Xmas Eve

A great looking after noon and night wth the pancake ice hanging around out the front of the station! The best time for photos seems to be around midnight at the moment.

Xmas Eve drinks were shared by many in the new Living Quarters (LQ currently under construction). I am sure you can see what a struggle it will be sitting up here when the rest of the building is completed. There are all the pancakes in the background.

Snow Petrel in Flight

These birds are great to watch but hard to get a photo of as they are all over the place chasing the winds. They will come in for a look at you and cut a couple of laps until you are ready to get a shot of them. Then they take off until the camera is away and you are walking again. Cheeky little sods! This is really for that twitcher "George Landy".

Wake up Grumpy!

I have had a couple of nights out in the Antarctic wilderness avoiding snoring, sweaty socks and group farts.

"Believe it or Not!" This is what I look like at 03:00 after waking up outside on a rock ledge thinking that I have slept in and am getting sun burnt. The cure for this is far easier to just zip yourself into the bivvy bag and pretend it was just a dream unless you need to pee. "Where is the damn pee bottle anyway?"

Trajer Ridge

This is the 'Happy Place' known as the Trajer Ridge Melon. Standing on this small rocky outcrop that is alongside a massive 7km tongue of ice that stretches off the plateau. Put in for science in the late 80's it has simply just managed to hold on as it is a great spot to come for field trips and recreational persuits.

All work of course! This is just one of the smaller cracks that you have to negotiate along the way it is about two feet across at this point and it has only a thin film of ice before a botomless drop to your death!

Still working, following the group as we come back down towards the Melon. We are actually walking along the tongue of ice from the plateau. It is steeper and sliperier than it looks.

More cool bubbles frozen in the ice of one of the small water pools along the way. Must be the Antarctic frogs farting (ok blowing bubbles) under the ice and then getting stuck in time.

Chinese Visitors

Yes, even in Antarctica you can get the occasional visitors from another country. The Chinese came to visit for a day this week as they were in the area and thought they would pop in. There voayager's felt very lucky to be just inside the first 2000 Chinese people down here. To put this in perspective though it is only the second year they have come. Insidentally that is a very large boat!

Marine Plain Apples and Melon for Lunch!

This is what the Apples and Melon look like at Marine Plain!

It may have been the only time that I will get out to the Apples that were originally put in for science research in the area. Marine Plain is a large Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) just south of it; this is due to the fact that there have been a number of sightings of fossilised dolphins. Not special in itself but they are dated before the time lines have placed dolphins and are extremely well preserved as they have appeared to die in the water and fall to the bottom being covered over by the sediments and etched into history. Unfortunately that means that you need a permit to go in there so it was not to be today. The Apples have been in for a number of years and have just hung around as they provide something good to head for and have their own little bit of history.

First Fatty Boomba Elephant Seal of the Summer

Here it is a young elephant seal doing what they do lying around on the beach waiting for all the hot chicks to come and play. Although he is close to the water here there will be hundreds of them arriving over the next few weeks and they will hang out on their own accumulated piles of shit!

These date back hundreds of years and scientists actually come and get core samples of it! Close up it resembles a bunch of manky old doormats all piled up. It was a bit on the nose now but it will get far worse. You can see the piles of poo and poo juice below!

Yummo just as well we were stopping for lunch as I was getting hungry!

Sea Ice There one day Gone the next!

A day is all it took this week to go from sea ice as far as the eye could see to a beach resort! Pretty amazing that 1.7m of ice can break up and dissapear overnight.

Satelites and SAR

Amazingly these are the same thing above and below, the ANARE Satelite dome and dish which makes it possibly to talk to all those people back home and to send any other info that is needed like this blog update. Friday Drinks was had on the inside of the dome and the below photo is of the outside of the dome.

Search and Rescue Training kicked off on Saturday morning. This is one of the heli pilots making sure that nothing delicate gets broken while getting the stretcher into the tight space of the Squirrel. That is with the passenger seat and rear seats removed!