Terra Nova Bay - Terra Incognita - page 21

extensive surveying work, but they failed to find an eastern landing. Initiative being the key to
Antarctic science then as now, they went north to Cape Adare instead.
On the way, much to the surprise of both groups, they met Amundsen and the other Norwegians
in the Bay of Whales. When the watchman of the Fram - clearly a man who liked to hedge his
bets - saw the Terra Nova sailing past, he brought out his Jarman gun, which he loaded with six
bullets, and an English phrasebook from which he quickly learnt to say 'Hello, how are you this
morning?' The encounter was cordial, and they inspected each other's quarters. The British were
astonished at the efficiency with which the Norwegians handled their dogs, and Amundsen recor-
ded in his diary that after the visitors left all the Norwegians caught colds.
At Cape Adare, Campbell and his five men waved the ship goodbye and renamed themselves
the Northern Party. After a fruitful season the Terra Nova picked them up again and dropped them
at what became Inexpressible Island, supposedly for six weeks. But when it came to fetch them
that time, it failed to get through the pack ice and returned to New Zealand, leaving Campbell and
his men marooned in an ice hole for eight months.
Then men got used to a meat and fat diet, though its high acid content meant that some fre-
quently wet themselves. After eight months on the edge of endurance they had to trek 230 miles
back to the hut on Ross Island, and when they got there, they learnt that Scott and the others had
perished.
Beyond the island, a flash of colour caught my eye. I realised it must be the Italian station,
crouched on the edge of Terra Nova Bay. In five minutes the rotor was shuddering to a stop on the
helipad in front of the base.
The main building was on stilts, with Prussian blue corrugated metal walls, a Siena orange roof
and Beaubourgesque chimneys. From it emerged Mario. He was a dark-haired and olive-skinned
man in his late forties, wearing glasses and a permanently hunted expression. He welcomed me,
looking anxiously over my shoulder at the helicopter cargo, of which there was very little. We
walked in, but he was distracted, so I tried to keep a low profile, not an easy task when thrust
among forty Italians eager for new blood. I was introduced to almost everyone at once, and pro-
pelled into the Operations Room - la sala comando . It was a long narrow room with one continu-
ous window overlooking the helipad and a great sweeping panorama encompassing the whole bay,
frozen as far as the Campbell Ice Tongue and metamorphosing beyond that into the beckoning tur-
quoise of open water. Presiding over it all was Mount Melbourne, the 2900-metre volcanic cone
named by Ross after the British prime minister. It dominated the Italian presence as completely as
Mount Erebus dominated the Americans and the New Zealanders. The operations room was run
like a wartime bunker by Gaetano, a wiry lieutenant-colonel aged around thirty who flew about the
room, spluttering like a grenade, and gave the impression of constant and almost fatal overwork.
He thrust a VHF radio into my hand and barked a few sentences of unintelligibly acronym-laden
Italian.
Shortly before supper Mario asked sheepishly if I minded sleeping on the floor of a laboratorio .
The dorms were full, and the alternative was an isolated outbuilding. I was perfectly happy. The
laboratory was a narrow room with a sink, shelves lined with bottles of lurid substances, a smell of
formaldehyde and a camp bed. When I opened a cupboard door a deluge of syringes rained down.