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As I have found out there are many questions that can be asked about life on an Antarctic station and most of them relate to things that I have begun to take for granted. Your awareness of the lifestyle adaptations that you have to make to suit the environment gradually melt away the longer you are here. It's like being in your own home where you become used to your surroundings and your daily habits become routine. You only begin to notice the things you do and the things you take for granted when you go away on a holiday and then come back home.
As I write this e-mail, in mid April 2000, the sun rises at 9.30am and sets at 6.00pm local time just a bit shorter than a day / night cycle back in Australia. However, as winter progresses the suns path over the sky falls lower on the horizon with the rising time becoming later, and the setting time becoming earlier until on the 12th of June the sun rises at 12:30pm and sets at 1:05pm. Then from the 13th of June to 28th June the sun doesn't rise at all and we are in a mid winter twilight. This contrasts with the summer when for a few days in December, the sun does not set all. While there are no hard and fast hours of work, most people at Mawson have an 8am to 5pm work day, with Saturday mornings set aside as station duties and Saturday afternoons and Sunday's off. There are no strictly enforced hours because often things can go wrong at any time of the day or night. Everybody is on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to address any problems in systems that they are responsible for. Also, everybody has a role to play in station issues such as fire alarms and Search and Rescue incidents. There are a few exceptions to the "normal" work day. The three Bureau of Meteorology observers, Phil, Denis and Peter work in shifts. Each day a weather balloon is released at 5.15am (shown above) and 5.15pm along with the required daily weather observations and reporting, so they take it in turns to have an early start.
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