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Authors: Sara Wheeler
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expedition. Perhaps Terra Nova Bay recaptured the excitement and energy of American and British bases operating thirty years before the Italians headed south.
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I had just divested myself of my cold-weather clothes after a bracing walk around the bay when Gaetanoâs voice boomed over the tannoy announcing that an elicottero was waiting for me, his tone indicating that each minute that elapsed precipitated the base further towards nuclear fission. I rushed to pull on my cold-weather clothes again, jamming the zip of the vermilion parka.
Ben was resupplying a pair of biologists working on a penguin project at Edmondson Point on the other side of Mount Melbourne. It was not a beautiful spot. Only partially snow-covered, it was heavily invested with skuas on the lookout for penguin eggs. The huge Adélie colony dominated the landscape, and as the Squirrel began its descent we could see individual birds waddling about with stones in their beaks. When we opened the doors, a sulphurous gust of wind blew in a blizzard of ice and rock particles. Edmondson Point reminded me of a curled old photograph I had seen of an early British base on the Antarctic Peninsula with the words â semper in excreta â above the door of the hut. A permanent low murmur hung on the air. Edward Wilson, Scottâs confidant, said that walking up to a penguin rookery was like approaching a football ground during a match.
The two women came to meet us. They had been living at this bleak spot with thousands of penguins for three months, and later I watched them capturing nesting birds with what looked like a large black butterfly net, stowing the egg lying under each one in a skua-proof box, tying the bird up by its feet, weighing it on a weighbridge, opening its cloaca to determine its sex, measuring its beak, passing an infrared wand over it and painting a number on its back. The penguins kept quite still throughout this ordeal, and afterwards settled back on their stone nests with a quick wing-flap as if little more than a minor inconvenience had occurred.
One of the women, Francesca, was about twenty-five, and she had never lived in the field before; when they werenât working she seldom strayed far from the tent. Raffaella, the other one, probably wasnât older than thirty, but she had years of field experience behind her and seemed much more at ease in the landscape. I imagined that the penguins felt safer with her.
âDonât you get bored?â I asked in my sketchy Italian.
âNo,â she said, pushing her hair behind her ears. âI bring a skipping rope. The penguins are good company â though I like some better than others. Take that one over there â the one poking his nose into someone elseâs nest. Miserable diavolo !â
âHow do you tell which is which?â
âHow you tell which man is which?â
âEr, well, they sort of look different.â
âYes, so penguins look to me.â
And that, it seemed, was that.
Then we headed south along the coast to pick up a pair of scientists at Dunlop Island. Below us, suffused in a primrose light, seal pups were slithering over the ice sheet, and in the distance the last remnants of sea ice lay on the bright blue water like a membrane.
A geomorphologist and his alpinista â the Italian version of the field leader â had already struck camp when we arrived, and they were waiting next to a mound of rucksacks and boxes. We milled around for a few minutes, then loaded up. The geomorphologist wanted to take samples at Depot Island some way to the south, and he and I were dropped there while Ben and the alpinista went off to refuel. The small, snowy island was discovered by Mawson and the South Magnetic Pole party at the end of October 1908 and named after a cache of rock specimens. The geomorphologist grew increasingly excited about the soil he was digging, and gabbled away happily in Italian.
Later that day we
â
I had just divested myself of my cold-weather clothes after a bracing walk around the bay when Gaetanoâs voice boomed over the tannoy announcing that an elicottero was waiting for me, his tone indicating that each minute that elapsed precipitated the base further towards nuclear fission. I rushed to pull on my cold-weather clothes again, jamming the zip of the vermilion parka.
Ben was resupplying a pair of biologists working on a penguin project at Edmondson Point on the other side of Mount Melbourne. It was not a beautiful spot. Only partially snow-covered, it was heavily invested with skuas on the lookout for penguin eggs. The huge Adélie colony dominated the landscape, and as the Squirrel began its descent we could see individual birds waddling about with stones in their beaks. When we opened the doors, a sulphurous gust of wind blew in a blizzard of ice and rock particles. Edmondson Point reminded me of a curled old photograph I had seen of an early British base on the Antarctic Peninsula with the words â semper in excreta â above the door of the hut. A permanent low murmur hung on the air. Edward Wilson, Scottâs confidant, said that walking up to a penguin rookery was like approaching a football ground during a match.
The two women came to meet us. They had been living at this bleak spot with thousands of penguins for three months, and later I watched them capturing nesting birds with what looked like a large black butterfly net, stowing the egg lying under each one in a skua-proof box, tying the bird up by its feet, weighing it on a weighbridge, opening its cloaca to determine its sex, measuring its beak, passing an infrared wand over it and painting a number on its back. The penguins kept quite still throughout this ordeal, and afterwards settled back on their stone nests with a quick wing-flap as if little more than a minor inconvenience had occurred.
One of the women, Francesca, was about twenty-five, and she had never lived in the field before; when they werenât working she seldom strayed far from the tent. Raffaella, the other one, probably wasnât older than thirty, but she had years of field experience behind her and seemed much more at ease in the landscape. I imagined that the penguins felt safer with her.
âDonât you get bored?â I asked in my sketchy Italian.
âNo,â she said, pushing her hair behind her ears. âI bring a skipping rope. The penguins are good company â though I like some better than others. Take that one over there â the one poking his nose into someone elseâs nest. Miserable diavolo !â
âHow do you tell which is which?â
âHow you tell which man is which?â
âEr, well, they sort of look different.â
âYes, so penguins look to me.â
And that, it seemed, was that.
Then we headed south along the coast to pick up a pair of scientists at Dunlop Island. Below us, suffused in a primrose light, seal pups were slithering over the ice sheet, and in the distance the last remnants of sea ice lay on the bright blue water like a membrane.
A geomorphologist and his alpinista â the Italian version of the field leader â had already struck camp when we arrived, and they were waiting next to a mound of rucksacks and boxes. We milled around for a few minutes, then loaded up. The geomorphologist wanted to take samples at Depot Island some way to the south, and he and I were dropped there while Ben and the alpinista went off to refuel. The small, snowy island was discovered by Mawson and the South Magnetic Pole party at the end of October 1908 and named after a cache of rock specimens. The geomorphologist grew increasingly excited about the soil he was digging, and gabbled away happily in Italian.
Later that day we
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