The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,26

my experiences with Debbie. But the words sounded distant even to me. A week and a half from Hobart and I didn’t know myself anymore. I was in this strange luminescent place and home was a receding memory.

We clunked west through the field of ice for two weeks, lengthening the gap between us and reality. People wearied of the pack ice. The crunching, crushing force of icebreaking. The echoing, tinny sound of ice on metal, shrieking and grinding. And yet the days of sameness were laced with surprises. Emperor penguins appeared from nowhere and launched themselves onto floes, fleeing the bow of the ship. Crabeater seals lay like silver slugs on the ice, waking up as we approached and spinning spectacular three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turns, lashing their tails, hissing and lunging as the ship ground past. Spouts rose as we rode alongside minke whales in breaks of open water, their small curved dorsal fins peaking as they dived. Snow petrels of purest white fluttered over the mashed ice in our wake, hunting krill. Helicopters took off from the back of the ship, heading out over the vast icescape to survey seals or to search out open stretches of water to speed our progress.

I passed the days up on the bridge, watching for seabirds by day, staring into the spot-lit night looking for icebergs. The captain told me we could hit a berg at nine knots without sinking. I thought of the Titanic going twenty-two knots in a field of icebergs.

At least twice a day, I pulled on all my layers of clothing and braved the cold above the bridge, staring into the blinding light, or leaning out over the bow watching ice crumpling, splitting and fracturing. Sometimes we became icebound, locked by slabs rafted up against each other, all twisted and strewn. Then, after working back and forth for up to an hour, the ship would finally create a crack in the ice large enough to push through into easier territory.

At the end of the third week in the pack ice we approached Davis Station, gliding through Iceberg Alley at sunset. The light glittered on the carved faces of the bergs. On the ice below, Adelie penguins scattered from the path of the ship. Eventually, we could see the station; the blocky shapes of buildings nestled at the foot of the crumbling brown Vestfold Hills. The frozen sea was dotted with hundreds of icebergs, snow-dusted islands and lines of black penguins.

As soon as the Aurora shuddered to a halt in the ice, we were into the intense rush of resupply. Each day the ship was out from Hobart cost the Antarctic Division tens of thousands of dollars, so anyone with a free pair of hands was put to work. Hägglunds, tractors and bulldozers flocked around the ship, and cranes swung into unloading. On a rotating roster we whizzed into station over the bulldozed ice highway on the back of a ute. They fed us and slotted us quickly into rooms where we could stash our gear. People like me—the incoming winterers—had rooms in the lime-green Living Quarters known as the LQ. The rest—those who would leave at the end of summer—were bundled into faded red shipping containers lined up across the road like holiday units at a caravan park. The road was the separation zone. Summerers and winterers; us and them.

The ship was gone within three days. Apart from the nuggety shapes of grounded icebergs, Prydz Bay was empty—a frozen sea with a jagged scar where the ship had done a six-point turn and crunched back to sea.

Life on station started to take shape. The first beer allowance was distributed. Scientists organised themselves and their field requirements. Duties were delegated. Field training began. In the machinery shed we diesel mechanics were always in demand. A quad bike that wouldn’t start. Fuelling up a Hägglunds. Repair and maintenance of motorboats, tools, skidoos. Chainsaws for cutting ice. Fixing and modifying equipment for scientists. Constant monitoring of the power house. Maintaining the firefighting Hägg—a vital task down there, where fire meant disaster.

Soon scientists commenced field work, disappearing over the ice. The days gained a regular sort of rhythm—breakfast, smoko, lunch, smoko, dinner. People whose weight had bloomed on the slow hours of the voyage south expanded further with the calorie-dense meals which were mostly covered with cheese. And all that food had to be prepared. Food for fifty, five times a day. The two chefs were the most important people on station: food was essential