Merry Christmas and a Happy New Beer

Gotta take advantage of the good weather when we get it ;)

What a ridiculous few days that was. So very, very busy and tiring. On Saturday we started with the usual celebrations upon the MIPEP crew's return with a BBQ, badminton and table tennis - plus putting up the Christmas decorations.

Christmas day started with a sore head and dry throat, although the pain was much more intense than usual. The small pile of packages outside my door from home were a wonderful surprise, as was the little hand knitted stocking with candy cane and rocky road.

Next up was a brunch with a rather large amount of food. Actually, here's the menu - I can't remember everything we had. As good as the food was, the sleep I had afterwards was amazing. I woke feeling great and ready for the rest of the day's activities.

We had a little parade with Santa and Mrs Claus followed by their misfit elves and a special appearance by Space Jesus. Then came the gluttony of the late lunch and the creation of a few more sore heads that evening.

L-R: The Christmas Pixie, Space Jesus, Mrs Claus, Santa, Enforcement Elf, Sultry Elf, The Alco Gnome.

Boxing Day started very late for most people and involved much rest and relaxation. There was going to be a Boxing Day cricket match between Australia and New Zealand, but rain stopped play.

On the Good Ship, Lollipop

On Tuesday I (and Dan the new comms boss) helped our TASPAWS rangers with their work as guides when the tourist ships turn up. The day started out with us being picked up on zodiacs and taken out to the Orion - a very classy, purpose built tourist ship. They have a sauna, spa, hairdresser, massage therapist, a gift shop that sells rather expensive pearls - even an elevator.

The Orion (or ice berg as it was accidentally referred to over the radio)

This particular voyage was bound for Commonwealth Bay (yes, that's in Antarctica for those playing at home), but they couldn't make land as the ice was very thick to about 450km off shore. Needless to say that the passengers were a little edgy about being able to get off here and stretch their legs, however the large swells made anchoring a problem for the ship. Instead we boarded and were given a room to freshen up in, then there was breakfast. We had a small helping of the buffet - omlette, toast, sausages, etc - but when Matt, the 2IC, had his bowl of fresh fruit and muesli placed on the table our jaws dropped to the floor and his wife was very kind to offer us a bowl of our own.

See the hunger in our eyes? (L-R: Dan, Claudia, Bree, Adrian and me)

Five very happy expeditioners

 The next few hours were taken up by the ship travelling up and down the east coast waiting for the swell to subside. In the mean time we had a little q&a session about our various roles on the island, then a delicious lunch of fresh salad (with mushrooms!), fresh fruit (there may or may not have been a rather large avocado stolen from the fruit bowl) and baklava.

Hurd Point as seen from the ship - there had been a reported sighting of an orca

We did eventually get off the boat at Sandy Bay and let tourists bother the animals - the wildlife didn't care and were actually very curious. Quite an experience seeing peoples first reactions to the wildlife and terrain. There had been a fog for 3 1/2 days previously,, which was already clearing in the morning, but, of course, the cloud cleared perfectly for them to a stunning day. Aren't we supposed to be in the sub-Antarctic?

A happy tourist with a frog - Kermit? Freddo? Don't know.

During the hours we were stuck on the ship there was talk of spending the night there, however as we were able to land at Sandy Bay, we were taken back to station.

Here's some of fun facts about a few of the passengers:

• Hailing from Armidale in NSW we had Bill and Sue Denison. Who? The grandson of Sir Hugh Denison and the namesake of Cape Denison and one of the main patrons of Sir Douglas Mawson's 1912 expedition. They were very interesting people although I only spoke to them briefly.

• There was a very cute 4 year old boy named Hunter who had complete run of the ship and I'm pretty sure is the youngest person to have ever set foot on Macca.

• All the way from Anchorage in Alaska, there was a lovely couple who, many years ago, just happened to attend the exact same university in Oregon as Julia, one of our Albatross researchers. Also, the wife and Julia just happened to have been in the exact same sorority.... and the husband's name is Leon...

Claudia enjoying the wind on the back deck.

Take a looks in today's "This Week at Macca" for a few more photos of the inside.

Plod, plod, plod

I spent last Monday to Friday off station, on another walking adventure. Most days the weather was not so great, a few clear periods (and a little sunburn), but mostly fog and drizzle were the order of the week. There's not as many photos as there could be, but that's because I didn't feel like taking as many pictures this time - and because of the fairly poor weather, there wasn't a huge amount to take photos of. However, here's a few of the good ones:

The royal penguin rookery near Waterfall Bay Hut

I travelled the length of the island again and one of the highlights was on the walk back towards station, when I met up with one of the dog handlers. I had the luxury of taking Flax the labrador back to the hut that we were both staying in that night.

