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!!!!