hobart, take on the Vasily’s cargo, turn around, nip back to Mawson, make the delivery, and pop back to Australia.

On the first of February there was bad news (the ship was expected to be coming even earlier) and good news: Lloyd knocked on my donga door to wake me up (after a late night spent packing) to say that we had a flight to the plateau for a last assault on getting back the buried magnetometer. He said: what are your chances of getting to the helipad in 20 minutes? I said: give me 25… And after all that, one of the choppers got called away for a medical emergency, so the three guys flew out to the plateau in the other chopper while I waited for Kat and Mick to be retrieved from the skiway where they’d just arrived back at Davis in the CASAs. It turned out not to be too serious; Kat had developed a serious migraine after having to pack up an entire field site in a short amount of time due to the newly rushed shipping schedule. They went to the doctor, I got on the chopper, and Leigh took me inland.

We chatted sporadically during the 50 minute flight over the flat, grey ice. Leigh told stories about pilots he’d known who’d had terrible accidents in Antarctica, smashing into ice cliffs in white-out weather – the perfect conversation while flying in a helicopter in Antarctica near ice cliffs. He told me about the flight he’d just made to the Amery, to pick up Angus who was, at the last minute, changing his plans and staying all winter to fill in as a meteorologist – the weather was terrible but there was no time to be fussy, so Leigh flew in a near-blizzard with poor visibility, and Angus was watching from the ground yelling over the radio “No, you’re coming from the wrong direction!” Angus had used all the camp’s supply of coffee to mark out a big X on the ground (they never stopped hassling him about that: ‘The coffee, of all things!’) – but it ended OK and Angus and Leigh got back safely.

We arrived at the magnetometer site and had a wonderful view of the other chopper and the guys digging, before we landed and I jumped out. Peter’s rigged-together detector, formed out of a coil of copper wire, an amplifier and an MP3 player, worked perfectly and pretty soon we were back in the familiar Snowhenge routine, chainsawing the ice into huge blocks, snapping them out with shovels and crowbars, hauling them to the top of the hole with ice axes, and shovelling away. I noticed that my eyes were sticking together when I blinked: revelation: I had eyelashsickles! I looked at Peter; he had beardsickles. I took a picture while I rested from digging and Lloyd did some more chainsawing. The previous hole (from Operation Dig To China I) was just discernable as a slightly sunken rectangle – in the few weeks since we’d dug it, it’d already been packed solid by the tiny crystals of drift-snow forever blowing across the plateau. It became apparent that we’d dug it in the wrong place anyway, out by about a metre.

The pilots Rick and Leigh were radioed by our base leader Rachael with the order: you must pull out by 8:30. We dug furiously. At 8:28 we found it: 2.2 metres deep. I could stand in the hole with my hands above my head and only just reach the lip of the pit. The cable had to stay in. We flew back along the coast, silently. Rick flew his chopper above ours and chased our shadow. The Rauer Islands were stunningly beautiful, like glass. Glaciers and open crevasses. Plateau. Davis: Home.

Two days later, it was Thursday 3rd February, and in the midst of the chaos all of us in the Space & Atmospheric Sciences group were heading out into the wilderness for a last jolly – a very large overnight hike out to the edge of the ice shelf, returning via Watts Hut. It wouldn’t have happened without Lloyd, who pushed for it – it was the only chance for the radar and optics guys (who had come down on the Vasily, mid-season) to get off-base at all. One of the radar guys, a young guy named D., decided not to come – a decision which I found completely baffling. First time in Antarctica, two weeks down on the ship, and then you don’t even have any motivation to leave the base? He explained to me that he didn’t see anything fun in going for a painful and exhausting slog through unforgiving terrain in the freezing cold, away from heaters and good food, in colourless scenery and possibly with a bootful of blisters. I looked at him with the kind of still-baffled expression that conveyed, “…and what’s your point?” and then the rest of us put on our thermals, packed some thermoses of tea and bivvy bags and so forth, and went to the helipad.

No walking off base for this jolly, nosiree! We were being taxied to our start point - Mossell Lake - by Rick in a chopper, under the pretext of doing an important biology survey. John, during a stay at Davis a few years earlier, had taken a photo of a particular area of stunning moss, and some biologists wanted a comparative photo taken of it now. It took us just a short while to find the spot and photograph it, and that was the work finished for the outing – 1% science and 99% jolly seemed like a good proportion for an outing! – and we got hiking: John, Lloyd, Damon and I.

Near Mossell Lake we saw the site of an old hut, now only distinguished by a few old bolt holes and splashes of red paint on the rocks. Lloyd mentioned that there was a story involving that hut and my supervisor back at uni, involving a near-death experience while hiking. I still haven’t asked him about it personally. We walked for 12 hours before we reached the hut, and it was a spectacular walk. It was the first time I’d walked to the edge of the plateau and seen the huge wall of it pushing onto the rocks. Due to the (unusually?) warm weather the water was gushing through streams and over waterfalls – and this on the driest continent on earth. That thought was no solace when we had to get our feet wet fording a rushing, freezing stream. We also saw a phenomenon called ‘fairy rings’ – where through the natural process of moisture in the soil freezing and thawing, the rocks in the ground sort themselves into strange rings, about 1m across, according to size. In a spectacular cave curtained by huge stalactites, Lloyd found half a VB beercan that looked like it was 20 years old. I photographed him holding it up with a disgusted look on his face. And one of the places we stopped on the way was Boulder Depot – a cache of food and supplies left in case of emergencies – which had a Taxation Office poster attached to the inside of the lid with a picture of penguins, saying something like ‘You don’t need to go to the ends of the earth to get help with your tax…’ And then after a few hours’ more slog we rounded a corner and there, thank the good Lord, was the bright red cube of Watts Hut.

