Almost There

With a few days until the ship arrives the station is buzzing with energy to get everything cleaned, tidy and ready to go. In reality, the work is getting done, but not necessarily with all that much enthusiasm as it has been a busy year and all are tired. We'll be having our big end of season dinner Tuesday night and I'm the lucky sod who gets to be dish pig for the day. I don't mind so much because the slushy gets to choose the music for the day and that means finding the strangest collection of music possible... or spending the day in the 1990s.

The brewing is completed, I'm not doing any more. If we run out of beer for resupply, it's the next crew's problem. I think that after brewing 5750 litres of beer I deserve a break.

Last Wednesday I had one last quick little jaunt to Green Gorge hut and spent the night there with Ben T, Julia and Tim. As I was preparing to leave, with 1 long neck and 1 six-pack already in my bag, I received a radio call from Julia requesting her last 4L cask of wine. So, as I started the walk the sky burst, the rain came streaming down, the winds were howling and Glen said "you broke the weather, fix it before you go!" I think I should've listened to him as the appalling conditions stayed around until well into the early hours of the next morning. I arrived at the hut at around 3:15pm and was completely saturated, then Tim turned up a couple of hours later and was worse off than me. Luckily, Tim also brought a bottle of champagne and a great night was had by all after having only about 1L of the wine left.

The next morning was a fairly slow start with pancakes being served at about 10am and no-one leaving the hut until 11:15. Tim was heading down the east coast to Waterfall Bay Hut, Ben onto the escarpment for hunting, Julia returning to station via the main track and I went to Brothers Point on the east coast. Luckily the weather was much improved with slightly lower winds and sunny patches. At Brothers, I felt as though I'd had enough of the field and decided that heading back to station would be best. I took the main track and was caught up by Julia and by that time we were both feeling the effects of the previous night. The rest of the walk was very slow, but we kept each other going and had a well deserved feed and hot shower.

Most of my gear is packed so photo editing is a little difficult. Here's the crew on Christmas Day.

 On another note, a huge congratulations to my cousin Lisa and her new hubby Richie. I'll be glad to be home for a bit and to stop missing all these things (although I might be heading south again next year...)