ianbee: this is instead of getting a dog

How hard can it be to pack?

I have just finished a wonderful book called The Lost Men. It tells the story of the Ross Sea Party, who attempted to lay a line of food and fuel depots across Antarctica in the early 1900s in order to facilitate the first crossing of the continent. The expedition was a disaster. The ship ended up slipping anchor and marooning ten men ashore where they lived for eighteen months on a diet of seals and penguins and the mouldy left over food from a previous excursion.

One of the criticisms leveled at the expedition was that the planning fell short of what was required for that sort of epic adventure. In the Edwardian manner, crew were selected on the basis of good handwriting rather than polar knowledge. The long sail South was spent learning how to set printing type so a journal could be published, rather than training the sledge dogs. Navigation on the boat was hindered by the fact that no-one could remember where the chronometer had been packed. They must have been very pleased when it turned up almost a year into the voyage, no doubt jammed between boxes of biscuits.

When I read this I was pretty scornful. I mean, how hard can it be to pack a boat? Put the important things on top, etc. Well this week I have learnt my lesson. I have moved house.

The transition unfolded whilst working a week of night shifts (which can't have helped). I alternated sleeps between the new home and the old home until it was all sorted. Unfortunately living in two places at the same time has logistical implications.

Due to general forgetfulness and ideas of redundancy I have come to own three toothbrushes. They all ended up at the end of town opposite to the one I was living in. So now I own a fourth. At one point I had an electric toothbrush charger, but no tooth brush. I also had a mobile phone but no mobile phone charger. You cannot charge a mobile phone with a toothbrush charger.

On monday it was ten degrees outside and raining. I only had shorts. The kettle was always one step behind me. I had everything I needed to bake biscuits, but couldn't shave. It was a nightmare. Based on my experience this week I am amazed the Antarctic explorers ever left port, nevermind had trouble finding their clever clock.

Penguins, etc

Hobart is one of the Antarctic "gateway cities", the others being Christchurch, New Zealand, and somewhere in Chile I can't remember. So that is why, as you wonder around Hobart, the big white continent keeps leaping up from over the horizon and grabbing your attention. Everyone is constantly reminded that it is there, it exists, in a way that was exciting to me as a Northern-hemisphere visitor. It's not just the big icebreakers outside your window; the city museum has an Antarctic gallery, the book shops have an Antarctic 'shelf' and a collection of bronze penguins on the marina are looked upon hungrily by bronze explorers. I went into a cheese shop and got talking to a man who had just got back from Antarctica yesterday. Yesterday! He still had snow on his boots (metaphorically). Nice that he rushed straight into the cheese shop; "have you got any out-of-date cheese?" You'd have thought that out-of-date cheese was an Antarctic specialty and he would be hunting out really fresh cheese on his return. Maybe out-of-date cheese is banned on Antarctica under some international treaty?

I took a short drive to the headquarters of the Australian Antarctic program, a collection of modern bridge-linked cabins that looks like a moon base relocated to the suburbs. They had a great collection of posters from their bases including one detailing how close you were allowed to get to penguins in snowmobiles. Unfortunately it was the humans who were in the snowmobiles, but the idea of joy-riding penguins made me smile. They did have a weigh-bridge designed for penguins that was designed to be walked over on the way to the sea (picture left). Later in the week I stood at dusk on a beach on an island south of the city. As I watched, a solitary baby penguin left the safety of the dunes to stand on the sand and await his parents. As the sun set penguins came out of the sea in groups of three or four to find their hungry young. Everything you've heard about how funny penguins look when walking is true.

Before I left the Australian Antarctic headquarters I had a cup of tea in their Antarctic Cafe (a sadly wasted martketing opportunity. It was just a cafe with snowy photos on the walls. They didn't even sell Penguin biscuits). I settled into a seat where I could just overhear the pre-departure briefing being given to a group of very excited scientists. There was a palpable air of delight, I guess this was a journey that for many of them was the pinnacle of their careers. As they filed past me out of the seminar room, clean shaven faces showing great beard-potential (even the ladies), one woman came up to be and asked if I would be willing to sign the consent form for the "Vitamin D levels in Antarctic personnel" study. I said I was just having a cup of tea and she moved off. If I had said "yes", would I have been on the trip? I'll never know.

Two French Films

 

I saw two wonderful films yesterday, one French Canadian, and the other French, um, French. The French one was called "I always wanted to be a gangster" (J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster). Susie is a waitress in a motorway cafe. She found herself in the job after her attempt to rob it went wrong. When a desperate man tries to hold the same place up two days later, she is well placed to offer him sympathy and advice ... Meanwhile two incompetent, bickering kidnappers forge an unlikely bond with their suicidal teenage emo victim and four elderly criminals spring one of their friends from a hospital in order to pull off one last heist. It was simply brilliant, hilarious and strangely beautiful. And Susie is my favourite film character in ages. She's absolutely insane.

"Le Dernier Continent" (The Last Continent, I think) was the other film. A boat full of stubbly Canadians decide to stick out the Antarctic winter in the name of global warming research. Although the crew seemed to spend more time playing ice-hockey and stealing satellite TV from abandoned Argentinian research stations than doing actual science. At times it was real, amazing boys-own stuff; the ice that was meant to hold their ship fast did not materialise until late in the season, leaving them at the mercy of some wild weather. "We're heading to the rocks, cut the ropes! Cut the ropes!" (coupez les cordes!) There were times I wanted to scream at the cameraman "put your camera down and help them!" as the heavy weather pounded the fragile ship and the nearest lifeboat was months away.

