This week at Macquarie Island: 6 April 2018

Easter so soon after arriving on the island was a tranquil and chocolatey treat.

You wouldn’t have thought that any self-respecting Easter Bunny would return to Macca after the thorough job that the MIPEP (Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project) did, but much to the delight of the chocolate egg recipients, they did. There were eggs enough to please all chocolate lovers.

Not to mention the ace job Annette our chef did in producing a superb Easter Saturday night dinner, much to our delight — needless to say, it didn’t last long.

Following the departure of the Aurora Australis on the 22^nd March, as a newly arrived team on Macquarie Island we went into ‘Field Operations Recess’.

This allows the station as a whole to think about Emergency Response, to identify an Incident Management team that can cover anything that could happen on station and, along with the FTO (Field Training Officer), those that will comprise the Emergency Response Search and Rescue (SAR) team ready to respond to any incident off station.

It is the first time that the current team have addressed Emergency Response since leaving Hobart and is also the first time they can apply their pre-departure training within the environment that they will be living and working for the next year.

As well as going through the SAR techniques the new fire teams were also put through their paces, donning breathing apparatus and testing all hydrants and hoses — despite the wind!

As if Easter wasn’t enough decadence, we also helped Building Services Supervisor (BSS) Tim celebrate his birthday this week with a mammoth chocolate cake cooked, iced and served with raspberry sauce, courtesy of Cathryn.

Of course it would have been irresponsible to let him eat that all on his own, and we couldn’t have that. Even after all twelve of us had a generous slice there is still two thirds left to eat — yay!