The tourist vessel Akademik Shokalskiy taking a look at Lusitania Bay

Flax, arguably the best dog on the island

Juvenile royals on the beach at Green Gorge

A skua decided to see if my boot would be a satisfying food source. Obviously the blade of grass wasn't cutting it.

A young punk king penguin.

As always, I had a great time with everyone out there in the field and look forward to seeing them in the next couple of weeks for Christmas.

The Friendly Weaner

I went for an early morning wander around station on a lovely, still morning (the afternoon wasn't) and was greeted by the sight of a weaner with its mouth against the balloon shed doors and nuzzling the bolts. One of his mates, who was a few meters away, suddenly took an interest in me and came bounding over. Here's a little video of what happened:

For some reason this little guy was completely obsessed with my boots, it's a wonderful thing having this wildlife around.

Beatrice the Acrobatic Weaner

The Comms techs have had the most weaners gathering around their building over the past few weeks and now we know why... They've been training the little guys to do tricks.

The Preparation

This is Beatrice. She has been practising all of about 40 seconds to perform the back-flip in pike position. Let's see if she lands it.

The Dismount

And there she goes, with the unusual method of using her face as the pivot point, rear flippers out as far as they can be stretched. But wait! Her left-hand flipper is tucked underneath, she'll lose a couple of points for technique there.

The Finish

There it is folks, Beatrice has landed her first back-flip. She's a little off to the side but it seems the judges are being lenient. That's an 8/10 - well done that weaner!

Happy Birthday Thylacine!

I'm a little late in putting this post up, actually Thylacine's birthday was all the way back in October. For his birthday I took him on the seal counting expedition and he had a great time along the way.

Thylacine made many new friends and saw some wonderful, strange looking animals. He thought they smelled funny, but would probably be delicious either way.

Thylacine helping with the nightly radio sched (where we call the station and give intentions for the following day)

After the sched Thylacine wanted a hot milo, but he got stuck and had to be rescued.

He figured that since the hunters were using dogs to try and get the rabbits, he would help out by looking down every hole he could.

 

As you can see, the penguins were unperturbed by his presence

But he tried to stalk them regardless.

Daylight

With the increasing daylight, sleeping patterns are getting completely stuffed up at the moment. The sun is rising at around 3.30am and last light doesn't fade until just after 9pm. Usually I'd go to sleep somewhere around midnight to 2am, but now I'm getting some very poor sleep.

I'm glad to have the black plastic taped over my window instead of the curtains that don't work very well.

Regardless of that, on those one or two days where we do get an aurora as the light fades, a spectacular show is put on for us.

Fruit

After 6 months we finally received a shipment of delicious fresh fruit on L'Astrolabe (along with those new people who are fitting in very nicely. Pineapple, rockmelon, grapes, kiwi fruit, bananas and avocados. We were a bit greedy and they were all finished within the week. Sigh.

My mouth is watering just looking at these

They were sooooo good

Other Birds of Macca: Sooty Albatross

Of all the albatross that call Macca home, the Light-Mantled Sooty Albatross is definitely the most beautiful. They nest on the steep slopes and wait for their partner to arrive, fly around in a paired formation and then settle down to business.

These photos are taken from around North Head and I had a lovely little sleep on the side of the hill after watching the birds.

Formation flying

Mutual preening. These two landed very close to me and I had to crawl away so as not to disturb

Sootys playing in the thermals. This was a fantastic view for a nap.

6 Months

Saturday 22nd October marked 6 months of having been on this incredible island. There's another 6 months to go, new people arriving today (but the weather is pretty bad so they'll be on the ship until tomorrow), others leaving and wildlife everywhere.

We are now starting to trip over the weaned seal pups and there's plenty more to turn up.

These weaners seem to think the diesel mechanic's workshop is a well protected area

Elephant Seal Census Day

What religion did we write down for them? Sloth.

This trip was again down to Hurd Point to count elephant seal numbers on the yearly census day: October 15. The area we were doing the census in was from Hurd Point, around the east coast and North to the old hut at South Lusitania Bay (photo to follow). As I was on this trip with the ranger-in-charge (yes, Macquarie Island is a National Park) we ended up doing extra work, such as replacing track markers, on top of the seal count and I followed his lead as to how close I was allowed to get to the wildlife. Essentially, don't approach them but they may approach you.

