For the few days leading up to October 5, I had been busy packing both my work equipment and all my personal clothes/effects. It wasn't quite as much of a chore as has been in previous years because from experience I knew generally what I needed to take and what I could obtain on station. The thing that made this season a little more tricky was the increased paperwork required to consign cargo and effects to Antarctica via the AAD cargo system. Everybody knows about the increased security and paranoia at airports since the 11th of September 2001, however, it has taken quite sometime for these restrictions to flow onto ports, and for the method of checking cargo/effects to be implemented in a practical manner. The 'security' restrictions In previous seasons has ranged from none at all to total xraying of all luggage and effects (a very time wasting exercise). Luckily this season the procedures put in place seem to have been thought through and the process of getting all my work and personal effects onto the ship was quite straight forward.

So at 4:55pm on October 5 we departed from Macquarie Wharf 4. Quite a number of people had turned up to say farewell along with an ABC TV cameraman. Departures of the first ship for the season are usually aired on the local ABC TV News, and this year was a little bit more special because it is the first season when specially purchased fixed wing aircraft will be used to transport people and cargo between stations.

As we sailed south down the Derwent in the afternoon sun a lot of people stood around on the rear helicopter deck admiring the view of Mt Wellington, Hobart and the Channel. Numerous last minute 'goodbye' mobile phone calls were made (me included!), and I'm sure a lot of reflecting was going on as to the coming summer adventures and tasks. I had a fair amount of work lined up, but no where near as much as I had done in previous seasons. One the main tasks I had set myself on the ship on the way to Casey was to write the software to control the Penguin Camera. That's because when we arrive at Mawson the cameras have to be setup and operational almost straight away.

Until the second time I went to sea, I didn't know that I didn't get sea sick and I discovered that when I forgot to take the anti-seasickness tablets (called 'Avomine'). Not getting seasick is a good thing. It means that I can easily read, write emails and make good use of my time. Even though I don't get sick, it usually takes about 2 - 3 days for me to "get my sea legs back" after a long period on land.

For the first few days we had a relatively calm ocean with only a small amount of rocking and rolling and it only seemed like there were a few people that didn't seem to be turning up for lunch or dinner, so hopefully the rest of the trip is going to be the same. I spent most of the day sitting at my computer writing software for the penguin camera, as well as sending out a number of emails letting people know my new ship based email address.

This morning I woke with the ship stationary. As I discovered later, this was because a mooring was being recovered. After having getting dressed and having a bite to eat I went out to the rear trawl deck and watched the operation taking place on the rear trawl deck.

Moorings
A mooring consist of an anchor (usually several old railway carriage wheels), several kilometres of wire and nylon rope, glass and plastic floats and acoustic releases to which all instruments such as sediment traps and current meters are attached. The anchor of the mooring sits on the ocean floor, with the sediment traps/meters spaced at intervals such as 500 or 1000m from the bottom. Floats are placed at regular intervals and at the very top. Also at the top is a flash beacon and radio transmitter. For a typical mooring there could be 3 traps and 2 current meters.

Watching the mooring being recovered was an interesting experience because despite all the high tech equipment on board, the method of grabbing the massive floats, wire, instrument combination came down to the ship passing as close as possible to a floats (without becoming entangled in the wire which is hanging between them) and at the same time the crew throwing grappling hooks with rope over the rear of the ship, hopefully hooking onto the wire rope or the floats. For the first mooring it took 3 attempts, and then the process of dragging the kilometres of cable in was made difficult by the complicated connections of wire/rope between the floats and the instruments. The trawl deck, where this was all taking place, was a dangerous place with many steel cables/ropes under a lot of tension. If one were to break then serious injury could result.

In total for the voyage down to Casey, 5 moorings had to be recovered. 2 of these were previously 'lost' (they had not responded to previous acoustic release commands) and attempts were going to be made to recover them by trawling a large net behind the ship at depths down to 2800 metres in the vain hope that it would snag onto part of the mooring.

On Friday, the reverse process occurred with 2 mooring deployed from the recycled & recovered sediment traps/current meters.

