Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of how to read in bed by positioning the Coleman lantern on our only stool next to the bunks, and
each night ended with its sigh as the mantles faded into the gloom.
I had been in many Antarctic camps, but nothing compared with having my own. I developed a
more intimate relationship with the continent, living with it at Wooville. Already I looked on Ere-
bus as a friend. We had claimed Antarctica back from the colonisation of science. Wooville was
the only non-science camp on the continent, and we had as much right to be there as the beakers.
I have nothing against either science or scientists, but they don't own Antarctica. You might
think they do - the entire human occupation of Antarctica is predicated on the theory of science as
an unending process of amelioration. Whatever is said about knowledge for its own sake, the only
justification for science in any sphere is that it is a tool of improvement - and, as such, it func-
tions as a highly effective shield for concealing the truth about Antarctica. Collective conscious-
ness must believe in the deification of science on the ice, otherwise it would have to admit that the
reason for each nation's presence in Antarctica is political, not scientific. Like the emperor's new
clothes, everyone knows but nobody says.
∗
Every week or so we cleared the snowdrifts from the inside of the Woomobile, fired up the generat-
or to warm the engine and headed back to McMurdo, where we would see Ron's little face spying
on us from his tiny window at the top of the Mechanical Equipment Center. He was very paternal
about his Sprytes. In town we washed ourselves and our clothes, recharged all the batteries, raided
Food, took slices of wheat bread from the galley, unpacked and repacked, and filled up our fuel
tank and our water containers. We stayed one night, occasionally stretching it to two. I picked up
electronic mail messages from the people I had left behind at Rothera. They told me stories about
their snowmobiles breaking down in the darkness of the far reaches of Adelaide Island. Rothera
was 2,000 miles away, but it seemed close.
We socialised during these stopovers. Sometimes I had dinner with the Kiwis at Scott Base,
where I felt more at home than ever. Their winter had apparently passed without a hitch. 'Only the
North Islanders got sick,' someone said.
I had expected Lucia and me to cling together at McMurdo, having grown accustomed to each
other's company, but in fact we barely saw one another. In addition, and as if by unspoken agree-
ment, when we set out again for camp neither of us asked what the other had done on station. It
was as if an unconscious release valve were in operation.
On one particular occasion we stayed an extra night in McMurdo for the annual Flag Tying Party
in the Heavy Shop. The whole population mustered at this event to drink beer, eat pizza and tie
flags on to bamboo poles in preparation for the forthcoming science season. The Heavy Shop was
a cavernous building dotted with huge pieces of mechanical equipment in various states of repair,
and at the party dancing broke out among the pools of engine oil.
The largest machine in the Shop was a D-8 low ground pressure tractor with fifty-four-inch
treads. It was inscribed with the word 'Colleen' carefully painted in a Gothic script, and a man in
blue overalls was leaning against it. When he saw me looking, he shouted over the strains of Joe
Cocker,
