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Author: Sarah Date: 27 July 2011 Temperature: -25 Wind Speed: 5 knots Temp with wind chill: -30 Sunrise: Na Sunset Na
The drawing of penguins has been done by many explorers. These quirky and amusing birds are a pleasure to draw. Edward Wilson, of Scott’s 1910 Terra Nova Expedition, was a master of drawing both Adelie and Emperor penguins. Wilson did both serious scientific drawing and comical pictures of the penguins.
Many of Wilson’s scientific drawings can be seen at the Scott Polar Institute website, one of my favourites is:
In this fine tradition, I began to draw penguins and in particular the Adelie penguins, whose antics and facial expression are so easy to caricature. I have been drawing cartoons of all the members of Scott Base and the picture shows us all together.
Author: Martin Date: 26.7.2011 Temperature: -27 degree C Wind Speed: 25 knots Temp with wind chill: -55 degree C Sunrise: n/a Sunset n/a
It was more than six months ago that I wrote about the transition from summer to winter life here at Scott Base in Antarctica. How it felt to see a very busy high energy summer season turn into a long, dark and more inward looking winter.
Now after six months of having the base to ourselves and getting very used to it, our winter over team of 14 has somewhat mixed feelings about shifting into another gear again. Even though the arrival of the first plane is still almost a month away, the change ahead is clearly on everybody’s minds. Making plans for the near future, trying to finish off outstanding work, getting the base in order is mixed up with the growing excitement about more and more light appearing during the day and some special fresh food soon to come off the plane. But there is also sadness in realising that the close knit, family-like life of the past six months comes to an end the moment the plane touches down. Our small team of conservators leaves, some new people come in and the staff at Scott Base will turn into the home stretch before the main season kicks off early October.
Author: Julie Date: 20/7/11 Temperature: -13.1 Wind Speed: 30 knots Temp with wind chill: -21 C Sunrise: August Sunset August
Last weekend we went into “Condition 1”. Condition 1 means life-threatening high winds, whiteout conditions, and/or low temperatures. We didn’t get the low temperatures – in fact, the opposite: temperature rose to a balmy - 6.4 degrees C at one point, as frequently happens during a storm – but we had winds that reached a maximum of 74 knots shortly after midnight Sunday morning, along with some snowfall, resulting in metres-high drifts. We weren’t allowed to leave the base during the storm, but I did go out on a semi-protected porch and stick my head into the wind to see what it was like. Yes, it was windy. You can get a sense of condition 1 from this video:
By chance, the day the storm abated it was my day to be the “mouse.” Being the mouse is a duty inflicted on all winter-over base staff by turns. During the day, it involves monitoring the radio traffic, answering the phone, keeping track of who is off base, where they are, and when they’re supposed to be back. Sometime around 10 – 11 pm, the mouse does “mouse rounds,” meaning the mouse checks laboratories, workshops, machine rooms, hazardous materials storerooms, and other spaces -- both inside and outside -- to make sure nothing is leaking or making strange noises, that appliances are turned off, that snow is shoveled away from emergency exits, that vehicles outside are plugged into engine heaters, and that things are generally in order.
As mouse, I was one of the first people to go walk around in all of the newly deposited giant snowdrifts. Snow was still falling (wet snow – weird), and it was quiet and beautiful. I did the rounds, jumped into some drifts, made a couple of snow angels, did a little sketch of pressure ridges (it was warm enough to take my gloves off), and listened to the “whoosh” of the wind farm turbines in the dark, clearly audible a kilometre away.
Date: 20 July 2011 Temperature: -14 Wind Speed: 20 knots Temp with wind chill: -36 Sunrise: NA Sunset NA
The use of wool as a textile and clothing fibre dates back many millennia. So it is not surprising to find wool being the predominant fibre of choice for the Antarctic explorer during Sir Ernest Shackleton’s and Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s expeditions in the Heroic period (1895-1915).
Many of the thermal clothing items that the explorers wore were commercially made and supplied by brands such as Wolsey and Jaeger. The Wolsey thermal top (pictured) is from Scott’s Terra Nova Hut, and is grubby from use and patched, most probably by a member of the Ross Sea Party.
When I was growing up in the 1970s seventies synthetic fibres were seen as the new miracle fibre for all manner of applications. In the 1980s synthetic fibres such as Polypro were used extensively for thermal underwear, despite the horrid smell they often attained after wearing when exercising and their slightly harsh nature.
I was greatly relieved, when I first started coming to Antarctica, when a friend told me to invest in a set of ‘new’ woollen thermals that were starting to appear in the New Zealand market in the late 1990s. Ahhh, the joys of a natural soft fibre that can be worn for many days when camping without getting smelly.
Now, in 2011, you can’t enter an outdoor gear supplier without finding merino wool thermal underwear adorning the shelves. It goes to prove that animals have adapted very well to their environments and natural fibres are still far superior to their synthetic counterparts when it comes to thermal insulation. The Heroic explorers were probably as comfortable as we are today in their thermal underwear.
Date: 12/07/11 Temperature: - 24 degree C Wind Speed: 10 knots Temp with wind chill: -38 degree C Sunrise: n/a Sunset n/a
Most people would have experienced that the increase in craving for a particular type of food is directly proportional to the degree of difficulty in obtaining it. Since it is impossible to get fresh food to Scott Base during the 5.5 months of winter, our team’s preoccupation with it is quite understandable. Luckily our chef Lance anticipated it and initiated and installed a small hydroponic unit in our dining hall at Scott Base. The effect is quite amazing.
