“Melbourne, in case you did not know, has its charms: botanical gardens, splendid churches, a high-domed public library where an old man can read the newspapers and stay cold on a hot day, etc. But there is no use denying that it is a flat place, divided up into a grid of streets by a draughtsman with a ruler and a set square. The names of streets are just as orderly. King precedes William, neatly, exactly parallel. Queen lies straight in bed beside Elizabeth and meets Bourke (the explorer) and Latrobe (the governor) briefly on corners whose angles measure precisely 90 degrees.”
No, I haven’t quickly snuck back to Melbourne, or been in Melbourne the last four weeks and been making up all this Antarctic stuff, or gone bananas and think I’m back home. This is an example of what I’ve been doing. Reading. This small exert is from a book called Illywhacker by Peter Carey. Reading is pretty much what I am up to at the moment. I have been grounded at Mawson station all week waiting for an appropriate weather window for a CASA plane to fly from Davis station to pick me up here at Mawson and then fly on to Syowa station. The problem with flying is that you need good conditions everywhere you are going and when you are covering a big chunk of Antarctica this can be difficult.
I have occupied myself in the departure lounge with reading, writing work reports and by getting plenty of rest. I have helped out around station as much as I can, to avoid the feeling of being a complete free-loader. I picked basil and lettuce from the Hydroponics garden we have on station, where we grow as much of our own herbs, fruit and veg as we can. I have helped in the home brewery filling beer bottles with draught and capping the bottles. I have helped in the kitchen washing dishes and cleaning floors for the cook. I visited the cosmic ray vault. This is a room 15m underground with a network of sensors setup which detect tiny particles which are constantly flying into the earth from space. These little particles are actually passing through your body as you read this, they are also passing through the computer, the walls and into the ground. The physics guys love this stuff, they measure the directions that these particles are coming from and other stuff. I have no idea what it is useful for, other than to satisfy curious scientific minds.
I have occupied myself in the departure lounge with reading, writing work reports and by getting plenty of rest. I have helped out around station as much as I can, to avoid the feeling of being a complete free-loader. I picked basil and lettuce from the Hydroponics garden we have on station, where we grow as much of our own herbs, fruit and veg as we can. I have helped in the home brewery filling beer bottles with draught and capping the bottles. I have helped in the kitchen washing dishes and cleaning floors for the cook. I visited the cosmic ray vault. This is a room 15m underground with a network of sensors setup which detect tiny particles which are constantly flying into the earth from space. These little particles are actually passing through your body as you read this, they are also passing through the computer, the walls and into the ground. The physics guys love this stuff, they measure the directions that these particles are coming from and other stuff. I have no idea what it is useful for, other than to satisfy curious scientific minds.
My bags are packed and I am ready to go. I am surprised how patient I have been and how well I am managing the delays, etc. A lot of people thought I would struggle with this part of working in Antarctica. Sure, it is frustrating, but it cannot be helped. I would prefer they only flew me around when it was safe. It will mean that I will struggle to complete all my set tasks, but I can only do what I can do. What is important is that I make the best use of the time I am given. I should get away from station sometime today. Then maybe I’ll have something original to report and not have to plagiarise someone else’s writing. So long Mawson.
