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.