Grandeur and beauty awaits on the slow boat to Antarctica
Who remembers Go South, the train journey documentary through New Zealand that screened for 12 hours straight and had no commentary?
If you did and it tickled your fancy, then you’re in luck. A sequel called Go Further South, is a boat journey from Bluff to Antarctica – with a bit of a detour.
A film crew of four people, including producer Spencer Stoner, spent a month at sea capturing footage for the new 12-hour documentary.
‘‘We don’t go straight to Antarctica,’’ says Stoner.
‘‘Along the way we stop off at the different islands. So the whole first half of the journey is actually made up of all of the amazing New Zealand subAntarctic islands.’’
Islands explored include The Snares, a group of islands southwest of Stewart Island, where Stoner saw penguins, albatross and sooty shearwaters.
‘‘It’s amazing how much bird life is out there,’’ says Stoner.
‘‘You’re talking about sections of the ocean where there’s very little fishing activity and where there’s very little human activity. So you go to these islands and the bird life there is almost like it was before people arrived. It’s just totally primordial.’’
Other islands featured include The Auckland Islands and Campbell Island.
Once Stoner made it to Antarctica, he was in awe of its sheer size and beauty.
‘‘A lot of people think of Antarctica as a single place, but it’s a continent that’s bigger than Australia,’’ says Stoner.
‘‘Within the New Zealand section of Antarctica, you’ve got the Ross Sea, which enabled us to have the really interesting privilege of being able to sail south while being in Antarctica because we’re able to sail along the coast of the Ross Sea.
‘‘You see all these historic huts built by early explorers like Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott.
‘‘You see modern research bases, so we stopped off at the Italian Research Station, and we also saw the Korean research station. Obviously, there’s McMurdo Station and Scott Base that everyone knows about.
‘‘You see icebreakers through there. You see people doing research and so much wildlife. So you know, it’s not truly a journey just to Antarctica because you get to Antarctica about halfway through the programme.
‘‘The entire second half of the programme is really exploring
Antarctica in a way that a lot of people don’t even get to see in nature documentaries.
‘‘We spend quite a bit of time in Antarctica. We were actually filming in Antarctica for more than 10 days. And the journey continues once we’re there, so people will see the changing, shifting landscape within Antarctica. You’ll see crazy black cliffs, volcanoes.’’
When Stoner visited Antarctica it was summer, which meant 24 hours of daylight. He sometimes worked in the middle of the night because he says the light was often at its most beautiful.
He says it is difficult to pinpoint a particular highlight of his visit to this part of the world.
‘‘It’s stunning,’’ he says. ‘‘It totally caught us off guard because we all went down there with this preconceived idea of what Antarctica was going to be like.’’
Go Further South screens on Prime on Good Friday from 7.30am. (A three-hour highlights package of the documentary screens at 8.20pm.)