The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,44

I have the rest of the afternoon to sit with Mum.

PART II

Evolution

11

Seminars at the the Antarctic Division are held in the theatrette. You walk in the front door of the main building and go downstairs into a large open area decked out with memorabilia: photos, and glass cabinets containing ancient rusted crampons, dog sleds and outdated protective clothing. It’s a good place to lose yourself if you’re waiting to meet someone.

This evening, some of the staff members have set up a table down there with drinks and nibbles, and everyone stands around and talks among themselves, waiting for the show to begin. Of course, it helps to know somebody. I rang Bazza yesterday and tried to persuade him to come, but he wouldn’t. He says the truth is that tradies like me—diesos, electricians and plumbers—don’t much like going to boffin functions because it makes them feel inadequate. And that’s pretty much how I’m feeling right now, even though I probably know more about penguins than most of them.

I wasn’t sure if I’d come tonight. I don’t go out much. But ever since Sunday’s family meeting I’ve been fielding a barrage of phone calls from Jan, and this seminar was an excuse to escape the phone. After visiting Mum today, I called Jan to let her know that Mum would be staying on Bruny, and Jan almost leaped down the line, saying it’d be my fault if Mum died down there. All she’d asked of me was to bring Mum back and apparently I’ve failed, yet again.

I wander around the foyer examining photos and trying to be inconspicuous. My favourite is a shot of the Aurora Australis at the ice edge near Davis Station at night, all lit up like a birthday cake. The sky’s black and overhead there’s the faintest green suggestion of her namesake—the southern lights, aurora australis.

I know a lot about that ship. Eighty-five metres sounds big, until the ship’s engineer tells you they cut her short to make her come in closer to budget. She ended up not particularly good at anything. Average passenger ship. Average cargo carrier. Average ice-breaker. That’s what happens when you try to make a cut-price ship.

Someone comes out of the theatrette. It’s John Fredricksen, a lean man with a head too large for his body. I’ve never had much to do with him, but I know he’s been into penguins for years. That’s the way it is here at the antdiv. Someone hooks onto a topic and they’re at it till they retire. It’s a closed circuit for scientists. Hard to get in, hard to get out.

He claps his hands to get the crowd’s attention. ‘This way, everyone. Time to find a seat.’

I move into the auditorium with the general stream of people, but I’m peripheral to their chitchat. They swoop on seats as if their names are marked on them. I sit at the back on the edge of a row so I can make a rapid escape if I need to. Down the front is a shortish, dark-haired girl wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She’s frowning over a computer linked up to a powerpoint projector. A few minutes pass as she fiddles with the connections and hunts around for a file, then she nods to Fredricksen to dim the lights and the talk begins.

Introducing herself, Emma Sutton explains that she’s spent three summers at Mawson Station observing Adelies. The penguins come back to breed early in the season and they’re all gone again by the end of summer. Working on an animal with a short breeding cycle is good for scientists, she says, because it means she can come home to work up her datasets and reorganise her gear ready for the next season.

Emma’s work has focused on the feeding patterns of Adelie penguins on an island off Mawson Station called Béchervaise. For many years, every bird that has visited the island has been tagged and implanted with a microchip. Over the past few summers, Emma and her team have rigged up a penguin-sized fence to funnel all the incoming and outgoing birds over an automated weighbridge to record each penguin’s weight.

Emma describes how her team glued satellite trackers onto the backs of some penguins so she could trace their foraging voyages after they left the island. When the penguins returned from a feeding trip, she retrieved the trackers. She grimaces as she explains the next stage, water offloading—whereby they pump water into the penguin’s stomach to make it regurgitate