Federal election day! Ian, the comms technician setup a web streaming radio server linked to ABC radio in Melbourne. This was so we could all listen to the radio coverage of the election results on our laptop computers. I attempted to listen to a bit of the election coverage, but wasn't very lucky because all I got was the gardening program... anyway, I gave up after awhile because I had the horrible gut feeling that the Liberals were going to be re-elected. I had already cast my vote, by postal ballot, as had most other people on the ship.

The election was overshadowed by a much more interesting activity on board - 'Murder on the high seas'.

• The aim of the game is to be the last person standing.
• Each person will receive the name of another expeditioner or crew on the ship Saturday - the game begins at 7pm after the names are distributed (they will be randomly stuck to cabin doors - just take one and don't swap - unless you get your own name !!).
• This person is your intended victim, who you can murder by approaching them and telling them "you re dead". If you manage to successfully murder someone, their victim then becomes your next victim and you are well on your way to becoming a serial killer!
  RULES
• To "murder" - you must be completely alone with your victim, not in eyesight of anyone else
• Cabins are "safe" unless you are invited in
• If you don't want to play - just wait until you are murdered and pass on the name of your victim
• The Science labs on E deck are out of bounds at all times (no hiding there or hindering marine science work)
  

Luckily most people were still trying to work out the names of the 100 or so other people on board (including the crew), but occasionally you would hear a shout, and then some laughter as crime was committed.

This species (if correctly identified) is reasonably common in the deeper waters (>500m)around the southern part of Australia but has also been collected at Macquarie and Heard Islands. It's interesting to find this species in such deep water, although it may have been caught on the way up from the bottom.

medium-sized brown one - a bit hard to tell what this one is, as there is not a clear view of it to see the important characters. My best guess is a member of the Family Centrolophidae, which includes the Trevallas. This specimen resembles one of the rudderfish, either Centrolophus, Tubbia or Schedophilus. These fish are well-known around
Tasmania in waters deeper than 500m. Again, it's interesting to get a specimen from such deep water, although it may also have been caught on the way up.

I nearly died in the 'murder' game tonight.. Sam tried to kill me in the E Deck labs, but of course foolishly forgot that they were out of bounds!. Now at least I know who is after me. hahaha!

Yay! I had my first (and only kill). I caught Gerry 'O (a crew member) as he walked up the stairs from the restaurant.. It was very simple really (I don't think he was trying to escape).

The rest of today was spent writing more software for for the Penguin Camera and then after dinner we had a a great quiz night. After 2 hours of all the usual weird questions interspersed with silly team games our table ended up being 3rd overall. Not bad from a total of 10... I think I had so much fun that I completely forgot all about the other game of murder that was going on because as I started walking down a corridor away from the restaurant I heard a door behind me open.. a thought flashed into my head.. opps!!.. Then as the ship rolled I heard "you are dead kym!" ... I then (involuntarily) went sideways through a door and fell & rolled all over the carpet (luckily no injuries) . DOH! I didn't last too long in that game, but the funny way I was caught made up for it.

Today I did something other than wakeup, eat, program, eat, program and then sleep. Time to wash the clothes, change the linen and wander up to the bridge. Snake said he saw the first Adelies ... and for some dumb strange reason I asked "in the water?" ha! maybe I was thinking on a piece of ice?.. but such is Snake's repartee that the answer was "no ... flying past the bridge" .. hahaha. It is going to be an interesting summer I thought.

I also tried to think about the iceberg sweep. The competition where you try and guess when the first iceberg will be seen (within a defined set of parameters like : must be visible within 5nm of the ship and along side the bridge). The next few weeks were divided into 15 minute timeslots at $0.50 each....

In the afternoon we started ship board field training sessions. First up ropes. It didn't take too long for all the old trusty knots to come back, eg the up-one-butterfly, clove hitch, truckies knot, figure-8 and figure-8 reversed. It is quite surprising how often you have to use knots while working in Antarctica. The most common one I use is the truckies hitch for tying backpacks/bags onto the cargo racks of the quad bikes, as well as tying large things down to stop them being blown away in the wind.

