Videos and virtual resources

Tour of Davis Station (Part 1)

Video transcript

Transcription

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/education-resources/videos-and-clips

Video 1 – Davis Station 4:06

2011

GRAHAM COOK

Welcome to Davis Station. My name’s Graham Cook. I’m the station leader here. Most people call me Cooky. We want to take you and show you a little bit of Davis station and tell you a little bit about what we do here in Antarctica.

Davis supports a lot of science programs during the winter and an awful lot during the summer. The rest of the station work involves a heap of tradesmen and tradespeople. We have a doctor here, we have a chef here and a little support crew which includes me to keep the place running.  The trades team this year is working on a new living quarters which hopefully they’ll have finished by the end of winter and we’ll be able to move into it in the summer. Along with that there’s an ongoing maintenance program that keeps all of us busy. There’s twenty-four of us here for the winter. In the summer that number grows to about a hundred so the first ship will come in around November and bring another seventy or eighty people with it. Enough of me talking anyway. Let’s go have a look around the station and meet some of the crew.

BOYD FLETCHER

Good morning over there with the video camera. This is not a real patient. We are not doing a real operation. These people are expeditioners. They’re ordinary lay people who’ve taken it upon themselves to do some surgical and anaesthetic training and help the doctor down here. Everybody has to take multiple roles and these guys do a great job. We’ve actually have had a minor theatre case only recently and today we’re having a rehearsal on how to handle instruments, how to set up the patient, how to set up all this machinery and as complicated as it looks, these guys are on top of it. I’m very proud of them, very nice to work with them. I’m the doctor. My name’s Boyd Fletcher and we’re pretending this patient’s having an appendectomy at the moment. We’ve got instruments set up here and Jenny’s our theatre sister, theatre nurse.  Jen over there is our scrub nurse. She runs around and gets things. And we’ve got Doug, and Justin, and Shane and they’re doing anaesthetics and setting up all the operating, operating all this equipment. Pretty good team, huh?

CHEF

Hey I’m the chef here at Davis and I cook for the twenty-four expeditioners over winter.

CLIFF

G’day folks. I’m Cliff. I’m down here as general trades. I do a bit of everything.

VOICE ON RADIO

Davis field to Davis this is VLZ one.

DOUG MCPHEE

Yeah VLZ , VLZ Davis go ahead, over.

Yes I’m Doug McPhee. I’m one of the communication techs on station here. We look after the radios, telephone systems,  satellite systems, computer systems. Basically anything electronic on site to keep them up and running.

DAVID

Hi, I’m David, the refrigeration mechanic for this winter. I’m here primarily to  build the new cool room s and set it all up for the new living quarters.

JENNY

Hi, I’m Jenny and I am part of the meteorology team down at Davis station. I am a weather observer. So what we do is we collect and collate all the weather data which then goes in to forecasts so we can tell people what the weather’s going to be tomorrow., whether it might be windy, whether it might snow. We also let off weather balloons which collect data from the atmosphere telling us how cold it is and how much water there is in the atmosphere so we can tell what sort of clouds there are about and that will let us know again what the weather might do tomorrow and the next day and the next day.

ANDY

Hi everyone, I’m Andy. I’m the building services supervisor on Davis station this year. We have a number of infrastructure programs going on including the new LQ and my job is to supervise all the relevant trades in performing their duties.

[END]

Tour of Davis Station (Part 2)

Video transcript

Transcription

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/education-resources/videos-and-clips

Video 2 – Davis Station 4:36

2011

JEN MCGHEE

Hello. My name’s Jen McGhee and I’m a plant operator here at Davis station. I drive pretty much all the heavy equipment here on station. I.T.s, the crane, trucks, JCBs, the dozers, and I clear snow, move large shipping containers around, help with building, do a little bit of recycling, and staying for winter I don’t do a lot of plant operating but I’m helping build the new L.Q. and other station duties.

JIMBO

G’day, I’m Jimbo. I’m one of the carpenters here at Davis station. One of my main projects this year has been working on this new L.Q. which we hope to have completed by the end of this season. I’ve been working on it with a whole heap of other trades and other guys who have put in a good effort over summer so let us show you around. This is the lounge area, this is our new cinema, this is the new kitchen and mess that we’re still working on at the moment.

KERRI

Hi. I’m Kerri. I’m a weather observer and we’re out at the snow gauge and it’s snowing at the moment, but at the moment there’s very little snow.

RICK

Hi. I’m Rick. I’m a carpenter. Over here they call us chippies. I’m a wintering carpenter for Davis 2011 and one of the projects we have on this year is to put in a mezzanine floor in this store room.

TONY

Hi, I’m Tony. I’m one of two electricians on station. We look after everything electrical around the station. This is our main power house behind me. We look after that together with the diesel mechanics. That supplies our electrical supply throughout the station. This is our main electrical panel. These are our four diesel generators.

BRIAN

Hi. I’m Brian. I’m the met tech. I fix weather systems and hydrogen systems for the bureau and also do weather ops(sp?).

DAVID TULLOH

Hi. So I’m David Tulloh. I’m here as an electrical engineer supporting the science group. Most of my work is supporting the atmospheric physics. In here, we’re, this is, got two radars in this one. We’ve got MST radar which has six large amplifiers, takes up most of my time, and a smaller digital amplifier set up for our media radar.

CRAIG

G’day, I’m Craig. I’m one of the comms (?) team and we’re just putting a new radar in this Hagglands we just got down on the ship.

MECHANICS

Hi, I’m Rob. Hi, I’m Cory. I’m Brad. We’re the diesel mechanics on station. We look after all the machinery, the generators for the electricity, basically everything else that moves.  

SHANE

Hi. My name’s Shane. I’m one of the plumbers here in Antarctica. We’ve got many jobs on station. We look after all the water, hot and cold, we got waste management, the heating and air handling and one of our most important jobs here is making water. What we have here is a desalinisation plant, where we pump water from a salt-water lake out back and we pump it through a whole heap of filters where we then pump it through up to our storage tanks up on the hill where we’ve got one and a half million litres of storage.  

GRAHAM COOK

Apart from the normal job, the maintenance work and the building work and the science work on station, the winter team in particular is very involved with a heap of jobs that support the community, jobs like being on the fire team. We need to protect ourselves from fire in the event of one and that can happen and it has happened in the past. We have a medical team that patches people up if they happen to hurt themselves, with the doctor guiding them. We have a search and rescue team that’s on call in case one of us falls over in the field and needs some support.

Look, if we’re not out in the field enjoying the outdoors, there’s a lot we can do inside as well. We’ve got pool, darts, a gym – very well equipped gym, library and a spa and a sauna. Thanks for joining us folks!

GROUP

Bye!

[END]