This week at Davis: 5 August 2016

Now you have all probably heard the story of The Tortoise and the Hare — how the hare races ahead but the tortoise always steady and controlled wins the race. Well that pretty much sums up how Davis approached the walk (that somehow turned into a race) to the South Pole. 

We let Mawson flog themselves doing over the daily limit that we were led to believe was set at 80 kms per team, per week. We curiously watched as all the other teams, Macca’s The Gumboot Ramblers, Kingston’s Team Remediation Rampage and Team Casey chased as we just plodded along in our own time. Although most of us did well over the daily limit we only recorded a weekly max of 80 kms, hence why we were last to cross the line.

However taking that all in our stride, we believe Davis are the real winners with the unmistakable proof we made it to the Pole thanks to our friend there — Robert Shwarz as shown in the following pics (and no they aren’t photo-shopped). Robert was a real trooper braving their much cooler winter temperatures to welcome our valiant team of 10 to the geographic southern end of the earth.

So the proof is in the pics. We look forward to participating in any further challenges and a big thanks to Jen W at Mawson for starting the ball rolling and also a special thanks to Jen P at Davis for keeping us on track.

The Davis workshop office is generally a ‘hive of activity’ with all tradies on station popping in throughout the course of the day, checking emails, fielding calls from Kingston, or jumping on the station server looking for various parts or manuals.

Most of the workshops are equipped with a ‘wireless’, so we can listen to Slushy FM whilst at work…

Every expeditioner on station gets a turn as the station ‘Slushy’ in the kitchen (almost once a fortnight here at Davis), washing dishes, mopping floors, vacuuming, rubbish runs, and generally keeping the station clean and tidy. The best part of being the Slushy is you get to pick the music for the day, which is then transmitted to the rest of the station.

Recently, our station BSS, Brett Sambrooks, asked the question…… ‘Do we have a spare wireless for the office?’

Paul Deverall, (one half of the Davis station Electrical team), responded with a definitive ‘yep’

The ‘wireless’ was quickly located and expertly installed to a suitable location within the office.

Then came the big moment… We turned it on…

After some calibrating and fine adjustment via the tuning knob, ‘hey presto’, we had slushy FM. Issue resolved (or so we thought).

Within five minutes of operation it was noted that the wireless had a tendency to fade in and out and lose the signal all together. Probably due to half the antenna being missing.

A solution was called for…

Within seconds an impromptu antenna extension was fabricated, resulting in crystal clear Slushy FM tunes radiating though the office.

Happy Days!

As the world is becoming more and more digitalised — it seems quite normal to be using an iPad for reading books and magazines. One thing that I did notice whilst reading in this manner before going to sleep, was that I just couldn’t sleep. After doing some research I realised that the light from my iPad was a probable cause for this.

Which brings me to my topic for this week’s story ‘The Library’ — we are very lucky here at Davis to have one, a library that is, with many books both old and new. The collection we have here has been multiplying over many years now and supported by our wonderful librarian at head office in Kingston.

There is a non-fiction section that ranges from plays, poetry, sports and exercise, travel, ocean voyages all the way through to an extensive collection of polar literature. Many books covering the early expeditions of the first Antarctic heroes such as Shackleton, Mawson, Amundsen and Scott to say the least.

Then there is the fiction section with everything from science fiction, fantasy, crime and romance. We also have old year books from previous winter seasons and numerous board games. One really good thing about this library is the librarian doesn’t charge late fees or penalties — I guess a cashless society does have its benefits.

The library also gets used a few times a week for our study group — usually a quiet place to retreat to where we can put on our thinking caps and nut out a few modules.

So, after spending some time moseying around the library to find a suitable book to read at night, I finally settled on the ‘Millennium Trilogy’ starting with the ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. Great book but I guess this isn’t a book review…

Lesley Eccles