My work on the Penguin camera has now got to a point where it is automatically taking photographs unattended every 10 minutes all night. I been leaving it on over night and coming back in the morning to review the 100 or so pictures it had taken but found that it had missed a few. Hmm. Time to look for some software bugs.

More field training. This time first aid refresher. In the following few days we also have navigation, GPS techniques, sea ice travel and weather observation/skills.

In the evenings there have been some talks by people on the ship about their intended summer programs, or about their field of research/interest. Tonight Lloyd from Skytraders, the operators of the CASA212 planes we are going to fly in this summer, gave an interesting talk about the fitting and trialling of ski's on these types of planes.

Wokeup a bit late today, and heard over the ships PA system that there was going to be a fire drill/muster.. Unfortunately I didn't hear the bit about 'crew only'. Haha. I wondered why it was a little quiet on the helideck and there didn't seem like anybody else dressing in their Antarctic clothing. Nevermind. I ended up spending a fair while sitting out on the seat on the side deck watching the waves go by, with the ship gently rolling in the swell ... very good stress therapy!

Tonight was the night for head shaving where people who have long locks are ritually head shaved for money which goes to camp quality. Unfortunately I had somewhat of a headache, and this night is not the quietest of nights, so I gave it a miss. About $8000 was raised which is a very good result.

Today I woke up early (7am) with the AA in icebreaker mode. Icebreaker mode is when both engines are engaged to the one propellor through a large gear box, and then the blades on the propellor are adjusted to a small pitch to prevent any damage to them by ice that passes underneath the hull. It is also quite easy to tell when the ship is in this mode because there are a lot of vibrations and shuddering that goes through the ship as it rises up onto the ice flow and then sinks down. You can also hear the sounds of the ice scraping along side the ship, as well as the tell tale orange marks of the paint left on the ice. Sometimes the vibrations are so bad that my laptop screen would wobbling all over the place making it hard to read - the best analogy would be to imagine trying to use a laptop while driving down a bumpy dirt road! The ice wasn't very thick because we were making constant forward motion, only when the ship has to stop reverse and then take another run-up onto the ice can you call it 'thick'.

However, things changed late in the afternoon when the ship got stuck on a rather large lump of ice and spent nearly 14 hours at various stages of full throttle backwards / forwards trying to free itself. Other techniques such as ballast shifting& "rudder waggling" (not the technical term) were also used without success. I think the master was heard to mention a few expletives under his voice after being constantly asked by expeditioners asking "are we stuck?"..."why don't we ...."

Plans are also being laid for the fly off into Casey tomorrow, hopefully starting at 6am (weather dependent). From the lists on the whiteboard about 65 people were to fly off, along with all their luggage and the cargo. On the list, Rhonda, Snake & myself were down about number 45, so we didn't have to worry too much about being up early in the morning.

Other activities today included more GPS navigation field training - where we wandered around on the deck marking waypoints, moving away and then wandering back to them, and then a compulsory helicopter flight safety briefing to make sure that we all knew how to approach, enter and exit from the machines as well as close/open/fasten the doors and hatches.

I also spend an hour or so packing up my work equipment and sorting through my clothes to make sure I would be ready when we started flying.

Woke up to find that the AA had managed to get off the piece of ice it was stuck on yesterday, but was wallowing about in the broken ice. Flying was obviously off because there was no noise up on the helideck and the horizon and visibility looked very poor.

After breakfast I went to read/send some emails. When I was reading one from Colin (one of my bosses at Kingston) , t Vicki the Voyage leader made a PA announcement saying that the CASA 212 aircraft were not due into Hobart until November 8. Woah!.. bummer and a half! That is when we were initially meant to be arriving at Mawson. Looks like the whole season for us is starting to slip uncontrollably.

Later on we received (via a third source) an 'all staff', 'all station' email that wasn't even addressed to us from our manager of operations explaining the reasons for the delays. This is quite annoying. Not being told directly about the delays and having to find out by the ANARE rumour mill. A quote from the email.

"Otherwise the worst seems to be in terms of disrupted plans, a measure of additional uncertainty and even the suggestion that things might be going awry"

Not quite sure what to make of that, but probably worth printing out and framing...

