Weather summary:
Clear skies and sunshine, a wonderful Antarctic summer day.
Today's activities:
It was another day of socialising amongst the French at Dumont D'Urville. With another superb day of sunshine we enjoyed some more great photo opportunities, of the bird life and surrounding landscape. It was action stations onboard L'Astrolabe as the cargo hold started to fill with containers, machinery and other assortments.
We all stayed at the base for the evening meal, sausages and mash potato, perhaps they were trying to make us feel at home. Our latest travel plans were announced tonight, L'Astrolabe will start loading passengers at 8.30 tomorrow (Tuesday) morning and we should be sailing by 10.30. After dessert the slide shows began, the blinds were drawn as the restaurant transformed into a cinema. We had a presentation from the dive team, with some fantastic photos; afterwards I gave a talk with some pictures about our stay at Cape Denison. There was great interest as many had never even seen a picture of Mawson's Hut before.
We have now returned to the ship for some sleep, after saying many goodbyes to our gracious hosts. Thousands of penguins chattered and squawked as we walked down the long platform walkway down to the wharf.
Tomorrow we will wave goodbye to Dumont D'Urville and its surrounding archipelago, after two memorable days the French /Australian Antarctic relations are alive and well! This brief stopover was a fabulous bonus to the end of our trip, the icing on the cake of a wonderful journey.
Warm wishes from the MHF team
Peter McCabe Field Leader Mawson's Huts Foundation
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