Monday, December 31, 2007
Environmental Monitoring at Mawsons Huts
Sunday, December 30, 2007
We've got the Power
Friday, December 28, 2007
Testing the LadyBug
I was fortunate to be able to loan a Point Grey Research LadyBug v1 360º panoramic video camera system from the iCinema Centre at the University of New South Wales (many thanks to Jeffrey Shaw and Volker Kuchelmeister) - and as today started off very windy it provided the perfect opportunity to sit down and familiarise myself with the system.
My plan is to shoot a few scenes inside Mawson's Hut and, if possible, some outdoor material - but this is contingent upon securing appropriate power sources. We have a generator at the Hut, and I should be able to take that out to the surrounding environment for some landscape shots - I'm talking to Steve our electrical genius about it, but it should be possible. Of course shooting 360º video is an entirely different proposition to conventional video because you, in effect, 'explode the frame' - i.e. there is no 'behind the camera' as everything is in view. This makes for a wonderful sense of immersion and raises interesting possibilities for navigable video for dome-projection systems - but also a whole range of other problematic issues, e.g. does the cameraman become an actor? (or should I hide behind a rock or underneath the camera as it doesn't capture a full sphere downwards...).
Anyway, this should all be fun to experiment with and produce some remarkable footage - I'll try and do some timelapse capture with the system if I can - in the meantime here's a test shot from inside the Sorenson Hut at Jubilee Base during our lunch break today - you might notice some odd artefacts in the image if you look closely - objects too close to the camera get "chopped off" due to parallax issues with the lenses - so everything needs to be further than ~1.5m away in order for images to 'stitch' properly. Nevertheless, in this image you get a fair idea of the inside of our hut - the main (and only) living quarters where we hang out during blizzards! (we were expecting one on Saturday, but everything seems completely fine now!)
Peter Morse
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Christmas Day at Commonwealth Bay
Christmas Cricket.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Merry Xmas, Frölichen Weinachten from Cape Deni son, Antarctica!
It looks like it'll be a White Christmas here with bright blue skies and sunshine.
Wishing you all the best for 2008!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Summer Solstice Party & Name-Our-Rap-Group Competition!!!
So now we announce our Name-Our-Rap-Group Competition! We'll be taking suggestions all this week until next Friday 28 December, 5pm and will announce the winner on Monday 31st December - the last day of 2007! The prize will be the honour of naming our group and getting a credit on the cover of our first album! You can make a suggestion by posting a comment on the blog and they'll be forwarded to us.
- Pemo
The arrival of the panels
The panels are now being installed onto the sub-floor, to create a conservation laboratory, and new sleeping quarters for expeditioners. The weather was kind to us on the Solstice, and the builders were able to get more than half the floor into place, more than adequately secured for the windiest place on earth.
Many thanks to Don and Margie (aka Ted and Ted) and the crew of the Orion for getting these essential supplies to us in perfect time.
Tony Stewart
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Jubilee Base Extensions!
Extension will double the size of the existing base - which includes (from left to right) - the Dunny, the Kitchen (window 1), Entrance & Comms/Medical Area (door), living area and some sleeping (window 2, right). The new extension will be the same size as the old base, including a laboratory and more sleeping facilities. It won't then be necessary to live in the Apple or tents any more - a bit sad, as the tents are great fun! (well, not in a blizzard).
- Peter Morse
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
"Spirit of Enderby" visits Mawson's Huts
As a bonus - if you put on some red-green anaglyphic glasses (those ones you get with 3D comics from the newsagents) - you'll be able to see this picture in stereoscopic 3D! After our sudden influx of visitors the silence returns - but it was a welcome break amidst perfect weather.
- Peter Morse
Monday, December 17, 2007
The Penguin Incident
Tourist Visit Cape Denison
The day begins at 4.30 am. For the past 24hours tourist vessel "The Spirit of Enderby" has sat off the coast of Cape Denison, buffeted by strong winds driving down from the adjacent icy slopes. But strangely for this hour of the morning the breeze is calm. The ship has come from New Zealand, a time zone that they still adopt. So 4.30 for us is 6.30 for them. Laying in my tent, the chatter on my VHF radio beside my ear begins, they are making preparations to come ashore. Eager to meet our first visitors, our camp is roused, blurry eyed we don our layers of clothing and trek over to Mawson's Hut.
