COOL EXPERIENCE

WORDS PENNY McLEOD PHOTOGRAPHY LUKE BOWDEN

Dr Nick Gales is a frequent visitor to Antarctica as director of the Australian Antarctic Division. But few trips south have been as joyous as his one last month with 12 Australian schoolchildren.

“It’s impossible to go to Antarctica and not be overwhelmed with the place and its beauty,” says Gales, who is shown not far from Wilkins Aerodrome, 70km southeast of Casey.

“For many of the kids, it was the first time they had seen snow, so to see snow in the most extraordinary part of the world – where there is more snow and ice than anywhere else – was just fantastic. They were full of wonder, but also full of fun.”

The West Australian and Tasmanian primary and secondary students were flown to Australia’s Wilkins Aerodrome for a three-hour visit after winning the AAD’s Name our Icebreaker competition.

Gales says both he and the students were “toasty warm” despite a “breeze that cut through you”.

“It was a really good day in lots of ways because it gave them a real sense of Antarctic weather,” he says. “We only fly when the weather is good and this was getting a little close to the margins of whether it was good to go down or not. It was somewhere in the order of -14C. They really had to wrap up.” Learn more about Australia’s new icebreaker – which will be named RSV Nuyina (noy-yee-nah), meaning ‘Southern Lights’ in palawa kani, the revived language of Tasmanian Aborigines – at classroom.antarctica.gov.au/icebreaker