The past few days have been simply phenomenal.
Many people have spoken to me about feelings of complacency over the course of the summer, of which even I was guilty of on rare occasions; however, there are very few feeling it at the moment. With only days until the Aurora Australis arrives, I, like many others are soaking up every last piece of this amazing Antarctic experience as we can.
Vestfold Hills
For three days in the past week, Alex and I have been measuring the lake levels in the Vestfold Hills for the Australian Antarctic Division. It is thought that the lake levels are dropping over time, but the rate is unknown. Accurate measurements of the lake levels have not been surveyed since the early to mid 1980's, so the results could be interesting and influential.
Being the spoilt scientists we are, we had a helicopter of our own for three days to fly us to approximately 25 lakes throughout the Vestfold Hills. In most cases, we would land on the edge of the lake, about 20 metres from the survey mark, take some measurements, re-load the helicopter and fly 1-2km to the next lake. To think, if we were in Australia, it would cost $2,000 an hour for a helicopter.
On the first day of surveys, the helicopter meet us at our second site, and brought out two visitors, Wade and Frederique, two of the film crew who were shooting the Mawson Documentary. The helicopter company had asked them to shoot some new training video footage for them, and who do you think are going to be the new stars of the helicopter resources video, that's right – GIDDY UP – talk about being famous. Now anyone who comes to Antarctica is going to see me in the helicopter training video and my showering video. How lucky are they?
On the third day of lake surveys (Saturday 3rd March – Becky's Birthday – Happy Birthday Booges), we even dropped in next to the Sorsdal Glacier on the way home to collect some glacier ice for The Last Supper – the final Saturday night dinner for all summer expeditioners.
Saturday Night Dinner Saturday night dinner is always a formal occasion for the station. Fine food, candlelight and collared shirts are even preceded by people showering. To quote a wise man;
Dale Kerrigan "We have had many top nights, but tonight was the most top"
Thanks Dale. It is true; over the course of the summer we have had some fine Saturday night dinners, but none of them come close to last night. There was a great feeling amongst the station, as we new this was our goodbye dinner to share stories, laughs and a few drinks with those people who have been our family over the past few months.
To make the occasion all the more special, waiters (in the form of one of the wintering crew) provided excellence service. Our Italian waiter Barnibus (Matt Ryan) from the province of Italy was a credit to the restaurant. This was the point were I was being told to enjoy my meal – OR ELSE!
Barnibus seated us, threw a napkin at us, poured each of us a glass of red wine, and read the menu, providing an in depth life story of each animal we were about to eat. He then looked around to see every other waiter rushing to the kitchen to get orders made up. Instead of following suite, Barnibus sat down and said, "you guys aren't hungry yet are you" before polishing off a glass of beer. Ten minutes later, Barny walked into the kitchen and within 45 seconds we had the food on our table while most other tables that had ordered 10 minutes ago sat and watched as we ate.
Here are a couple of pictures from last night. Note in the picture of Matt and Alex, Matt is actually eating someone else's dessert.
The dinner was spectacular, I had the beef wellington
Sal: "oh Beef Wellington"
Daryl "what's Beef Wellington darl"
Sal "well, it's beef wrapped in a pastry"
The red wine was flowing and before I knew it, it was 10:30 and our table had been through 4 bottles of red. It was an amazing night. Throughout the entire dinner I don't think I stopped smiling or laughing. It was great to reflect on the amazing summer I have had. I could look around the tables and recall a story about each and every one of the people I have spent the summer with.
After some speeches, everyone retired to the bar where the festivities (included the DAVIS band) continued long into the night and well into the following morning. I had set myself for a big night given that at 5:44 the following morning, it was going to be a Lunar Eclipse. Given I had never seen one before, I thought there was no better place to watch my first one.
Having said that, it was difficult staying awake between 3 and 6am, so Brendan, Chris and I decided to make some phone calls. Being in Antarctica, we decided it would be nice to talk to someone a bit further north than us so we rang directory assistance and asked for the phone number of a Mr. Jones on Maine St in Anchorage Alaska. That's right we just picked the most common surname and street name and what do you know it worked. We got Andrew Jones who was a lovely fellow that owns an auto repair business. After chatting for about 10mins we asked if he new of anyone a little further north and we got the number of a hotel in Nome Alaska. They didn't answer so we changed the last number to a 9 and tried again. You would not believe who it was – THE ITITAROD ORGANISATION OF ALASKA! These are the guys that race Husky's 2000 miles across Alaska. How cool is that – just a random number and we get Husky's. They were very happy to talk to us.
We eventually made it to 5:44 and saw the Lunar Eclipse at totality (full eclipse). It was –10.7 degrees outside, we were cold, sobering up and I would not have missed it for the world. Here are some of the shots from the eclipse.
As you can probably tell. Chris (left) and I grabbed and spare clothes lying around inside to stay warm.
The earth's shadow being cast across the moon was symbolic of my amazing adventure soon coming to an end.