In the pursuing hours a steady stream of punters file from ship to shore. In groups of three everyone was carefully guided through the hut, emerging afterwards positively brimming with delight. To walk into Mawson's Hut for the first time is an incredible experience, like walking through a time capsule, reading the initials of each party member painted on his respective bunk, gazing upon book still resting on the shelf. The experience exemplified by the crystals of ice delicately lining each timber rafter overhead, refracting the twinkling sunlight beaming down through the skylights. The new visitors have travelled a long way and the location has not disappointed.
One member of the group grabbed our attention in particular, Emlyn Thomas has just come ashore, one of Sir Douglas Mawson's grandsons. The journey to commonwealth bay has been a long time coming for Emlyn, and everyone is keen to bend his ear about his childhood days when he lived with his grandfather. He also surprised us with some very special memorabilia, he has one of Mawson's original balaclavas, proudly, he posed in it for photographs with our team, before safely stowing it away. I noted that an hour later he had it back on, claiming that it was far warmer than the beanie had brought for general use. The balaclava bore the badge of Jaeger; a clothing firm that still sponsors the Mawson's Huts Foundation today. I could not resist getting Emlyn to sign my copy of Mawson's book Home of the Blizzard, which I have been pouring over since I arrived trying to learn as much about this place as I can.
We were invited to The Spirit of Enderby for lunch; arriving on the last boat load I walked into the dining room to see my freshly showered team mates, enjoying a catered meal. I was politely handed a cake of soap and towel and prompted towards the shower block. Surely I wasn't that smelly, it's only been a week! Now I'm looking clean faced after running the razor through its paces on two weeks of stubble, after the royal tour of the ship we retuned to our humble abode, showing obvious signs of the early start. With a last burst of energy we knock together some home made pizzas, the tent and pillow is calling, slumber will come quickly tonight.
Pete McCabe Field Leader
Friday, December 14, 2007
Entering Mawsons Huts
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Inside Mawson's Huts
With my heart in my throat, I stepped inside Mawson's Hut today - the odour of damp wood and time in one's breath, a strange expansion of space as the interior seemed so large compared with the outside of the structure, subdued light, and the stillness of the place, a sense of history and lives lived, adventures and tragedies, the romance of the heroic era.
It is silvered with hoar-frost, a miraculous crystalline beauty of flowering water ice, weird argent forms growing in the sixfold symmetry of snowflakes, over every surface, a patterned chaos and so delicately, finely beautiful. Yet what is striking about the place are the artifacts - the cheap paperback novellas, the tins of chemicals, discarded filthy clothing, finnesko, an umbrella, frozen black potatoes, graph paper, things unbelievably printed with the year "1911" - stuff that you see in museums or antique shops, scattered in disarray, frozen in time - some perhaps where they were left; an index of who put them there - a trace - just as every nail was hammered at some time by some person, so many years ago - the building is redolent of the lives of its inhabitants, despite the interventions of time and visitors.
I stood there alone in silence and it seemed to breathe. We see a counterbalance of two forces - the torrent of wind and snow and ice, weathering and dissolving the structure; the material energy of human construction resistant to this in its manufactured forms inside - a battle already lost, as the wind flows through aeons; the artifacts struggle for a century. You see Ninnis' initials painted on his bunk, a tragic death recorded and read at the time by other now-dead men; Hurley's darkroom bearing the pencilled line upon the pine boards - "near enough is not good enough" - a litter of chemical bottles and cardboard boxes for glass plates, autochrome and Paget plates; a tiny den of industry recording the life here where it first occurred - you could feel it amidst the ruin.
The mystery of Mawson's room, like the intractable historic figure - glittering with crystals like a fairytale - the chair haloed with light, and the dark damp bed, with the pillow covered in mattress ticking, a massive efflorescence of iceflowers on the shelves, a still life of a bowl, scattered pictures, the Rococo voyeuristic erotica of the Fragonard print of "Girl on a Swing" still stuck on the wall beside the bed, enshrouded in ice - another next to it I recognise but cannot place - Rembrant? Holman Hunt? Pre-Raphaelite?
Things in darkness under the bed, frosted and translucent ice - a mound upon the floor. It felt eventful, waiting, almost as if someone was to return after a hundred years and resume occupancy - a strange sense of having been deserted or left behind, as the empty chair awaits sitting-in or indicates the absent form of the body. It was strange and impressive, that all this was done so long ago, so far away from anywhere, in a genuine terra incognita of its time - and the place remains hardly known and barely trod, and so it should remain. A paradox.
