Early Morning at the Skiway

WILKINS INTERNATIONAL RUNWAY
ON FINAL APPROACH

Cutting slots into the ice to allow for the instalation of anchors for an Auotmatic weater station for the Skiway.

Winding up the season !! digging our way into the conatiners towards the end of the season wasnt such an issue as the last 7 weeks have been Blizz free.



We moved 55 drums of fuel to Wilkins Runway for fueling the Casa 212's ferry tanks .The Sliver Chalet , ( rear of picci became the pilots sleeping quarters prior to the 11 hour flight.

One of our CASA 212's comming in to the Skiway

A hunting leopard seal has these two Adelies in a bit of a spin. After a while watching , the seal missed out on his meal.

Looking out the Jump door , is amazing . The pilots crack the door about 12 inches , and we are rewarded with a view like this !!

A self portrait up on the Plateau.

A sight a long time comming , a commercial airliner taking off from Casey Station. (Wilkins Runway )

Heres Jason doing his best Fred Flinstone Impersonation. He's actually doing work to the avionics of the CASA212.

Heres a shot from Davis station. One of my friends Brad Dennis who was here last winter has gone to Davis for the summer. He took this pearler of two fighting seals.

An Australian Milestone, the first Airbus to land in Antarctica.This will start a new era in Aussi Antarctic expeditions. With passengers being able to fly down ,in 5 hours instead of the 7-13 day voyage by ship.
The A-319 airbus landed last night at Wilkins Blue ice runway with no problems.

A shot of the Bunger Hills from the air.

Sitting down behaving myself !! As you can see the plane's interior is spartan. The drums tied down beside me is the fuel we cached at Bunger Hills.

Locked in Bergs.From 5000ft

Casa 212 on the ice at Bunger Hills.

Heres the scar Ive put on our earth , the skiway. I got on a flight 2 hours west of here to a spot called Bunger Hills. Its a deep field Australian base. We cached some fuel out there and returned some old stock of Aviation fuel.
Its a bizzare sensation , flying along with nothing but ice and snow , then over the horizon some rocks appear , which is an area of some 4o miles square of mountians and frozen lakes.

AS you can see the weather forcaster was spot on , as the sun popped out under the clouds , the definition improved and the planes popped out of the sky. They landed at a bit after 10 pm. A long day , as the call went out at 2pm that they were going to fly . We start work at about 8am , so a sleep in was the order of the next day.

Finally , a weather window opened up and we have now recieved our Casa 212-400 on station

This is a sunlight recorder.when the sun is shining, It refracts the light and burns a hole though the paper. Thus giving an accurate count of hours of sunlight.

Looking down into the Shirley Channel. Been doing a few trips here while we can, as the sea ice will soon be gone.

Snow Petrels on Reeve hill.

A young Elephant seal. They dont usually spend to much time in this area , their wallow being down on the Browning Peninsula. A bonus !

Another Adelie at Shirley Island. With still no planes arriving, our evenings can be spent exploring the recreation area.

A sunset trip to Shirley Island on Lizzies Birthday gave a select few of us some stunning Photos op's . Happy Birthday Lizzie !!!

The S-76 tsking off. The pilots like to see that you've done a visual check before taake off, the thumbs up given and keep looking , just in case. We are a long way from any spare part shops !!!

The skiway and the glove. 1.5 km long and 50m wide , with runoffs on all 4 sides.
All we need now is for the planes to get a good weather window. Its a long flight from Hobart in Tasmainia to here.

Heres my mug up at the Skiway. Been a busy couple of days with moving of our camp.

This Tracked Quad is proving invaluable. It goes anywhere and with the tracks has a low ground pressure footprint.

Marking the Skiways the next job. Spent a few long days grooming the surface and marking in preperation for the Casa 212 to land . @ planes will do the ferry flight to Durmont Deville , the French station , then fly on to here.( if it ever stopped Blizzing!)

The S-76 on the ground , thats me next to the tracked Q]quad

Thats me on the first day on the ground marshalling some of the first Helos. We had cracking weather days for the first two,then it all turned to custard and we were out in 70 knot winds tying down the two choppers on the ground

We did a sling loading course. A very interative course as one can see !! But worthwhile and good to learn the right way to do such a task!!!!

An earlier photo of the Aurora Australis. She's 90 metres long. They dont call her the Orange Roughy for nothing !!!!!

