Peters' Antarctic Adventure

     Well, the last few weeks has really all been about our mid-winters celebration and related activities. For the days leading up to June 21st we were making plans for what we were doing, where it was happening and who was was doing what to organise it. Official mid-winters day here seems a bit weird because winter has still got a couple of months to run in Australia .. mostly it has to do with the day with the least amount of daylight. The 20 of us in Station were organised into three teams with different responsibilities revolving around three meals or parts thereof.       On Mid-winters Day we arose and at 8AM attended an on-line meeting/mid winter celebration with the Head office of the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart and the three other Antarctic/Sub-Antarctic Stations of Casey, Davis and Macquarie Island. Like most of these online meetings, there was a fair bit of yawning and wondering how they could possibly make them more boring than ...

  Well the undoubted highlight of the last few weeks has been the airdrop of supplies by the RAAF C17 Globemaster aircraft on Wednesday 22nd May. As it turned out the weather here at Mawson was spectacular all week and the airdrop could have been done on any day of the week. But as the flight was from Perth and involved refuelling in the air via an RAAF air tanker, it wasn't only the weather here that mattered. We needed good weather at 25000 feet or so ( limited turbulence, not too cold so that ice wouldn't form on the wings etc ) and not just for a while but for nearly a 12 hour window all the way to Antarctica and back. And we got it.     The plane arrived just after 12pm midday local time. It did a fly past to check out the drop zone which had been prepared by a team from the Station with markers ( effectively a "Please drop presents here Santa" sign ) and flashing lights and other markers all around the drop zone. Once that was complete the aircraft went away for...