Teamwork rules at edge of the world
Science reporter Jamie Morton is visiting Antarctica this month. He gives an insight into life at Scott Base.
At first glance, New Zealand’s lime-green Antarctic outpost can seem a little like a space station. But rather than floating in orbit, Scott Base hugs a volcanic headland at the southern end of Antarctica’s Ross Island, some 3500km south of Dunedin.
It’s a cleverly-connected series of blocks, laboratories and hangars that allows you to stroll from one end to the other amid the kind of alien megablizzard you expect from the coldest, driest, windiest place on Earth.
Over summer, however, typical conditions aren’t much different from that of a Kiwi skifield.
With the sun overhead day and night, you get a clear view of the world’s southern-most active volcano, Mt Erebus. Straight ahead is the vast Ross Ice Shelf — and its waves of ice are constantly ramming against the land to create the folded “pressure ridges” in front of the base. Out to the west, in McMurdo Sound, is the boundary between the ice shelf and the sea ice that forms every winter.
It’s a breathtakingly beautiful world overwhelming to the senses.
Once inside, it feels like a school camp. There are bunks, shower blocks and camp mothers and fathers who show you the ropes and make sure you follow the rules.
Arriving at midnight, one of the first rules I have to learn is creeping as quietly as I can into the base’s main sleeping quarters, Q Hut. The last thing a sleeping shift-worker needs is you stepping on their face while hoisting yourself on to the top bunk.
Another rule is pulling your weight around the dining room. If you find yourself standing in front of a full tray of dishes — or being “trayed”, in base terminology — the quickest way to get off-side with full-timers is to add your plate and walk away.
The expectation is that when a tray is filled, you slide it into the steriliser and hit the button.
You don’t put more food on your plate than you can eat, shower longer than three minutes, or use the drier when a perfectly good drying room will ready your socks in half a day.
After every Saturday base meeting, mechanics, chefs, scientists, communications operators, firefighters and New Zealand Defence Force personnel all stick their hands up for whatever needs doing.
Today it’s helping the kitchen staff load two months’ worth of food. We form a human chain, passing boxes of vanilla icecream and frozen butter from a fully-laden ute.
Heading off base for a walk requires signing out, taking a radio and checking the weather.
For the most part of an Antarctic summer, it’s what’s called Condition Three — or normal weather, when you’re free to go for a hike over the hill to US-operated McMurdo Station. But if it drops down to Condition Two — where visibility drops to just a few hundred metres — leaving the base area is prohibited.
Condition One storms are some of the fiercest on the planet and to experience one is to witness nature in its fullest fury.
Temperatures drop below -73C and winds top 100km/h. Any movement outside base, save for search and rescue parties, is banned.
The sheer remoteness here means whatever can go wrong, simply mustn’t. Yet that isolation can also be liberation: the internet speed is famously slow and there’s zero cellphone reception.
You find more social things to do: having a yarn in the bar or trying out Scott Base’s new disc golf course.
Over at McMurdo Station — or “Mac-town” with its 1200-strong population compared to Scott Base’s meagre 80 — there’s a softball game on and plenty of barbecued meat.
You learn to enjoy being part of this happy little wha¯nau, all mucking in together at the bottom of the planet.