Ranger Paul counting the ele's with the hut in the background

Interestingly, the only wildlife willing to approach us this time around were the skuas (there's a post on them somewhere earlier in this blog). There was one time while on top of the plateau that they trotted over to us to see if we were about to start dying so that they could, but instead one of them pecked at my walking pole. Then while doing the count on Hurd Point a skua decided that my boot looked tasty. As I've said before, these guys are cheeky bastards and they have no fear. That's enough of that tangent.

So what was the other motivation for doing this particular trip? Well, the area we did the counting in is closed for recreational walking, we have to be working in the area to be allowed in there... which brings up close and personal with the Royal penguins, endemic to Macca.

A small colony next to the Hurd Point hut. They were rather loud all night.

The endemic Royal penguin

Um, that's one whole colony.

A King with his Royal court. Or maybe he's hoping they don't notice that he's different...

New born pup

This one new the photo was being taken

The old South Lusi hut. Made out of an aeroplane engine packing crate.

Seal Counting

One, another one, another one and another one. How many is that? Lot's of ones!

We counted 427 cows in this harem

One of the many projects the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service (TASPAWS) rangers work on is an annual census of elephant seal numbers. The number of females within a harem are the main focus of the count, with pups that have already been weaned or dead pups also included. The mothers of those pups would have already made their way back into the sea.

So here's a few photos from when I helped out with the count near the station and next week I'll have photos from the census day count - I'm helping out with the count from Hurd Point, around the East coast to Lusitania Bay. The penguins are back so the photos should be dramatically different from the last time I was there.

After feeding for 28 days on the fattiest milk in the mammal world, this pup has been weaned and left to fend for itself

A fur seal pup was seen with the ele's

Missed seeing a birth by not very long. Here you can see the scavenger birds cleaning up the placenta

A dead pup that the birds have already started on.

They see him rollin' - and they shit themselves. The bulls will bounce over anything that's in their way in order to prevent another male from getting into their harem.

Brewing

In the words of Homer J Simpson: "Mmmmmm, beer."

On arrival, we noticed the beer stocks were dismally low as they'd been ravaged by the hordes on the vessel L'Astrolabe. I think I mentioned in a previous post that L'Astolabe was used for the station resupply of food, personal affects, general cargo and food and that the Aurora Australis (AA) mainly supplied all the gear required for MIPEP.

The beer, therefore, had to replenished. Quickly. As such, the brew committee decided to use the two 120L fermenters and fill the delicious health into the four 20L kegs provided and any clean bottles we could lay our hands on. The only way to achieve this was to push the beer fairly hard at a touch below 30°C and have the fermentation completed within 5 days. It was a gamble, but it paid off. Within 10 days we had drinkable beer - including a stout.

That was at the start of the trip, now that we're almost 6 months in and have endured frozen water supply (no washing bottles, kegs or fermenters) and a monthly consumption when the hunters and dog handlers return to station, our stocks are up to a more manageable level.

We've now brewed approximately 2930L of beer. Delicious.

L to R: Draught, Stout, Ginger (front), Cider (rear). The stouts have always been problem children.

A Busy Week

This week has been fairly busy with lots of work (and more work) and a day of cooking. The chef is off station at the moment so I was stand in chef (and dish pig) on Friday. We had pizzas - yum!

There were no birthdays or weddings, Saturday dinner was a Greek cuisine. All the good stuff such as hummus, tzatziki, taramasalata, lamb, spanokopita and of course baklava. Hmm, maybe the should should go have some more time off...

There were a couple of fairly good aurora during the week

Unfortunately they were mostly obscured by cloud.

Walkabout

A couple of days after my sister's wedding (see a couple of posts below) I went off station on a 6 day walk. I made it down to Hurd point again and had a lovely rest day down there. I also met up with many of the expeditioners who are based in the field, which was very nice indeed. However the most amazing thing to happen was a perfectly calm, still, bright, glorious sunny day - I was even able to take off the gortex outer layer we generally get around in.

One of the expeditioners mentioned that that sort of doesn't come around too often, maybe once every 5 or so years.

Moon rise out of Green Gorge Hut

Mt Hamilton on a fantastic day

Mt Jeffryes looking a little tamer than the last time I was there. See the post from a few months ago

Looking towards Carrick bay, to the west of Windy Ridge (which was only breezy)

 

Round 1: Fight!

They can move fairly quickly for something that weighs around 3 tonnes.

This guy decided I was interesting enough to come and have a close look at

More Giant Petrel photos, these birds are the pterodactyls around here.

Aurora over Hurd Point Hut

Aurora to the south of Waterfall Bay Hut