A Southern Christmas 2001 - Day 1 (Setting off from Hobart)

 

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…

 

Michael Thomas (Mick) Fleming

 As we go through this journey that we call life, and if we are one of the fortunate ones who by random act of chance was born in a society of relative security, access to health care, clean water and an education then, if our luck holds out, we get to experience all the emotions and sensations that life provides – love, happiness, sadness, joy, grief, excitement, fear, pleasure and pain.  We’re all on the same ride along the moving footpath of life and none of us know where or when it will end, just that it will – and that for some of us it’s getting uncomfortably closer. 

I realise that this is a maudlin way to start writing a few words to honour a wonderful man, only I’m reminded, as I grow older that there are quite a few more who have completed their journey than there were when I was about halfway into my own.  I have grieved and shed tears for all of them – but none more than my lovely friend, brother-in-law and great mate, Michael Thomas (Mick) Fleming. They say the difference between friends and relatives, is that you only get to choose your friends. Mick became a relative, and I in turn became a member of the Fleming family, the day Pauline and I walked down the aisle almost fifty years ago. Mick was a dear, dear friend and I miss him - he was a brother. We know that Mick’s journey with his beloved Maureen began when he joined the army after he’d had enough of the misery of working in a coal mine in 1950s Nottingham. It was in Ashford that he met a pretty 19-year-old Maid of Kent and knew at once that she was the one. They were married shortly after following his demobilisation in 1958. After a brief honeymoon by the seaside, with only enough for their fare, they took the train to Nottingham. Mick told me a tale that when a fellow traveller, noticing they hadn’t eaten throughout the journey offered them one of her sandwiches, he proudly said “Thanks very much, but we never eat when we travel". They made their home in Ashford and lived there for many years. Although when we lived in the UK, we were in a different part of the country, Mick and I became friends and though Pauline and I moved to Australia a few year later, we continued whenever we could to share time together. Apart from the times we spent at their homes in Ashford and Rugby, we shared memories in France, Cornwall and Australia. I could write many stories of the times the four of us shared – Mick, Maureen, Pauline and me. Road trips up and down the NSW coast, lunches and dinners at iconic restaurants and resorts, and lunches and dinners at cheap pubs and roadside rest stops. It was always the same – laughter, enjoyment and affection. 

Not wanting to make this story “too long, didn’t read” (TLDR), I’ll mention only three events which remain in my memory. Christmas 2002 – their first visit to Australia. A wonderful time driving from Sydney to the Gold Coast in a rented VW people carrier. Staying in a borrowed apartment overlooking the beach at Broadbeach. Swimming in the surf, followed by Christmas carols and barbecue, looking out at sand and ocean in 35-degree heat, then later, watching from a second-floor balcony, glass in hand as a summer storm tore through the area, reducing visibility to a few feet and dropping 200-300 mm of rain in less than an hour, only to be gone the next day and sunshine restored.

Easter 2005 – again in Australia. A day out sailing with Ian Kiernan. Perhaps not as well-known outside of Australia, a brief visit to Wikipedia will tell anyone interested that Ian was an Australian icon, a former Australian of the Year, round the world yachtsman and environmental campaigner who founded the “Clean up Australia” organisation and inspired millions of volunteers and supporters over many years. I was fortunate to have known Ian through business connections and worked with him for a number of years until he sadly passed away in 2018. When I told Ian that Mick was coming to Sydney for a holiday, he immediately offered to spend the day with us on Sydney Harbour in his classic fifty-year-old yawl “Maris” – the same yacht in which he completed four or five Sydney to Hobart races. She was then, and still is now a wonderful sight sailing on the beautiful harbour. It was a truly delightful day. Ian brought along a picnic lunch and a couple of cold beers, and we could not have picked a better way to spend our time.  Later that afternoon, Ian presented Mick with an inscribed copy of his autobiography, “Coming Clean”, which from that day had pride of place on Mick’s bookshelf.

December 2018 – Brisbane.  I can’t finish a story about Mick without at least one golf story. I have lost count of the many enjoyable (but fiercely competitive) rounds of golf we played together – sometimes just the two of us, and on other occasions with Paul, and once with cousin Colin - a great day out with the wives at the Briary in Birmingham. Mick taught me all I ever knew on a golf course (or so he would have anyone who happened to be in earshot believe). He was a stickler for etiquette, but really understood the value of a good sledge. “Are you sure you want to play off the blue tees, Mike? It’s a lot closer from the yellow ones you know.” 

He never wore a glove – when it was his turn to hit the ball off the tee, he would step up to the ball, spit on his hands, rub them together, grab his driver firmly and swing – and the ball would sail down the fairway – often.  If not, he would issue a round curse, and stride off after it ready for the next blast.

