This is it, dear Reader. The last journal entry from our memorable trip to Antarctica 23 years ago.
If you have managed to stick with it from Day 1, you have my admiration and gratitude - thank you for your resilience. If you have no idea what this is all about and have just dropped in randomly, please take a moment to go back to Day 1 (HERE) and hopefully, if what I have written appeals to you, we'll see you back here in a few days.
I've thoroughly enjoyed re-visiting these memories, and while I realised of course, at the start of this exercise, that what I'm doing here is the very height of self-indulgence on my part - I did it anyway!
Southern Ocean
This will be my last journal entry for the trip. Barring vessels in distress lost refugee ships or pirates, we should have an uneventful voyage from here and be making our way back up the Derwent River towards Hobart in about six days’ time.
We had a competition to design a voyage tee-shirt. My contribution was to offer to have Collex pay for them if we could put our logo on the sleeve. I think it was Tamara who came up with the winning design.
I mentioned yesterday about the Antarctic waste problems and the many challenges it presents. But what else did we learn from the voyage?
Well, perhaps more than anything we learned about the human relations aspect of such a voyage. Being thrown together with a wide variety of people and personalities, even for this short period of time, has provided a great opportunity to learn something about people’s characters as well as our own. I spent nearly ten years on board ship during my marine engineering career but that was a long time ago and from today's perspective of a reasonably comfortable lifestyle, with plenty of personal space whenever it is needed, this kibbutz-style of living three to a cabin (four at one stage) and the sharing all facilities takes some getting used to. I never really feel I’m on my own until I draw the curtain in the evening on the 2 metre long by 1.2-metre-wide capsule which is my bunk.
There is no escape. If I decide to go to the bar for a drink, or to the ship’s gym (sadly, not something I have done often enough) or to the video room to watch a movie, or the conference room to check or write an e-mail, I share the same space, with the same people with whom I have had breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And yet it’s not so bad. This has been a remarkably happy and friendly voyage, and there is something agreeable about the experience of strangers becoming friends and of unfamiliar faces becoming familiar.
On the way south, we were a comparatively small group of 40 expeditioners and 20 crew and the eight days it took us to get to Casey, provided ample time for us to become a friendly community. We shared a barbecue on the Trawl Deck and had a great time on Christmas Day. We enjoyed the fun of watching a hirsute bunch of people become follicly challenged as they shaved their heads for Camp Quality, and we had the opportunity to learn a lot about the different reasons we all had for coming on the voyage.
There were wintering expeditioners on their way to face 14 months of isolation, marine scientists carrying out work enroute and individuals like Yann and myself who had some project involvement, for which a visit to Casey would provide valuable information in carrying out their various tasks.
Once we arrived in Casey, we were overwhelmed by all the new faces. We, who had been comfortable in our ship-board environment were suddenly the visitors; the interlopers who were invading the space of the fifty or so expeditioners who made up the 2001 Casey summerers and winterers. We joined them in the Red Shed for meals and socialised with them in Splinters Lounge, but we knew that we were the round-trippers who were now taking up room in their territory.
Then we left Casey, and those fifty or so Caseyites came with us, leaving behind the fourteen 2002 winterers that had come south with us. The ship was now not so quiet and we who’d had the luxury of being the sole occupants of a four-berth cabin, were now three to a room.
Then the decision was made to turn left, instead of right when we came out of the ice. We weren’t going home after all, or at least not just yet. First, we had to see what help we could give Polar Bird, a few days away to the west of us. It was during this time that those strange Caseyites who had joined us, turned out not to be so strange after all. Those odd people with names like Critter and Fishbuster and Pepé, with their green and orange hair and their familiarity with each other, started to appear normal and friendly people, and quite a pleasure to be with.
Is it something special about the type of people who come to the Antarctic, or is it true of people everywhere? I guess it’s because living and working in the cities and towns and in the busy world of today, the only people we really need to know well are our immediate families and friends and that anyone else is just a bystander.
I’m reminded of one of the comments of AAD’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Peter Gormley at our briefing on Day One, the morning before we sailed. He said, “When you sit across the table from the same fellow for four or six or twelve months, or however long you’re away for, and even though he cleans the food out of his beard with his fork, you’d better get used to it and learn to live with it, because he’s going to be there again tomorrow. So the message I leave you with is this: be kind to each other.”
And so it was when we picked up the Mawson crowd from Polar Bird. By this stage, we had over 100 souls on board, and lunch and dinner required two sittings. But still morale was high and the attitude of all one of comfortable cordiality. Alright, the rationing of the beer to one can of VB per day was a bit of a drag, especially when the Guinness ran out, but there are still a few cases of Jacob’s Creek on board and the Light Ice at least quenches the thirst.
It’s not just the expeditioners either. Being back on the deck of a ship after my own sea-going career many years earlier was an absolute pleasure and not one I had ever anticipated. I was quite chuffed when Evan, the ship's Chief Engineer, on learning of my previous engine room experience, inquired whether my marine engineering qualifications were still valid – if so, perhaps I’d like to do a couple of watches! I kind of think he was kidding, but I wasn’t completely sure.
