Notes from the Antarctic Desert

Flat and white as far as the eye can see. The sun is shining and the glare from the ground burns your eyes. This is the view from on top of Law Dome in Antarctica, the driest, coldest and windiest continent.

You pull up your collar and face the wind, which chills you to the core. Your eyes are hurting from the intense cold and cutting force of the wind; your fingers feel as thick as sausage rolls inside your lambswool-lined gloves. Beneath your thick wind-resistant coat you have several layers of clothing through which the wind still bites. Your toes are numb inside your thick rubber and lambswool-lined boots, your socks are pulled up nearly to your knees and your lips and ears are tingling.

The temperature has been below zero for the past eight months, at times as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius. Snowfalls are regular and the ground is covered with snow and ice several metres thick. Near the coast, there are occasional rock outcrops that are jagged and harsh and stand as the only resistance to the bitter katabatic winds, which scour the land continually throughout winter.

Casey Station becomes my home on the 26th of December 2003, when I leave the warmth of Darwin to take up a position as “Plant Inspector”. Plant Inspector? It’s a strange job title in a land that is barren of all forms of vegetation apart from a few species of moss and lichen! But as a diesel mechanic the plant I inspect is not the vegetable kind.

Before work begins, Australian Expeditioners have to go through extensive training in preparation for the severe winter season. The training programs cover all facets of survival in the sub zero environs, including sleeping in an “ice coffin”, a trench hacked out of the snow and ice, in which you lay in your sleeping bag and “bivvy bag” (a light-weight, wind-resistant type of tent) to get away from the wind and blinding snow. Survival is the main thrust of working here in the Antarctic and our experience is not unlike that of those people who have ventured into the harsh desert country of inland Australia.

Casey is remote from the outside world. Some 3,800 kilometres from Perth, WA, at 66 degrees South, it is situated on the coast at the edge of a dome of ice called Law Dome. The dome rises approximately 1,000 feet into the sky behind the station. Across the bay, one-and-a-half miles to the north of Casey, you can see Wilkes, the old American station established here in 1957. It is now in ruins and mostly covered by ice and snow.

Some of the buildings at Wilkes are still accessible through hatches in the roof, which open up into a ghostly frozen interior. The ice has built up here to a level within a metre of the ceiling but it is clear enough to see through and you can make out the various pieces of equipment that still remain frozen forever in their silent tomb.

Beyond Wilkes, the horizon is littered with hundreds of icebergs of various shapes and sizes, many of which are grounded on the Peterson Ice Bank. The setting sun casts rays of red and golden light across the tops of these bergs to create an amazing panorama of these silent and beautiful giants. This is the view from my room looking towards Darwin, to warmth and home.

Along the coast of Antarctica are hills and rocky outcrops as well as numerous islands along the shore. All of these contribute to a beautiful and peaceful scene with distant icebergs and never-ending sky. There are contrasts of colour, easily distinguishable peninsulas of landfall receding into the dark blue of the ocean, outcrops of windswept rock, barren of any vegetation. Best of all are the glowing iridescent colours of the sunrise and sunset. This is picture book Antarctica, abounding with penguins and birds throughout the summer breeding season, beautiful landscapes in every direction and so different from the inland.

Halfway through my tour here, I move over to the Air Transport Project and begin working on the construction of an ice runway, 65 kilometres inland. It is the nearest suitable place for a runway, which will allow for the rapid transit of science personnel to and from Antarctica -- but only in the middle of summer.

To get there, we travel in Caterpillar D-7 bulldozers, as used for all larger crossings of the ice cap. The bulldozers have been set up especially for traverse work, with fuel racks opened up to supply more fuel and to give you a top speed of 12 kph, depending on the conditions. They use aviation-type kerosene (ATK) with an anti-icing inhibitor that freezes around the minus 67-degree mark.

At an average speed of 8-10 kph, the crossing is slow and tedious with plenty of noise and rough surfaces. The 65-kilometre journey to the airfield takes you around 10-12 hours, especially when you are pulling several sleds. The first sled is filled with drums of fuel, the second is a workshop and generator van followed by the communications van and sleeping quarters.

Inland Antarctica is forbidding, white and barren. Long flat plains as far as the eye can see in all directions, windswept snow with hardened patches of blue ice devoid of vegetation and animals of any description. Everything is white and grey with patches of blue where the snow has turned to ice. At times, the definition between ice and sky is difficult to determine; the horizon blends into the sky and the sky into the horizon.

You come across an occasional bump of snow or lumps of hardened ice called sastrugi, which reflect an eerie blue glow almost as if they were lit from inside with a fluorescent light. The reflected sun burns any areas of exposed skin in a short period of time, which is difficult to comprehend when the temperature is still below zero.

Distance is impossible to judge. Your eyes are deceived by countless mirages, small insignificant objects appear huge and miles away in the distance, yet at other times you are unsure where you are walking and you stumble and fall into sastrugi, which you are unable to see at your feet.

There are no reference points to help you make your judgment and the terrain can change from day to day as the fierce winds scour the surface, moving mountains of snow over a very short period of time. You can wake in the morning to find your doorway blocked with a wall of snow or a blizzard tail stretching from a rocky outcrop to form a ridge of hardened snow several metres high that was not there the day before.

Snowfalls vary from a few millimetres to several metres at any one time. The snow is continually shifting like the sands of the desert and at times the intensity of the wind will reduce your visibility to almost zero, when you can’t even see the ground beneath your feet. It is a place of extreme climate, harsh winds and blinding snowstorms that may last for days. The inland is a place where the wind is both lazy and bitter. It can shift a mountain of snow overnight and bury your vehicle and it can also be deathly quiet with no movement and nothing to see.

When we head back to Casey for a break, driving is a mammoth effort with no roads and no landmarks by which to navigate. The horizon is the same in all directions so your lifeline is your dash-mounted GPS. You are wholly dependent on the readings from your GPS and bamboo canes set in the ice as markers to let you know that you are on track. The cane markers have three aluminium beer cans attached to the centre to allow the radar to pick up a reading in adverse weather conditions. Vehicles are fitted with navigation radar as well as the GPS navigation system.

Speed across the ice varies from crawling speed to a fast 25 kilometres an hour. We travel in a versatile Hagglunds vehicle, which carries four passengers and drives on all four tracks at the same time, exerting low ground pressure for travel in soft snow. The ride is rough and you feel as though you have just completed ten rounds in a heavyweight-boxing tournament at the end of the day.

A snowstorm approaches across the white desert and my thoughts turn to the warmth of northern Australia, even the cool nights in the desert south of the Alice when we thought it was cold. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be standing here in the wild and harsh Antarctic landscape, experiencing such low temperatures.

In ways the desert is similar -- vast areas of nothing, harsh temperatures, cruel winds scouring the landscape, moving the surface in an ever-changing myriad of designs, a place where isolation makes you feel so insignificant in Nature. Like the desert, the Antarctic is also dangerous and life threatening and not a place for people who are ill prepared and laugh in the face of such extremes of climate. This place will kill you through the sheer extremes of nature, through the biting wind, the loss of visibility, the lack of recognizable landmarks, and the disorientation.

Both places are vast expanses of nothing, yet in their own way they exhibit a beauty beyond your imagination and they get into your blood. The white and red deserts have an awe-inspiring atmosphere that is addictive and feeds your desire to explore the last untouched areas of the planet.

Cheers from Bloo.