Inside, fellow SAS dudes Angus, Klucky and Dave were waiting for us, with the heater cranked right up and a huge hors d’oevre platter prepared: olives, sundried tomatoes, cheeses and so forth: heaven. They cooked us up a meal; Lloyd took stock of his well-worn boots, which were now almost entirely separated from their soles, and put his socks over the heater, which immediately sent up huge unending clouds of steam. Lloyd patched his boots with duct tape. Angus got out his guitar – which he’d hiked with, strapped to his pack – and I perused the typically dodgey hut-reading material, which consisted of a few boring ancient paperbacks and some playboy magazines. We drank some red wine. We drank some peach schnapps. Angus and I decided to bivvy out, and let the others have the bunks inside.

I chose a spot with a view on the top of a hill. It looked perfect: a 180 degree view over the fjords, and over the ridge from the hut. It started to gently snow as I looked for the flattest and smoothest bivvy spot – the crystals were fat, perfect hexagons; the best I’d seen in Antarctica. I found a spot that would be just right, except for a lone, large flat rock. Horror of horrors to pick up the rock and find what can only be described as perfectly preserved, probably >20 yrs old, human feces and toilet paper. I put the rock back and found a different spot. Case in point for why the rules are to never leave any waste in the field – it never breaks down. Thanks to whoever left me that present to find.

We left the next morning: goodbye Watts Hut, goodbye Ellis Fjord, goodbye the Portals. As we walked, there was a lot of air activity overhead – the two choppers going back and forth between the skiway and the base, and the CASA ferrying people from Mawson to Davis in preparation for the ship departure. My feet were aching, aching, aching; John’s magical bag of Power Jubes kept us all going. And then we were on the familiar last stretch along the south side of Lake Dingle, past the familiar landmark of the loaf-of-bread rock that marked the place you turn off Dingle Road to get to the lakes… goodbye Vestfolds, thank goodness that there is no chance to dwell over the parting.

The last 15 minutes walk from the meteor radar site up to the LQ are the worst, as always. Head straight over to the field store and return my beloved kit. How lucky we are to get stuff like that – the Chinese guys in the Larsemanns don’t get that sort of thing at all. Then to the shower. Then I return most of my clothing kit – all the outer layers and stuff, keeping only the emergency stuff we need for ship musters. Then finally I sit down for some food. Pack up the stuff in my room. The donga is no longer the lowest rung of accommodation – now there is blizz-tent-city for the Mawsonites.

Then – I go up to SAS and check my email. It’s now 10 pm, and the official report – ship definitely arriving 12:00 noon tomorrow. I stand up and look out the window and it’s in the bloody harbour already!

The next day, Saturday, is a frenzied blur. We packaged up all the equipment that needed to be taken back to Newcastle and consigned it to the ship. It was raining/snowing! Of all the days! All the cardboard boxes got soggy and the ink ran.

Then, finally, it was time for the last night drinks. I sat on the wooden plank out the back of the donga, talking to Clare, watching the beach, drinking wine, with a doona over our legs. We never got around to doing a donga roof party coz we could never find a ladder at the appropriate time of night. We were taking our time; we knew we were late for the drinks but we figured the party would be going long into the night. Then: the Polaris buggy hooned out of nowhere onto the beach below us, did a tight loop way too fast, and suddenly tipped up and rolled over its roof onto its side. There was stillness; we were the only people who’d seen it. Clare and I looked at each other in shock. We started toward the beach, not knowing whether someone was pinned underneath or injured. Then we heard laughter and two black figures emerged from it and walked up the beach toward the living quarters. We figured they were OK and went back to our wine. A few minutes later Fred and Wilma (the air ground crew) came out, flipped it onto its wheel base, and drove it off.

We sat and watched the beach, and the weddell seals, and the ellys, and the giant petrels. It was the last night, and there was some sort of feeling of release, like a pressure valve. Clare and I did something we hadn’t done for the whole three months, which was talk about other people – and suddenly, comparing stories about other people and adding together all the small little incidents, we realised that X actually was a real sleazebag, and Y was a real nutter etc. It was funny and a very very interesting insight into the whole isolated professional community thing works: most people naturally refrains from (or at least cut down on) destructive gossip, which enables everyone to live together – and then, of course, it all comes out at the very end, when you don’t have to live with the people any more. Suddenly the whole atmosphere was so much more relaxed – and the voyage home would reflect this: the Aurora Australis, which had been a science vessel on the way south, now turned into Fairstar the Funship for the return voyage.

So we went to the mess and joined everyone for dinner. Heaps of red wine, heaps of good food. Whole animal on a spit. Much flirtation. Much good. Much wine. We decided to try and pick the locks and break into fort knox. Good plan, didn’t work. Very very late night. Go to bed around 4:30 – people all still up, sitting on benches, watching the view, or else still in the bar with the smoke machine going, hollering, or else totally smashed. Bed. Up very early the next morning.

Next chapter: The Departure -- coming tomorrow.