If there is one criticism of the film, it's that we did not get to fully appreciate the individual characters. The direction, perhaps understandable given the environmental focus, concentrated on the icy world around them. The only adventurer we got to know was the leader, Jean Lemire; the Jean-Luc Picard of the ice, but with more hair. We were treated to many shots of him in his study, writing his star-log. However, the wintery wastes of Antarctica have been documented in many other films, so this expedition had a great opportunity to take a different angle and shed light on what it takes to spend months in total isolation, in almost perpetual darkness and trapped with a dozen people you may or may not get on with. For the most part this potential was not grasped, although we were treated to the sight of the ship's doctor dealing with interpersonal conflict by writing his feelings down before burning the paper. As I left the cinema I overheard one comment, "There was no way that was a real doctor, his handwriting was too good."

Encounters at the End of the World

The Sydney Film Festival is currently underway, and I plan to throw myself into it. I have brought a pack of ten tickets so I have a lot of films to fit in during the next two weeks - as well as a full time job! I'm hoping that my attendance will distract me from the fact that I am missing the Edinburgh Film Festival. It will be interesting to compare the two. The Edinburgh brochure is glossier, but the Sydney festival has comfier seats. So far. Don't worry, I'll keep you informed ...

Today I went to see a documentary by Werner Herzog called 'Encounters at the End of the World'. Yes it's a film about Antarctica, so it was very predictable that I was going to see it, and sit at the front. I walked out of a previous film of his through sheer boredom; I'd only gone to see it becuase Herzog was once shot halfway through an interview with Mark Kermode ("Don't worry, it is only a flesh wound ...") so I thought that would be a director worth discovering! I'm glad I gave him a second chance.

Herzog focuses on the curious, eccentric characters that staff the American 'McMurdo' base on Antarctica. "This is not a film about penguins" he explains, instead he fills the screen with brilliant scientists and crazy support workers. There is the plumber who is descended from the Aztecs, the philosopher fork lift truck driver and the linguist who has found himself working in a greenhouse in a 'land with no language'. These interviews are interspersed with footage from beneath the ice and within the volcanoes that compose this stunningly beautiful continent. The film does contain one submission to the world of the penguin. Apparently, occasionally, a penguin gets disorientated. A group of them stand out on the ice, some head back to the colony, some rush towards the sea. But the camera focuses on one who watches the others go and just stands still. After a while he seems to make up his mind and wonders off in a direction that takes him towards the mountains. The camera follows him as he waddles off into the distance, never to return ...

F14: Tom Crean: Antarctic Hero

This was a one-man theatre show; Aidan Dooley telling the story of Tom Crean, the forgotten Antarctic hero. I imagine not everyone in the drawing room at the Assembly Rooms knew who this character was. If you've been watching the Sunday night 'Blizzard' programme on BBC2 (featuring a person I want to be) you'll know a little bit about Scott's ill-fated journey to the pole in 1911. You'll remember that for the final push to the pole Scott selected a four-man sledging party out of the eight remaining men, then at the last minute requested that a fifth man be added to his team. Tom was one of the three men forced to turn back within shouting distance of the pole. Few are aware of the story of his journey home; three men pulling a sledge designed for four over hundreds of icy miles, then reduced to two men as the officer became delirious with scurvy and had to be lashed to the sledge. Tom covered the final forty miles alone on foot to get help. He did it in twenty hours.

If this wasn't adventure enough, he returned several years later to be part of the disasterous Shakleton expedition. The party were trapped in the 'Endurance', frozen in the ice for eight months, then were forced to sail across 800 miles of the most torturous sea in a tiny lifeboat in search of resuce.

This amazing story was told with humour and humility. An Irishman dressed in 1911 expedition clothing explaining his small part in the big picture. I was always going to enjoy this, and I did!

PS Suzi, you'll be glad to know that I was late for his and had to run very fast.

My secret addiction

This is the post in which i confess my secret addiction. I am an Antarctica nut. It started when Penny lent me Terra Incognita and continued when I saw an Antarctica IMAX film and then my brother brought me the essential Lonely Planet guide one Christmas, etc etc ... you get the idea. (NB I refuse to see March of the Penguins.)

Visiting New Zealand a few years ago was heaven for me because it was the closest I am likely to ever get to the Big White Place. Christchurch, in the South Island, is one of the gateway cities to Antarctica and has an airport with 3 terminals; Domestic, International and Antarctica. I sat in the lounge surrounded by men with MASSIVE beards staring into their coffees. And I was happy. I also got to see Captain Scott's sledge.

So this was a big week for me, as Edinburgh was hosting the 29th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting. I went to a lecture on "extreme survival" and a couple of exhibitions of science and art. The highlight was today when I actually got to explore two British ice-breaker support ships which had docked in Leith; RRS Earnest Shackleton and RRS James Clark Ross. I was so excited (please don't laugh) - I'd seen so many pictures of these vessels floating in icy seas, and now I was going to see them for real. I met the people who live and work on the vessels; scientists, navy personnel, engineers, and got to ask them about their jobs and lives. I met the base commander of Bird Island, and the bloke who controls the under-sea drill ...

... if I am boring you, then I understand. I was actually totally gutted as i left the boats. I love my career and I don't regret the decisions I have made so far, but given the chance to do it all again in another life i will study marine biology or meteorology and I will go and live on a snowy lump that doesn't see the sun for half the year and it will be brilliant.