Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ise yet; I had scarcely expected it to materialise at all. It was embarrassing to run away from my
American hosts the minute I was qualified to do so and before I had been anywhere with them.
For the rest of the day I occupied myself by climbing Observation Hill overlooking McMurdo.
The team Scott left behind at the hut had put a jarrah wood cross on top as a memorial to the five
men who died on the trek back from the Pole. Just before the
Terra Nova
left Antarctica they had
inscribed it with the last line of Tennyson's
Ulysses
: 'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'
They got the idea for the quotation from Nansen, who had used it to pay homage to Amundsen's
voyage through the Northwest Passage. Tennyson was their poet, though Browning came a close
second, and once they even held a competition to decide between them. It was difficult to imagine
members of a contemporary expedition sitting round arguing over the merits of Auden and Yeats.
The disparate buildings of the station were spread out in the hollow below Observation Hill,
adding a pattern of dull colour to the icescape around it. My eye followed the coastline of Ross
Island. In places, especially where it had been engulfed by a glacier, it was difficult to distinguish
where the island ended and the frozen sea began. The topography of the island was powerful and
muscular, bulging with volcanic unrest, and it was a relief to turn away to hundreds of miles of
flat, frozen sea. Beyond the sea, the mountains on the fringe of the continent were too distant, and
too perfect, to seem threatening. They were frosty sentinels, unassailable and infinitely desirable; a
tease. Although I hadn't yet experienced anything of 'the real Antarctica', already I had a profound
sense that I was in the right place. To start with, the relief of actually getting there was incalculable
after the interminable preparations. But it was more than that. In some bizarre way I had an atavist-
ic sense that I had come home. I couldn't imagine what this meant; but I didn't seek to understand
it then. I had only just arrived.
The next morning I carried a packed bag and a set of cold-weather clothes to my office and
attempted to locate my helicopter by means of the station telephone network. The machine, it
emerged, had already flown to Scott Base, the New Zealand station two miles from McMurdo. As
these bases are linked by telephone I was able to track down an Italian climatologist called Claudio
who announced that they were delighted I was joining them on the journey to Terra Nova Bay. He
would call me, he said cheerfully, when departure was imminent. We hung up.
Trapped in my office for four hours, waiting for a call, I had my first lesson in the logistics of
Antarctic travel. Part of the journey was about learning to keep still.
When the telephone rang, a Kiwi pilot introduced himself. He was very sorry but he couldn't
possibly take me as the helicopter was already overloaded. He had no idea when there would be
another trip, if ever.
Ten minutes later, as I was still sprawled miserably in my swivel chair, the telephone rang again.
Another Italian was gabbling. Mario, I established, had ordered Claudio off the flight so that I
could take his place. 'You come to Scott Base immediately!' I heard this unknown voice demand-
ing) and I began pulling on my cold-weather clothes.
Scott Base has been called a suburb of McMurdo, so close that a shuttle bus runs between the
two stations and Americans make daily raids on the tiny shop run by the New Zealanders. It was
usually possible to catch a lift, and this I did. Scott Base was probably about one twenty-fifth of the
size of its neighbour, at first sight a neat collection of pale green buildings overlooking the frozen
