Cob is a truly happy man. He’s the senior Met Observer here and he’s been (the only one) disappointed that the weather has been relatively mild this year, but last Sunday the Weather Gods answered his prayers with a record-breaking wind gust of 134 knots (248kph) at 115pm local time. The previous wind speed record was set when my boss Dr Jeff Ayton was here in March 1992, with a wind gust of 131 knots! Pfft! We also broke the record for the coldest July day, with a seriously bone-chilling -34.2C earlier in the month.
Living through winds like that was quite an experience. As a rule of thumb, you get knocked over when the wind speed in knots exceeds your body weight in kilograms, so for safety reasons our travel is restricted and once the wind gets over 100 knots for a sustained period of time no one is allowed to leave the Red Shed. With sustained winds between 60-100 knots we go on “Red” travel conditions which means that you can only go outside in pairs, with permission from the station leader, and you take precautions like wearing ice chains on your shoes and holding onto blizz lines (Nick, the head dieso, who has recently began an affair with protein powder and the gym ie he’s not little, tells me that for a brief moment the wind lifted him right off the ground and he was holding on for dear life to the blizz line!). I went out in those conditions with Brilly to move a Hagg and check the powerhouse obs – it’s pretty exhilarating at first but then it just gets uncomfortable and tiring fighting to keep your balance and move forward in poor visibility whilst sharp snow stings your face and you struggle to breath with all that gear on. Saturday 6th August actually marked the anniversary of the death of G. Reeves here in 1979 – he went outside in a blizzard to use the toilet at Robbo’s during a field trip but didn’t return to the van. He was found the next morning, alive but very hypothermic down on the sea ice, and was unable to be resuscitated. Reeves Hill is named after him. We studied his tragic case as part of our cold injury module in uni last week, and also read about this case which highlights the dangers of getting drunk in a cold environment or without friends to look after you: http://imgur.com/gallery/QzTs0.
The noise inside the Red Shed during a blizzard is pretty deafening and can make movie watching and sleep a bit hard, particularly if a chunk of snow or ice or even a rock hits the side of the building. The water in the toilet bowl sloshes around too which provides me with childish amusement. Despite the hectic winds, there was remarkably little damage done – a flag pole was knocked over, a windscreen was broken, a tarpaulin covering a biopile blew away, and one of the buildings got a fair bit of snow inside it because the door blew open. I think because the winds were so strong, not much snow built up so there wasn’t a lot to clear, unlike the week before.
Being cooped up in the Red Shed over the windy weekend wasn’t too terrible however. Formal dinner was on Saturday night, which coincided with Brilly’s birthday. A few of us bought a bottle of wine and we held a very civilised red wine tasting. It’s clear that my wine tasting skills are very rusty and will need some dedicated polishing when I get home. I think the amount of wine I’ve bought online this year, which is waiting for me at Mum’s house, is a concerning sign of how much I’m missing wine bars, wineries and bottle shops. Incidentally I hopped on a clothes site the other day to see what was happening in the world of fashion – it is strange how irrelevant and far-removed from us that world is down here.
We’d held a suturing training class on the preceding Friday for the LSA’s and for a few of the guys going on the traverse because they’ll be a few hours away from their lovely doctor. The class was taken very seriously at first, but then turned into somewhat of an art and piercing class…Nothing too out of hand though.
When the wind dropped, and the air cleared of blowing snow, the true scale of the devastation was revealed. The sea ice is GONE. Boo hoo hoo. I am gutted. Hopefully there is a long run of cold weather and it can refreeze before winter ends, and I can get back out on it on skis.
Andy is a man of many talents. Not only can he staple his own finger, he is also one of my amazing anaesthetic LSAs, the Brew Master (see https://craftypint.com/…/…/Cold_As_Ice_Brewing_In_Antarctica for a recently published magazine article about him and the Casey brewery), the karaoke king, the play director, the video games guru (including gambling games for Casino Night) he is also our Comms Tech so he is the radio operator and our go-to-man for any entertainment requests or computer, communications or technological issues. And when not busy doing any of the above, he also collects data for scientific research.
Brilly accompanied me on my hydro check one night last week as the travel conditions were red, and afterwards we went and checked the powerhouse because he was rostered on for obs. Powerhouse obs are done four times a day. It’s a thirsty plant, burning through a staggering 50,000 litres of diesel a month in an effort to keep our lights on, appliances running, and buildings warm (water circulates through the building, is heated by the engines, and pumped back out around the station). That doesn’t count the diesel used by vehicles. All up we will use almost one million litres of diesel this year between Casey station, the skiway and Wilkins runway. The hungriest machines are probably the chef’s ovens and my sterilisers. Mawson has a wind turbine (Scott Base, the NZ base near McMurdo on the Ross Ice shelf also generates a lot of wind power for both stations I believe) but Casey’s winds are too erratic and unreliable, and we wouldn’t make enough solar power in winter, but maybe one day we’ll be able to generate more renewable electricity, and as buildings are modernised they hopefully will become more energy efficient.
The windy weather last week made it difficult for Marto the plant operator to work outside, so instead he renovated Splinters, our bar, with some help from others. He made a very exciting discovery when he removed the bench top: a time capsule from 1989 that had been built into the bar!!! The grand opening will be saved for a special occasion…perhaps our end-of-winter dinner later this month, before Marto and the other three Wilkins guys head back up the hill to spend the next two months preparing the runway for summer and the handing-over of the baton.
The weekend just gone was full of entertainment which helped to break up the ongoing tedium of medical facility stocktake, maintenance and study. We filmed our entry for the highly competitive annual Antarctic 48 hour Film Festival – movie criteria are announced to all stations on Friday afternoon and the movie is supposed to be filmed, edited and handed in by Sunday night. Kieran was our director and producer, and worked tirelessly all weekend to get the film together. More about that to come after the movies are aired and judged by all the stations but it was a timely weekend for filming as Dean had organised a Cas Vegas casino night which was a lot of fun and involved horse racing, roulette, blackjack, poker and raffles, and so a little hint… there are some casino scenes in our movie.
Gambling is not condoned by the AAD so we played with printed money (Jimmy dollars). Inflation was rife as Dean the cashier became more generous as the night progressed, which was lucky for me because I lost all my money early on. Raffle prizes included breakfast in bed served by Chef Donna, a dental clean by me, coffee at Matty’s “It’s hard to say” cafe, guitar lessons from Jeff, Veet hair removal cream, Danny’s lost Estwing hammer!, and all-inclusive trip to Wilkins runway which was won by Katie and I. We can’t wait to enjoy a guided tour of the mineral springs (the crevasse that they tip grey water down), experience a 2-minute or less shower, and burn one down in the incinolet.
The next day Marto and I went for a ski around the Bailey Peninsula to check out the scale of the damage to the sea ice and the igloo. Sad as the destruction of both made me (and Muz, the igloo architect and chief builder), I was gladdened to see lots of Antarctic petrols flying around – they must be taking advantage of the clear access to the sea water. It had been several months since I’d spotted a bird!
And this is what really happened to Marto’s hair:
Eat Sleep Freeze Repeat 