The officers and crew were to a man and woman, some of the most skilled and capable people I had come across – maybe it’s something to do with being on the Antarctic run, and the fact that this must be one of the last pioneering spots on the planet. The comment from our ship's captain, Tony encapsulated it all when he said to me one day, “A lot of people think that the two best jobs in Australia are Prime Minister and captain of the Australian Cricket Team. They are all wrong – this is!”
It’s been a trip that I would not have missed for the world. Had Yann and I known beforehand how long we would have been away, we would have most likely decided not to come. Our jobs have suffered during this extended absence, and it’s been unfair to our families. From a personal perspective, I probably could not have been away at a worse time with bushfires in Sydney at one point threatening the suburb where I live and I am so thankful that I have a wonderful partner in my life who said, “Go, you’ll never get another opportunity.”
I believe that during this time, Doug, my boss at Veolia in Sydney sent me the very first email he ever sent in his life, complete with punctuation errors it read,
“Dear Mike, Do yOU still work for CoLLex?”
But I’ve now been Antarctica and witnessed the wonders of that special part of our planet which is its very engine room. The place where the currents and winds seem to originate; where circumpolar low-pressure systems are formed and then spun off into the lower latitudes; where so much unique wildlife exists – the whales, seals, petrels and most of all those comical little penguins.
It has been a privilege and not one I will ever take for granted. I just know that the next time I go to an event where there are thousands of people like a packed footie stadium, I will look around at the crowd and think to myself, “How many of YOU have been to Antarctica?”
It’s a place where scientific research provides us with so much information about the very life and future of our planet; where the glaciologists, geo-physicists, earth and marine scientists and biologists come to study those things which look at climate patterns, the ozone layer and the biodiversity of life.
I’m so very pleased to have made this trip and pleased that Doug Dean, Collex and Veolia have made a commitment to helping to return the White Continent to a condition where our human impact is minimal. I’ll be back.
Footnote 2025
I never did go back – or at least as I write this, I haven’t made it back yet. Maybe I’ll get there one day as a tourist, but it is unlikely to happen any other way. However, much to my family's amusement (or maybe not), I am still wearing the tee-shirt.
The waste in Antarctica particularly at the old Wilkes base continues to be an issue. Australia is not alone with this problem. A quick Google search will reveal that there are legacy waste sites at many other present and former bases owned and operated by Antarctic Treaty nations.
I'm certain that if a similar situation existed at a more accessible or visible Australian territory such as a former mining site say, the news would be on the front pages. It's unkind to say that out of sight, means out of mind, but this is Australian Antarctic Territory and there is no doubt that it continues to present a serious problem.
Will it be fixed in my lifetime? I sincerely doubt it.
The airport at Wilkins about 70km from Casey was completed in 2007 and most expeditioners now travel by Airbus on the four and half hour flight from Hobart. This reduces the amount of work that the charter ships do in terms of carrying expeditioners, but regular visits for refuelling and the carrying out of scientific marine work goes on.
The dear old orange roughie, Aurora has gone. After over 150 trips to Antarctica she carried out her last assignment five years ago. She has been replaced by Nuyina a larger, faster and more powerful vessel.
I did some research on the current whereabouts of Aurora. When last seen she was alongside the wharf in Vung Tau, Vietnam as the Cyprus registered, Aurora Dubai. No longer certified as an ice breaker, she is described as a supply vessel and my guess is that her days are numbered.
Polar Bird did her last voyage for Antarctic Division in 2003. To my surprise, she is still active as Israeli owned and registered general cargo vessel Almog, last sighted in Haifa.
It was, as I said in my journal, the journey of a lifetime. One particular moment that keeps coming back to me is standing on my own on the Helideck at about three o'clock in the morning. The ship was in a gentle swell in open sea and we had seen our last iceberg a few hours earlier. I must have stood on that deck for an hour, on my own, just looking at the silvery reflections on the sea from a billion stars overhead and thinking, I need to capture this moment in memory for ever - because it may never happen again.
To people like Martin Riddle and Ian Snape and the many others involved in the human impact and clean up programs I acknowledge the critical contribution you have made in Antarctic research over many years.
To those expeditioners I was fortunate to spend time with: Steve the kelp expert; Ann and Mary the lichen and moss ladies; glaciologist Mark; krill master Angela; risk manager (and great voice-over actor) Gordon; Lucinda from the ANARE Club; voyage leader Greg; deputy leader Simon; Station leaders John and Paul and those whose names I have forgotten, but certainly not your involvement and commitment, I remain in awe of your work.
To the ship's officers and crew, particularly skipper Tony; chief mate Scott (who later captained Aurora's replacement, Nuyina); second mate Jake; third mate Carmen; chief engineer Evan; Pilot Ric; Elvis; King Neptune; and Mark (who lost more hair on the charity night that most of us can grow in a life time), I thank you for your professionalism and your good will.
To those AAD executives like Tony Press and Kim Pitt and later Kim Ellis, it was a privilege to have known and worked with you. I dips my lid to all of you, expeditioners and mariners alike.
I'd also like to say a very special thank you to my colleague and friend on the trip, Yann Moreau - you were a great shipmate.
Finally, thank you, Doug Dean – RIP.