A very unusual event happened at 4.36 am this morning , we had an earthquake. I was 5.8 on the richter scale , but centered 7.5 km underground.
I woke with the room shaking , and Im on the 2nd story . Normally the building shaking would mean a wind , but this time a tremor.
Antarctica is mostly very stable, but I guess , any place any time !!!

The trip down was 7 days of this , and 3 days crashing though the ice. Cabins had make overs , and the Galley was turned upside down with one of the waves.

The 79 nm fly off from the ship made for amazing vision

The Voyage down was a rolly affair with large swells and re-arragenged cabins. An abudance of bird life was a welcome sight as we only got to see our first ice berg on the day before flyoff. It was a long flight for the squirel helicopters but a bloody spectatular one.
Theship ,( Aurora Australis )had beeen punching though the ice for a good 48 hours and made little progress , so at 79 nm the call was made to fly off, so it was up at 0530 to check the weather then into the first of 3 different helo's on board to fly in to Casey.
It was like I'd never left! Then it was hit eh ground running. As Im now working with aviation , my job was a busy one for the next 4 days.\, Day one was a 15 hour affair , then day two was a bit more civilised with 10 hours knocking that day on the head.
The floowing morning looked promising , but a impending blizzard put work to rest for the day , well apart from tying the helos to the heli pad!!
It blew up to a max. of 65 knots and was blowing snow.
Day four was a get the out going winterers and their bags out.
All went well and we finished up at 4pm .
Today was spent checking out the skiway for the possibility of the fixed wing plane flying in shortly.
It will be good to do nothing tommorow!!!!

Our new Quads !! these machines are 8oocc of high touque grunt !!

Aviation fire fighting!!

Im heading back down to Antarctica as an Air ground support officer!!

Im looking forward to this role as it will give me a lot more chances to spend time in the tundra!!

The training has been entertaining , weather obervations , fire fighting , Air field reporting , sling loading. etc

We deploy on the 20/10/07 with an ETR of mid march.

During this time we hope to have landed several flights of an Airbus onto the Wilkins Runway Blue Ice runway , 70km inland from Casey station.

Watch this spot!!

Sunrise over Fantoms Peak. after our dash up the top of the ole hill , we cooked ip a storm , had a couple of sherberts , then slept like babies!! Its about 2 hours back to the car park from the hut. Great spot.

Syme hut , Mt Egmont ,. Taranaki , New Zealand.
This spot is situated on Fantoms Peak. A top hut allowing a quick route from here to the summit , in summer conditions.
We did the summit in 2 hours from here. @ hours up , and 40mins down !!

Arrival at the Blue Lake Hut , with Anso and Stephane our 2 French friends

The friendly locals !!!!

Pete and I having a break for lunch after completion of the decent from the upper Travers pass.

View from the Upper Travers Pass , down into the cloud cloaked Sabine valley. We spent 1 1/2 hours climbing to this point and what goes up , must go down!! So it was a knee busting scoria and rock decent into the valley.

Blue lake , Nelson Lake National Park , South Island , New Zealand!!!!


What a magic spot. It took 2 days of intense climbing though stunning NZ beech forest a climb over the Travers Pass and then up the Sabine valley until Pete (carpenter from Antarctica) and myself finally arrived here.)
A bit of history , Pete was in New Zealand for a wedding and wanted to hike the Routebourne track. Ive always wanted to do the Nelson Lakes , as they arent quite so well heard of , but 10 times more stunning in beauty.
We met up in Murchision then headed off into the National Park. Pete had read an artical of a route he wanted to attack so we followed that.

WE got here , FLOGGED !! its a heavy long climb with 20 odd kilos of gear in the backpack,including water and food for 5 days.
So a swim was in order . Unbeknown to us , this alpine lake is not only feed by a higher up lake , but also Spring feed. So COLD!!!!! it was a dive in , and a just as quick dive out !!Almost as cold as the mid winter Antarctic swim!!!

Home !!!

It seems a life time ago , but Im now back on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Ive left behind the sureal world of Ice and Snow and back trying to work out my place in this spot!!

The amazing experiences and sights that Ive shared are ingrained in my very being. Its only been a day back here . I had a few days in Hobart ,Tasmania , doing what needed to be done and on the big bird last night to a night of heat and humitity. Time to catch up , reflect on the year that was and work out whats in store for me next. I will continue to slip a few photos on as I now should be able to with out the dramas of before.

This berg towards Browning( or was it the terminal face of the VAnderford is towering over our winter Doc Lloyd.