Peter Morse
Day 2 Thoughts & Opening the Hut (almost)
"A plunge into the writhing storm-whirl stamps upon the senses an indelible and awful impression seldom equalled in the whole gamut of natural experience...We stumble and struggle through the Stygian gloom; the merciless blast - an incubus of vengeance - stabs, buffets and freezes; the stinging drift blinds and chokes."
That was in winter, when it never gets light - so I would expect far milder conditions - indeed we seem to have stepped ashore in weather perfectly akin to Mawson's experience - calm, bright blue days with gentle winds or utter stillness - creating a paradisiacal sense of antarctic beauty, the frozen sea-spume like foams of blue-tinged pavlova atop the McKellar islets just offshore, vivid surreal shapes in the fresh and limpid air, the eye drawn to the horizon across the deep blue ocean towards massive icebergs, again tinged with blue, drifting slowly across the curvature of the earth. Scribbles of cirrus in the sky, a sparkling ring around the sun of ice particles refracting light, the puzzled squawks and enquiries of curious teams of Adelie penguins, running towards you, intent to examine these bipedal, brightly coloured aliens newly wandering their landscape; the miraculous, many forms of ice, transparent, blue, ice-sculpted, rippled; snow, firn, soft and hard - a myriad of arrangements enwrapping the startling variety of rocks - that appear to me to be a geologist's dream. And last, but not least, tiny patches and streaks of bright green or yellow lichen, scattered unexpectedly upon rocks or entirely consuming the bones of a penguin skeleton, frozen amidst stones - life and death mere metres from each other in the guano- covered colonies.
Amazing.
And finally we opened the door on Mawson's Hut. It was an emotional moment for me and very kindly Anne and Michelle asked Pete and I to do it - they'd excavated the ice with Jon and Brett and Pete (enough to build an igloo!) and finally freed the door under a metre and a half of solid snow - cut with chainsaws. And so we opened it and I stepped inside and smelt old damp wood and found more snow inside and another door and an amazing overwhelming sense of history, that these people really were here 90 odd years ago (1911-14) and they really did do this stuff. You're reminded constantly by the lugubrious cross to Ninnis and Merz just how lethal this place can be. But opening that door - we immediately found another interior door that is closed (a new one put there by the last Mawson's Huts Foundation Team) - so have yet to step inside- we must be patient as it is a very fragile environment. We removed the skylight covers so you could get glimpses of the interior. Everyone is very excited - there is a great sense of anticipation. I am startled by how much I know this place already by having visited it in my imagination for so long, by having created it virtually upon a computer - and I haven't been too far off - except in one major thing - the detail here, the sense of presence, of its reality, of its startling being.
- Peter Morse
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Arrival at Cape Denison
A short note to test the email and to let you know we've arrived! Perfect weather for the transfer from the ship. All's gone as well as possible. Quads are running, tea is brewing.
I feel we're the most fortunate people on earth!
Tony the DocFirst Encounter with Mawson's Hut
- Peter Morse
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
66 degrees 40 minutes South, Commonwealth Bay
Commonwealth Bay itself is clear of ice, apart from some bergs in the distance, broken off from Mertz Glacier to the East. The Antarctic coast is magnificent, awesome, and very, very white. Jon says the coast is a lot whiter than his last trip!
All our cabins are packed and we're waiting for the helicopter to take us the next leg of the journey. It will take many round trips in all to get us and all the gear to shore.
Tony Stewart
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Rough Seas in the Furious Fifties
60 Degrees South
The sea and weather have been very kind to us so far, making for a relaxing journey. There's still some possibility of 'interesting' weather ahead.
The email side of things is working well. It involves some specialised software on one of the laptops and using an Iridium Satellite phone as a modem. The photo shows Peter McCabe and Tony Stewart doing one of the email schedules, on the heli deck of L'Astrolabe.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Expedition departure
Friday, December 7, 2007
49 degrees South
On the satellite photos Commonwealth Bay appears to be clear of ice, in contrast to the French base at Dumont D'Urville, where the ice extends tens of kilometres from shore. There's a great sense of anticipation.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
First Day on the High Seas
The ship inside is steamy and hot - cramped and sauna-like in the cabins - especially in my top bunk - if only it was possible to open a porthole and let in some fresh air! But who's complaining really? I have no doubt the warmth will be very much appreciated in a few days time, when outside temperatures really begin to drop.
The sun vanished in an apricot swirl of clouds at about 8.55pm, and the days will get getting longer and longer until - by the 21st Dec. the sun will not set at all, as Cape Denison is within the Antarctic Circle. Anyway, enough in this first real test-post - I'll try sending a photo tomorrow and a few more coherent thoughts.