This morning I woke up to the ship still stationary in the thick ice floes, as well as a brilliant bright whiteout. The light was so bright that I had to put my sunglasses on because I started to get a thumping headache (too many late nights!).

As I ventured outside to take a few pictures all I could see was white. This is best demonstrated by the following two pictures. which show the sun (top part of the frame) behind all the clouds and snow. Looking away from the ship all I could see was bright white, with a little bit of definition on the sea ice.

Today the weather at the ship was a bit better with gaps of sunlight through the clouds shining onto the white ice, but still not good enough for flying due to snow showers in between the ship and Casey. The ship manoeuvred around a bit more and parked up on another piece of hard ice. The ice core team got off and took a few more sea ice core samples.

After lunch, Vicki (our Voyage Leader) allowed us to get off the ship and run around on the sea ice. This was one of the best things that had happened for a long time, mainly because it was a great chance to be able to get to know what we had been looking at for so long! besides, the exercise and the chance to stretch/test muscles was well overdue.

A typical ANARE phrase is 'hurry up and wait'... well, the next two days are going to be that! The weather was playing tricks again, not wanting to make things easy. It was either clear at the ship and bad at Casey, or vice versa. One or two sorties managed to make it to Casey before the pilots radioed back that the weather had deteriorated so they would be staying at Casey overnight.

On Saturday I was told that there was a good chance I would be flying in on the last sortie, so I packed up all my work equipment, as well as my personal clothes & effects ready to leave within an hours notice. However, later as I sat in the 'departure lounge' (the video room) Vicki came and told me that the last flight was scrapped and I'd on on the crack-of-dawn flight tomorrow. Oh well. Time to unpack my sleeping things again!.

Over the last few days the ship had been gradually drifting with the sea ice further west and away from Casey at about 10 nautical miles per day. This meant that the payload capacity for the helicopters was reducing for each flight. Before the flight we had to weigh all our personal belongings as well as ourselves (while wearing all our Antarctic survival clothes) and add up the total for 3 people to make sure it would come under the 350kg limit. We were all allowed a maximum of 30kg luggage each, plus ourselves in Antarctic survival clothing. Unfortunately, for the sortie which I was on, even though we were all below the allowed limit the total was 14kg over 350kg, so Mel & I had to leave our work laptop computers behind for the next sortie. This didn't worry me a huge amount - but only as long as they came in on the next flight and not 12 days later when the ship returned for the final visit.

So Friday and Saturday passed uneventfully with the usual round of feeding sessions, strolls on deck & up to the Bridge, movies watched and snoozes performed. Although I did manage to get to bed earlyish ready for a crack of dawn start.

Yes we are flying ! YAY!. Isn't it strange how your body wakes you up and throws you out of bed at such early hours when something fun is going to happen, but all other times it feels like an elephant is sleeping on you? Well this morning was not an elephant morning! I packed up and moved all my gear to the departure lounge, then had some breakfast and waited for the rest of the cargo/flight crew to be ready.

At about 8am, I got dressed in my Antarctic survival clothing (mainly a brown Carhart Jacket and Pants with beanie, gloves, thick socks, thermals and Sorell boots). Then we took our gear up onto the helicopter deck and laid it all out ready to be loaded into the two helicopters which were out on deck ready to depart. The sky was quite clear with some wispy cloud and the sun was out, with the air temperature a crisp -15 degC.

Seconds later, 1000kgs of squirrel sprang off the deck of the AA like a blowfly about to be swatted on a dirty dish and we soared around the AA. I sat in the middle rear seat squished between all the cargo and Mel while Toni had the birds eye view in the front seat. In the Antarctic, the helicopters always travel in pairs, and at about 10 minutes apart. So as the second helicopter began to spin up we circled the AA a number of times and then headed off at a slow pace until we heard Captain Ric call the AA to say he was airborne.

