Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER ELEVEN
From New Zealand to the Falklands
It's just that there are some things women don't do. They don't become Pope or President
or go down to the Antarctic.
Harry Darlington, chief pilot on Finn Ronne's
1946-8 Antarctic Research Expedition
WE LANDED
at Christchurch at half-past eleven in the morning on 25 January. When the aircraft
door opened, the smell of trees and green things filled the plane. To us, it was as if we had
come to the middle of a jungle. A 747 had just arrived from Singapore, and we all cleared customs
together. The Singaporeans looked clean, elegant and ironed, as well as very little. They eyed us, a
shaggy tribe of overdressed primates with matted hair and exhausted faces. The traffic even within
the airport compound was overwhelming. I ordered a cappuccino at a café with the Swedish scientist
who had read the part of Amundsen at the Pole on Christmas Day, and we both drooled over the
frothy cups.
'It's really too good to drink,' he said. 'We should just look at it.'
Later, Roger took me to turn on the streetlights of Christchurch at SouthPower, where he worked.
It was still possible to do it manually, and I flicked a switch and watched the city fizz to life. On the
first night, savouring the darkness, I slept in the garden.
'It's so
warm
,' I said to Roger the next morning when he returned from his daily run up the
nearest hill.
'What d'you expect?' he said. 'It's the end of January - mid-summer, practically.'
When I went into town, I wanted to buy something in every shop. I ran into people I knew from
the ice, and we quickly parked ourselves in coffee shops. It was as if we were looking for each other.
I wore a skirt, walked in the chequered shadows of trees, had my hair cut and opened my bag
without being bitten by a crampon. I caught a bus to Lyttelton Museum, an overstuffed old building
smelling of linoleum. The small Antarctic gallery displayed a vermilion parka identical to the one
I had taken off the previous day, and curled photographs of the
Terra Nova
black cat, inevitably
called Nigger, in the hammock specially made for him on the long voyage from Britain to New Zea-
land. Next to the pictures of Nigger, a little girl was riding Rumba through shafts of sepia sunlight.
Rumba was one of Shackleton's ponies, only he never made it south - he was left behind to live out
his life in Waikiri.
On my last night in Christchurch I was invited to a soiree in the Polar Room, the repository of an
impressive collection of recent Antarctic memorabilia. It was presided over by the most assiduous
keeper of the flame, an author, historian, eccentric and
bon viveur
called David Harrowfield. The
Polar Room was tucked away at the back of his neat suburban house and clipped garden, and its
trophies included the escape hatch from the first Scott Base bar and a bicycle modified with skis.
