Today is my last day at Mawson, I ran out of sleep at 0330. I am so excited to be going home, I feel like I have been at a health retreat (minus the healthy part) for the last 10 months.  Forced to inspect my self at close quarters, investigating and interrogating my interactions, self doubts and life in a totally introspective manner.  It was refreshing for the first couple of months, then depressing and now that I have reached the end of this part of the journey it is becoming inspiring.

I have learnt a lot about myself, have more confidence in some areas and a lot less in others. It has definitely been a journey, but a long and way to boring one for one blog post.

So now I am getting ready for two weeks at sea on an icebreaker… they are not renown for their smooth ride and I am not renowned for my sea-legs so I am hoping to lose at least 3 – 4 kgs.  I have downloaded some books, Judith Lucy – Drink, Smoke, Pass Out & Dawn French – Dear Fatty… as I write that I think I see a pattern developing, autobiographies of alcoholic fatties!!! I have now added The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama maybe that will even it out a bit.

I get a bit nervous before flights on small planes, not because of the small stature of the plane but because there is no toilet. I took two packets of fibrogel last night to assist with the red wine and cheese weekend… they haven’t work and now I am slightly concerned that I am going to be halfway across the Amery Ice Shelf on a 12 seater plane in ‘a situation’.  Could be an interesting flight for everyone!!!

Finally it is a reasonable hour, 10am and many cups of coffee and a resolved ‘situation’ later, we are standing on the seaice waiting for a little blob to appear in the sky.  It seemed like hours before finally the blob appeared, with my slightly dodgy eyesight, I had to wait longer then everyone else but it was there. A couple of low flyovers later and a bright shiny red little Basler landed smoothly on the sea ice, gliding to a stop right in front of us. A human emerged from the steps and I think I might have looked like a timid monkey hiding behind the guys peering out. It was the first human we had seen for ten months!!! Amazing, they looked all healthy and tanned and spoke with Canadian accents. I totally spent the next 30mins just staring at them from behind my massive sunglasses.

 

I was now going to insert a paragraph full of inspiring prose about the amazing beauty of the ice shelf and how spectacular it is, but I feel asleep shortly after take off and woke up as we were coming into land at Davis so I missed it. I am sure that it looked pretty much the same as when we flew over it on the way to Mawson in February only whiter because the sea ice is still fairly solid. It’s a bit sad I admit when the sight of one of the biggest glacial ice shelf’s is not enough to keep me awake, but we have moved into nearly 24/7 daylight here and sleep has been hard to come by lately.

Disembarking the plane and there is a second nice surprise for the day a friend in a tiny little Polaris!! Hug Hug, squeal squeal, that’s me squealing in case you were wondering, another girl eeekkkkkkkkkkk, I haven’t seen one for so long.  I can talk about the difficulties of running out of moisturiser, how terrible our hair looks and the inconvenience of 3min showers every third day.

The ship is parked 3.5kms from station wedged into the sea ice, little roads are graded into the sea ice surface running from the station to the ship and all available vehicles are hustling running cargo from ship to shore and return. Our little Polaris is sharing the roads with massive trucks, hagglunds and lots of other machinery that I just never really learnt the proper names for. The ship looks tiny from the airstrip, a little bright orange dot sitting in the middle of the ice-bergs and frozen Islands…

Behind the ship is the icy canal that the ship has carved through the sea ice, the free water providing a recreation area for Adelie penguins who are sunbaking like Europeans at a Spanish beach. The occasional Emperor penguin wanders by to have a bit of a look and snow petrels are making the most of the small feeding area darting around skimming the water surface.

It is hustle bustle, crazy resupply time and I have nothing to do but chill out, watch the action and reflect. One of the things that I love about working down here is that every-one is genuinely excited to be here. People want to know each other’s stories, fellow expeditioners constantly show up my very poor memory by greeting me by name and remembering exactly were we met. It is both disconcerting and like being wrapped in a big hug at the same time. I constantly wish that I had the same capacity to remember names and faces but I think that I meet to many people to quickly and I don’t remember. I feel sort of let down by this failure on my part to recall individuals because I think that I miss a sense of connection sometimes.

Only a couple of days away from Mawson and I am already reflecting with joy and happiness on the winter. As always the negatives are starting to fade and seem insignificant in the broader scheme of things.  As a bonus my ability to think, write and talk seem to be returning, thank goodness. I really thought that I might be stuck talking pigeon English and grunting a lot for the next few months.