Unfortunately, our route to Casey meant we had to fly into the area where the cloud was low and grey. This meant that the sea ice and the horizon melted together with very little surface definition with only the black water showing through the leads and cracks. At our altitude of about 1000ft speed about 150knots it would take just under 1 hour to get to Casey by a route that would follow the dense pack ice, over the Peterson Bank and then down the coast. Flying the direct route meant we would have to travel over open water all the way, and in the event of having to ditch, we would not survive long in the water whereas flying over hard ice means we could land and safely await rescue.

Soon we reached a GPS waypoint at the edge of the Peterson Bank, then turned right, over the fast ice (with no cracks in it) to head for another waypoint which, unfortunately, was taking us towards very ugly looking sky. What looked like snow showers had turned the sky and ice below into a solid white sheet. There was no way to tell where the ground was besides looking at the RADAR altimeter. We were lucky though, because out to our right in the distance we could still see the distinct edge of the Peterson bank and the water. Captain John then decided it was too dangerous to continue that route and we banked and headed to the edge of the ice/water. We called back to the helicopter following us to say we were adjusting our route and to follow our lead.

The weather cleared slightly as we followed the edge of the ice and water, taking us over a breeding Emperor Penguin colony. It appeared as two large brown smears on the nice white ice sheet, with 1000's of little black dots. A could see a few lines of black dots trailing out away from the brown smears - long lines of penguins arriving or departing from the colony. It is rare to see an Emperor Penguin colony, and even rarer to see one from the air. It was just a big pity that the weather was so poor. I took a digital picture but it didn't turn out very well. Besides, the aircraft must keep a minimum distance from the colony so as to not disturb them. I wasn't sure how far we were, but probably at least 5km line of sight.

Since I had been to Casey back in February 2004, it was not all completely new to me. I knew the general direction to the Red Shed, living quarters and where the fire board and mess were. Rhonda, Snake, Toni, Mel & I walked down main street to the Red Shed to be greeted by the winterers and to have our names put up on the fireboard to say we were now on station. I spend the rest of the evening sorting through the backlog of emails from Kingston, as well as making a few phone calls to say I had arrived.

Normally Saturday dinner is the special night of the week. This week it was shifted to Sunday, so dinner was very nice with an almost full mess. After tea I talked to some of the winterers I had previously met on my February V7 round trip, then went to sleep early because I was on slushy duty the next day.

Slushy! Yay!. hmm. maybe not, but sometimes it is a good excuse not to do work and to do something completely different. Slushy, but the way, is the name given to the chef's assistant. During this period of changeover between one wintering team and the next, two slushies have been rostered on whereas normally there was just one. Also slushing with me was Sara, the BMCS Instrument Electrician. We had previously met on the trip down to the Mawson in 2002/03 aboard the Kaptain Khlebnikov (See EFA 02/03) so it was good to hear about what she had been up to since then and how her winter at Casey had been.

So, my duties for the day were putting plates/cups/bowls through the dishwasher, cleaning large pots & pans that the chef (Gerbil) was using, cleaning the tables in the mess area, refilling milk containers, putting out the lunch bowls/salads, sweeping / mopping the floors, peeling potatoes (we did one 25kg box) as well as onions (most of which were binned because they were beginning to go off), doing just about anything else Gerbil needed done and finally! choosing the music to play on the radio which is traditionally the slushies privilege.

We had a 2 hour break at 3pm, which when I had to go to comms and have a field training session in the use of VHF radios. Another boxed ticked. Back on slushy at 5pm and then after tea had a lot of help from other expeditioners to clean the floor and tidy up by 7.15pm.

7.30am Still half comatose but partly awake, Snake yells "Hey Kym, field training is at 8.30am" ... hmmm. Nobody told me?.. anyway, got out of bed, had breakfast and prepared a packed lunch, then got ready for a day walk over to Shirley Island where there is a large number of Adelie Penguin colonies.

Our group consisted of Snake, Amanda, Toni, Sam, Simone, Mel (Mawson FTO) and myself. Snake and I have to redo most parts of our field training despite our previous experience. Rhonda doesn't because she did last summer at Mawson under the new system. This is because of a new training system in field competency introduced just after I did my 2002/03 summer, and wiped the slate clean for everybody. The system has some recognition for prior experience, but still requires 'all the boxes to be ticked' to re-establish skill levels. Amanda, Toni and Sam however, haven't been down here before so they have to be completely field trained, while Sam and Simone were just along for the daytrip (they are heading back on the ship).

