Talking with the locals

14 January 2012

I began this blog with a reflection on the history of waiting in Antarctica and the strange contours of time down here. As you voyage south, it is as if your ship is pushing out the boundaries of the day itself as well as of the earth. Then darkness is finally banished and you are into the latitudes of eternal summer light and, at the same time, you meet the ice which magnifies and celebrates the sun. Your eyes become drunk on light.

And if you are in a white-out, you lose a sense of space too. Our ship is again enshrouded by low cloud as we try to plan a landing and a ceremony at Commonwealth Bay. Outside, the vast white snow-plain merges with the cloud and creates a luminous cocoon. Inside, we wait…

But before the cloud enclosed us again this afternoon, we were able to send a reconnaissance party, who are now ashore. This morning was beautiful with little wind and a stunning clarity of light. Finally we could see the distant rocks of Cape Denison, a rare, beckoning oasis along the noble, white cliffs of the continent. The helicopters were coaxed from their hangar, bladed up, and soon our leading delegation was despatched by air. Who do you send ashore first in Antarctica to parley with the locals about terms? Your penguin biologists, of course!
I have been enjoying talking on the ship with Colin Southwell and Louise Emmerson who are studying penguins along the coast of Australian Antarctica and who will be installing a monitoring camera near one of the Adélie colonies at Commonwealth Bay. We don’t know quite as much yet about the penguin populations of vast East Antarctica compared to those of the more accessible Antarctic Peninsula. It seems possible that, in the east, their numbers are increasing significantly in recent decades.

The Adélie, as we have been discovering ourselves, is a very personable and lovable creature, curious about us but apparently unaffected by the invasion of a big orange ship into their domain. We are not allowed to play with them, but fortunately they are allowed to play with us. We are bound to respect their personal space, but they often investigate what we are doing of their own volition. Some of my shipmates built an igloo on the ice and soon the Adélies were lining up to enter it. Several of us participated in a field training session about how to rescue one another should we fall through the sea ice, and we were soon joined by a number of bemused locals who need no such assistance. A historically-minded human created an ice sculpture of the number ‘100’ on the ice, and it was not long before penguins were standing guard by it. But of course they just could not resist slipping through the zeros.

Penguins kept people sane in Antarctica. But I regret to report the fate of the first Adélie to venture ashore at Commonwealth Bay in late 1912. It was the morning of Sunday, 12 October, that a sleek, adventurous Adélie shot up out of the water and landed perkily on the ice at Cape Denison. He began to make his way to his traditional nesting site where he would begin collecting pebbles when, suddenly, a large, agitated figure embraced him and carried him into a warm, dark, noisy place. His heart rate soared.

Mawson’s men gathered around the traumatised penguin in the hut and shouted with excitement over this harbinger of spring. It had been a long winter and this creature had just ended it. Archibald McLean had found him and brought him back in triumph, but it was Charles Laseron who would have to kill him. They wanted his skin and meat. Whereas leopard seals hungrily awaited the first Adélies into the water, men were ready to seize the first out of it.

This is why Colin and Louise have been sent ashore. They have some delicate talking to do with the locals. The past is always with us, and there is a history to be dealt with here. If Colin and Louise secure permission for our visit from the Adélies – and, incidentally, if the cloud lifts – then the rest of us will proceed ashore. But for the moment, as I explained, we are waiting. And that’s exactly what our predecessors were doing a hundred years ago too. But, as Frank Stillwell commented, the day goes very fast since one manages to do about 12 hours sleep in this climate. The strong gale continued and had brought all unloading operations to a standstill. Men on the ship gathered in the warm engine room of the Aurora and distributed themselves over the top of the two cylinders. They, like us, had a party ashore, and were wondering how they were getting on.