This week at Casey a first time plumber gives his thoughts on the summer and leopard seals move in for the kill

Leopard Seals Lurk

When the weather is calm and there is not a ripple on the bay our minds turn to boating at Casey. It can still be grey and snowing but that just adds to the atmosphere of the event.

A few of these perfect-for-boating days have resulted in some amazing trips with photos to match. Now that the Adélie penguin colonies are feeding larger chicks the parents are making more frequent trips out to forage for food. As they leave and return they now run the gauntlet of leopard seals that have set themselves up strategically around the Windmill Islands.

A Plumber’s Thoughts

As a soon to be departing summer plumber, it has been an awesome journey.

I have worked on a lot of different plumbing tasks, some familiar and some completely different than what I have experienced during my plumbing career. There’s been some fantastic experiences along the way such as field and travel training where we learnt survival skills plus experienced some amazing scenery as we went.

Watching and learning how the Australian Antarctic Division operations work has been a real treat, including the resupply effort where we all pitched in and assisted with the unloading and loading the icebreaker Aurora Australis.

We have been incredibly spoilt by the great crew of chefs down here with the sublime dishes they pump out day after day. We are assigned roughly one day a month to help out the chefs in the kitchen with our slushy duty which is a nice break to have from our plumbing projects.

On top of work we have a good time with our social and leisure activities such as Australia Day festivities, weekends away to field huts with a cool motley crew of people, hitting the ski loop on a set of cross country skis and much more.

All in all it has been an unforgettable stay with an amazing and harmonious bunch of people that I will cherish for a very long time.

- Michael Howard, Casey Plumber 

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