The Garden - Martin
Firstly it is a nice feature and people love to see something growing. (Some have also been seen with their head inside trying to catch a bit of UV light). Secondly it is an entertaining game amongst us, because each plant is named after a team member. So it is a constant contest of “who is growing faster, stronger, tastier etc.” However being the fastest growing is also the quickest way to finding your name on the menu. Thirdly, but most importantly - eating what we have seen growing. Tomatoes are a good example. Everybody wants to eat 10 at a time but is likely to be too polite to even eat their fair share. So it did not take long before the tomato chart was up and running and recording people’s tomato consumption. This put everybody’s mind at ease.
Author: Jane Date: 07/06/11 Temperature: -32°C Wind Speed: 10 knots Temp with wind chill: -42°C Sunrise: Sunset
We have a radio station at Scott Base. 97FM keeps us entertained at work and in the bar in the evenings. We do not really have any TV stations, which is quite nice, although we do get the TVNZ news every evening so we can keep in touch with what is happening around the world.
Our communication engineer, Anthony, also known as Johnny 5, is our resident DJ. We all create playlists, which he changes regularly, but not often enough sometimes. Every now and then we will ring him with requests to play, or stop playing a particular song.
We even have promos on the radio which have been recorded by past residents of the Base, including one by Sir Ed Hillary.
Every morning, Johnny 5 gives us the weather and a run down of the daily events on Ross Island in his usual witty way. This often involves a prelude to what Lance has prepared for morning tea and every now and then a secret recording of someone having a rant about world politics and the proliferation of zombies in the area.
97FM may have an audience of only 14, but we think it has broken some world record for more plays of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ than any other radio station in the world.
Date: 6 July 2011 Temperature: -25 Wind Speed: 0 knots Temp with wind chill: -25 Sunrise: NA Sunset NA
Last week a very fragile, well worn and sooty jacket arrived on my desk for treatment, from Cape Evans. The only indication as to who could have worn the jacket was a makers tag in the back of the neck, which reads ‘Morsheads, Gents and Ladies Tailors, Ballarat’.
Ballarat is a city in the centre of the State of Victoria, Australia. Knowing Ballarat, this piqued my interest, so I read through the explorers biographies and discovered that Richard Walter Richards, GC, often referred to as Dick Richards, was born in Bendigo, Victoria in 1893. Bendigo is not far from Ballarat and Dick Richards had started his science teaching career in Ballarat not long before heading South with Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in December 1914.
My interest was further sparked as I read on. Dick Richards was awarded the Albert Medal, which was later upgraded to the George Cross, for gallant conduct in saving the lives of Mackintosh and Hayward. The George Cross is the civilian equivalent to the Victoria Cross, the highest award possible. Yet again this simple object reminds me of the suffering of the Ross Sea Party. But also to put it in Richard Walter Richards’ own words ‘it was not futile, but was a demonstration of what the human spirit could accomplish in adversity.’
Author: Julie Date: 29/6/11 Temperature: -28 Wind Speed: 12 knots Temp with wind chill: - 41 Sunrise: August Sunset August
The wind farm from Crater Hill. Photo: Julie
Scott Base is powered by wind turbines. Installed by Antarctica New Zealand and Meridan Energy in 2009, the three wind turbines are producing all the electrical power that Scott Base needs, plus a large surplus which is directed to the United States’ McMurdo Station. More information on the wind turbines is here: http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/scott-base/ross-island-wind-energy
Part of the Scott Base winter-over staff work programmme is to maintain the wind farm. Ground temperatures are measured as part of the environmental monitoring at the turbines. Last week I drove with Victoria, the Scott Base Science Technician, up to the wind farm to take thermistor string readings. Thermistor strings measure the ground temperature at various depths around the turbines, basically by measuring electric resistance, which varies with temperature.
Victoria takes a thermistor string reading from inside the comfort of a truck. Photo: Julie
There are three thermistor units. One can be read without getting out of the vehicle, sort of like using a drive-up ATM machine (except that you don’t drive away with more cash). The other two require actually putting on cold weather gear and getting out of the truck.
Back at the base, Victoria enters all data into a spreadsheet and generates an ongoing graph of temperatures with respect to depth. As you might expect, half a metre down the temperatures follow the air temperatures, fluctuating widely. However, at 12 metres down, the temperatures remain fairly stable at about -17 C, only fluctuating a couple of degrees a year.
Date: 29.6.2011 Temperature: -30 degree C Wind Speed: 15 knots Temp with wind chill: -55 degree C Sunrise: n/a Sunset n/a
The siren is ear piercing and the continuous voice coming out of the PA system calm but firm: Evacuate the building. Go to the nearest fire exit. Evacuate the … And I am, as Murphy’s law dictates, in the middle of a particular tricky gluing process on historic food boxes. Frustrated at first, but a little pulse of adrenalin helps me drop everything and get on the way to the assembly point. You never know.
Fire is by far the biggest risk to Scott Base and the people living here. Main reasons are the extremely dry atmosphere inside and outside, as well as a number of workshops, power generators, boiler rooms etc. all close together under one roof. Sophisticated systems are installed to protect the buildings, raise alarms and fight, if necessary, fires anywhere on the base.
In addition to that, all Scott Base staff have gone through a very intensive fire fighting training. Our group of 14 is divided into two fire crews, each of them on duty every second week. If the alarm goes off the duty group locates the source and attends to the fire. Within the group allocated roles include crew chief, auxiliary, hose runner and BA (Breathing Apparatus) carriers.
Luckily it was yet another drill and since I was not on duty I was soon back rescuing the unfinished gluing process.
