A Southern Christmas 2001 - Day 1

 

Something to read over Christmas

(sort of)

Twenty-three years ago this week I set off on an adventure.

It was a selfish act, abandoning my family in the heat of a Sydney Christmas with the impending threat of bushfires, but it was an opportunity of a lifetime and my wonderful wife, Pauline convinced me that there would be more Christmases ahead, but there was unlikely to be another chance like this.

So where was I going? The Galapagos? The Amazon? The Moon?

No, this was to Antarctica – by sea, as a temporary expeditioner with Australian Antarctic Division.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I want to jump back to that time and share the experience again. I hope you’ll stick with it.

It began with a sizeable contribution to a clean-up program by the parent company of the business I was employed by at that time. The issues and actions which took place then, are as relevant today as they ever were.

At that time, I was working as Development Manager with what was then, and still is - one of Australia’s leading environmental services companies. The company had been operating as a waste transport business for over twenty years before being acquired by French services group, Veolia in the early 1990s. The people in Paris had become aware of a report, which had been prepared the previous year by one of my colleagues in Tasmania following a waste audit carried out at Casey Base for the Australian Antarctic Division.

That same year, consistent with their sustainability values, Veolia made a global commitment to sponsoring waste clean-up in Antarctica and were already working with agencies in Antarctic Treaty countries including Argentina, Russia, France and the UK.

As a result of a determined initiative by Veolia’s long-standing head of the Australian operation, Doug Dean, this translated into a $2 million offer to construct specialised waste containers to assist in a clean-up being planned by the Australian Government over the next ten years.

The offer was willingly accepted by then Federal Environment Minister, Sen. Robert Hill, and it wasn’t long before we were working closely with the Division to build the 240 containers which would travel on board Aurora Australis to Casey Base at the end of 2001.

An exciting outcome of this from a personal view was that I was to travel to Antarctica with the first shipment on a three-week round trip over the Christmas and New Year period. As it transpired, the adventure lasted almost seven weeks for reasons which will become clear over the course of this story.

I kept a journal during this time and what follows is a summary of the trip. I confess that reading it again it seems a little pretentious in parts, but I have tried not to change it too much, only removing repetition and trivia to make the story less longwinded. I hope it provides a hint of this unforgettable experience.

I’m not going to post it all at once – I’m fully aware of the TLDR risks associated with such communications.  The adventure (and it truly was an adventure) began 23 years ago this week on 16 December 2001, and my plan is to post each day’s journal entry on the anniversary of the day the events took place.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do recalling the events so many years later.

MISSION ANTARCTIC: WASTE REMOVAL – AN ANTARCTIC DIARY

Sunday 16th December 2001

On board “Aurora Australis”.

Yann and I checked out of our Hobart hotel at 0730 and headed down to Macquarie Wharf with our gear. There, with 38 of our fellow travellers we assembled in the main dining room for the briefing of voyagers and expeditioners. They are an interesting group and I’m looking forward to getting to know them over the next three weeks.

Our party includes a dozen or so “over-winterers” heading south for the next 14 months. This includes some of the people who are going to be filling our bins with the waste from the old Thala Valley tip. Their voyage T-shirts say, “CASEY 2002 – The Rubbish Run”.

The briefing was thorough and started with welcome speeches by Greg, the Voyage Leader and Tony, Director of the Australian Antarctic Division. We learned something about the purpose of this trip (essentially re-supply) and what some of our fellow travellers would be doing on the voyage, and when we arrived at our destination. It was a great introduction to what was in store for us.

If we had the slightest impression that the Antarctic is not an exciting and potentially dangerous place, it was quickly dispelled by AAD’s Chief Medical Officer who gave one of the most graphic and entertaining presentations of what to do and what not to do to survive the Antarctic.

Because some of our expeditioners are going to winter in Antarctica and will be away from home for over a year, there was a focus on some of the personal as well as physical risks which will be faced – and as someone who had in a previous life spent many months at sea, I could understand his comments about not focusing on the way the fellow across the table eats his food or scratches his beard which, when looked at day after day for months on end, can drive a person to distraction without the right attitude.

Later the ship’s master, Tony gave us a briefing on the Aurora itself. She has five decks – A, B, C, D, E and F, from which we will forever remember the mnemonic, action, bosses, crew, dongas, eating and fun. Yann and I are sharing a donga on D deck which is where most of the group are located.

We had been scheduled to leave at 5 pm, but due to some last-minute technical changes this was revised to 8 pm. It’s a major event when an Antarctic Division ship leaves on a voyage south, and this departure was no exception. Although a relatively small group of 40 expeditioners and 21 crew, there was nevertheless a healthy contingent of well-wishers, loved ones and old hands on the wharf to wave us off. The obligatory streamers were strung out between ship and shore and on the dot of 8 pm Aurora gave a long blast, and we slowly moved away from the wharf and into the Derwent.

As the distance between our vessel and the wharf grew larger, the streamers separated one by one, and cameras and videos were replaced by mobile phones. We all congregated on the helicopter deck, in the lee of our deck cargo of waste bins, using our phones for the last time for a few weeks. As we sailed down the Derwent past the township of Kingston, headlights of a car on Bonnet Hill could be seen flashing as a determined spouse sent his or her last bon voyage to one of our number.

By 9 pm, we were heading out into open sea and the first gentle swells began to cause the ship to gently pitch in the fading light. We all gathered in the Dining Room for a final briefing. Here we learnt that we are due to arrive in Casey on Christmas Day and that Santa had agreed to make an early visit to the Aurora on December 22. We learnt that there were to be a few more things to look forward to, although our Voyage Leader Greg told us he’s going to leave us in peace tomorrow as we get used to the feel of a moving deck under our feet.

To be continued…