My favourite round, and coincidentally the last time we played together was Christmas Eve, 2018 at Victoria Park Golf Course in Brisbane, a beautifully cared for public course, close to the CBD. The course sadly closed a couple of years ago in the name of inner-city development but on that day, we walked a lovely hilly course with well cared for fairways and manicured greens.  I can’t remember who won on the day (well, I can – but it doesn’t matter). It was a close game, we had a lot of laughs, swore a lot – mostly at the ball and not each other and enjoyed an ice-cold ale in the beer garden afterwards – something to remember for ever.

I’d like to close this short homage with a few words from Terry Pratchett from his novel, Reaper Man.

"No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."

Farewell, Bro!

 

The Bantam Rules

 I’m in the mood for a little nostalgia, and what better Memory Lane to return to than the one which includes those magnificent days when like my peers, I was full of teenage wisdom and immortality.

As I wrote in an earlier chapter, my first career choice on leaving school was to be an apprentice fitter and turner at the local brewery where I was to spend the next five years learning a trade. 

I say career choice as though I had spent many weeks planning and deciding my future. It was nothing like that. I needed a job, my Dad said, "get a trade", I applied for the job, was interviewed, found to be of relatively good character and employed. I had no idea what a fitter and turner was - I would soon learn - but I've already told you about that.

Too young for a licence, I spent the first year or two on a pushbike, leaving home at 7.30 and riding two kilometres to work to be sure I punched my card in the Bundy clock before eight. One minute late and I would lose an hours’ pay from my miserable six pounds a week.  My route took me the length of Draper Street, crossing the busy Bruce Highway at Mulgrave Road. I am mindful of my generous use of the term “busy”. With a population of 25,000, Cairns was still about ten years away from its first set of traffic lights. The pace was far from hectic and while not exactly sleepy, the city was a long way from being the tourist magnet that it is today.

As I approached my 17^th birthday, I was determined that my cycling days would soon end. I needed something classier than a Malvern Star. My father had been a motorcycling enthusiast in his younger days. The family albums contained many photos of Dad and motorbikes.  He had been George Brough’s foreman at Brough Superior Motorcycles in Nottingham (check here for information about the Rolls Royce of Motorcycles). He was a frequent visitor to the Isle of Man TT in his early years having once competed in the late 1930s.  It may have been his own experiences with motorcycles in his youth, or his diminished opinion of the skill and ability of the average North Queensland road user, or the capabilities of the local council (his employer, by the way) to maintain such roads in a safe condition – whatever the reason, he was adamantly opposed to my even learning to ride, yet alone think about ever owning a motor cycle.

So I did what any typical seventeen year old youth would do in similar circumstances – I interpreted his directive as advice and completely ignored it.  Thus it was, that a few days short of my seventeenth birthday, I arrived home from work on a 1958 BSA Bantam.  

It was 175cc of two-stroke heaven and after no more than a dozen or so family arguments, my parents accepted my new mode of transport with just one condition – I was never to be without a motorcycle helmet. True to my word, I was never without it.  Regrettably, it was rarely to be seen on my head. Instead it was stuffed into one of my saddlebags the moment I was out of sight of the house – the obliviousness of youth!

How I loved that Bantam.  It wasn’t quite up to my later aspirations, and I wasn’t yet ready to rub shoulders with the cool guys like Frewy and Pancho on their Bonnevilles and Rocket Gold Stars – but it was a Bantam Super, not a pitiful 125 cc Bantam D1, or even the 150 cc Bantam Major, this was a Bantam Super in case anyone should ever forget it and to me, it might well have been a Manx Norton.

My lifelong friends, Mal and Friz also thought it was great.  I had just begun studying at night school – four nights a week, the first year of a seven year Engineering Diploma. I was back in my old class room at Cairns State High.  Every evening from Monday to Thursday, I was there, listening to my old maths and physics teachers, now surprisingly articulate and engaging in comparison to my school days. The Bantam would be out in the street, right alongside Bob Spencer’s Matchy and Alan McKenzie’s AJS.  For a long time, I could not understand why the engine was often still warm when I came from class around 10pm.  I eventually learned that while I was diligently studying applied mechanics and differential calculus, Mal and Friz were joyriding my cherished possession to Ellis Beach and Yorkey’s Knob and God knows where else.  The Bantam had no ignition key – it was just kick-start and go. Maybe I should have removed the spark plug and taken it to class with me!