Shirley Island is only a 5km walk away from station, across a narrow stretch of sea ice. We began at 9.30am with calling into VNJ (Casey comms) to say we had departed station and were heading to Shirley Island. The weather was mild but still cold, about -12 deg C with a 10 knot wind. I was keen to get walking and get warm. On the way we stopped at a few snow and ice slopes to practice various techniques such as cutting steps in snow slopes, walking with instep crampons and crossing smooth ice. We also practiced sea ice rescue and the details of using a throw bag to rescue somebody who has fallen through the ice into the water. A throw bag is a small bag with a long piece of rope stuffed in it. You throw the bag to the person who needs assistance while holding on to the other end. It then uncoils and you use it to help pull them out.

One the way back to station we practiced, unsuccessfully, self-arresting techniques. These are techniques where you try to stop yourself sliding down a snow slope using an ice-axe. Unfortunately we couldn't find any decent slopes where we were able to slide down so we will probably do that part again sometime.

After a moderate walk back to station, we arrived at about 4pm and unpacked. That night we planned to bivvy out, i.e. sleep outside for a night. This is a requirement for field survival so that you know how to construct a shelter and the techniques for keeping yourself warm and sheltered if you are not able to find shelter, eg no tent, field hut etc.

After tea at 8pm Marty, Snake, Amanda, Simone, Toni and myself walked back out to a spot about 300m from station where there are a number of soft snow tails. We went through the various aspects of identifying a good place to shelter and also how to set yourself up for a warm night sleep. Some of the tricks are things like keeping your boot liners, water bottle, gloves and other things you don't want to freeze inside your sleeping bag during the night.

Luckily I have bivvied outside a number of times so I knew what to expect, however, I didn't quite expect it to be as cold as it was. There was no cloud cover so it was going to be a cold night, however luckily there was also very little wind. At 10pm the air temperature was -22degC, quite cold, and normally the kind of temperature experienced in winter at Mawson. After discussing the techniques we all got into our bivvy bags. I managed to get a reasonable nights sleep, but at times I found myself gasping for fresh air. The hard bit is maintaining an adequate supply of fresh air, without becoming too cold. Each time I took a breath of fresh air I could feel my lungs chill and at the same time this dehydrated me because of the very dry air. If you close your bivvy bag/sleeping bag up too much then you can also feel suffocation from the lack of fresh air.

So at 4.05am the girls had had enough and packed up in a hurry and went back to the warmth station, Snake gave up about 45 mins later, but I was moderately warm (a few degrees less and it would have been hard) so I stayed until 6am when the sun was well and truly up. Marty & I then walked the short walk back to station where I had breakfast and let my fingers thaw out as they had become bitterly and quite painfully cold (I forgot to keep my gloves inside my sleeping bag).

Meanwhile ... Rhonda has been lazing around station (well sort of) and in mega-lumpy-jumper-jolly-mode, haha. While we were out field training she managed to score a pretty good helicopter jolly. Here's the 'oh-so-excited-one's email :

Woohoo, I just went up in a helicopter!!! I don't just mean up, I mean UP!!! 3500 feet straight up, in a tight spiral...what a rush!!! Bright sunshine, blue sky, dark water, white plateau, grey sea ice...could see all the way down the coast to the Vanderford Glacier to the west (I think, we were going in circles so can't be too sure of direction!), north to the thicker pack ice, and I have no idea what lies to the east of Casey but it all looked very speccy! And to the south...ice!!! And the funniest thing about it? Ken the pilot was just shifting the helicopter from its landing pad in front of the Red Shed to the dieso's garage, 200m (if that!) down the road! The quickest, most extravagant and most buzzy jolly in a long time!!!

Cheerio, Rhonda xo

PS, in case you're worried about what may seem a blatant waste of taxpayers' money, Ken was actually doing a maintenance check, something about flying at full speed to a set altitude to ensure the engines maintain power all the way up...but to me it was just the long way to get to the dieso's workshop!