It was a wonderfully reliable machine.  Three gears, one down and two up and a top speed of just over 50 mph (about 70 kph).  Occasionally, if pushed too hard at maximum speed (and I’m ashamed to say, this was quite often), the engine would seize causing the back wheel to lock and go into a skid. If the clutch was not immediately engaged, an unpleasant incident would be unavoidable.  I would free-wheel with the clutch handle engaged, and as the bike slowed to a more respectable pace, gently release it whereupon without fail, the engine would again kick into life, and I’d continue on my way.

There is no need to say that this did not do the engine a whole lot of good and I was soon leaving a trail of blue smoke visible from the Kuranda Lookout.  “It’s the rings” said one of my workmates, “an easy job – get down to McGregor Motors, pick up a new set of rings, you'll fix it yourself in no time at all.”

No time that is, if you’re an experienced fitter or motor mechanic – but, for a second year apprentice, not quite the same thing.  Had I been a little more experienced or informed, I might have also known that just because it was blowing smoke, it didn’t necessarily follow that the problem was the rings.  All two-stroke engines blow smoke sometimes because the lubricating oil is mixed with the fuel and if there is an excess of oil, some of it doesn't burn during the combustion process, instead it comes out of the exhaust system in the form of smoke. How was I expected to know?

However, I am not delivering a technical dissertation here. Some engineering genius had told me I needed to replace the piston rings and that was good enough for me.  All started out well and I did an excellent job of stripping down the engine.  I disconnected the fuel lines, removed the spark plug and after a bit of a tussle, removed the four nuts on the cylinder head. Then with the help of a screwdriver I loosened and eventually removed the cylinder head without breaking anything apart from maybe slightly damaging the head gasket.  OK, I may have spilled a few large drops of dirty oil on the clean concrete slab underneath my parents’ high-set “Queenslander” home where I was working; and I may have slightly broken one, possibly both of the old piston rings as I removed the cylinder barrel from the crankcase; and there may have been another gasket which couldn’t seem to make up its mind whether to stick to the barrel or the exhaust manifold.  Fine, I admit it, I was in difficulties.

Eventually, I decided to do what anyone else might have done under similar circumstances.  I re-assembled everything to the best of my ability and when for some obscure reason, the engine would not come to life when I tried to kick-start it, I asked my father for help.

Here’s where the story gets somewhat mortifying.  It would be fair to say that at that point in my life I did not enjoy the closest of relationships with my father.  Who did?  It was only years later, after I left the nest and spent a couple of years globe-trotting that our relationship improved. He obviously learnt much while I was away. 

It was a Saturday morning.  My friends, Mal and Friz (the same two who had the habit of road-testing my bike once or twice a week), had dropped by to see what I was up to (we did a lot of that) and I had just asked Dad if he would mind when convenient, having a quick look at the Bantam because I was having trouble getting it to start.  I should mention that he was workshop superintendent for the City Council’s large fleet of trucks, road graders, bulldozers and every other motor vehicle that the council owned, so he ought to know something about small two-stroke motorcycle engines.  “OK, let’s have a look at it,” he said.

It wasn’t long, before he looked up at me from where he had crouched beside the bike and said, “Have you been tinkering with this?”

“No,” I replied in my most convincing witness-stand voice, “Do you think it might be the rings?”

“Don’t bullshit to me, Michael!”  he said, in a tone which still rings in my ears over half a century later – and which my so-called mates, never let me forget.

Humiliation and shame aside, the result was that my father soon had the bike back in shape, newly decarbonised, new rings and gaskets. He gave a kick to the starter pedal, a flick of the throttle handle and it purred like a satisfied tomcat.  

I would like to tell you that it taught me a lesson, and eventually it did – but alas, not immediately, I had bigger things in mind.

As I approached my eighteenth birthday, it was time for me to step up a level.  After all I was a third year apprentice, and now licensed to carry pillion passengers, but who would want to go out with a guy on the back of Bantam BSA (even if it was the Bantam Super), when there were guys riding around on much bigger and throatier machines.

One of the older members of the motorcycling fraternity, an electrical fitter who lived a few streets away had decided to move up from motorcycles to motor cars, and word got out that he was keen to sell his Norton.  This wasn’t quite the streamlined silver Dominator 650SS, that was the talk of the town, but to my eyes, it was nonetheless an amazing machine and a steal at forty pounds.  I thus became the happy owner of a 1954 Norton Dominator 500cc twin, and I was a king!

Parental anxiety aside, I could not have been happier. I was no longer going to be confused with a noisy lawn mower as I rode past, this was a real machine, and everyone knew it.  As the ads said the Bantam was "the small machine with the big performance", the Norton on the other hand was all performance. The question was, could I handle it?