This week at Casey: 1 March 2024

Casey Station has lived up to its reputation as a hub for the Australian Antarctic Program and has fulfilled a successful season for 2023/24.

The station has tested its limits with full capacity encountered several times during the season and it continued to function! With an awesome station leader at the helm and a team of the coolest people in the continent, we've collectively navigated the station through to success.

How does supporting Casey station look for a plumber, you ask?

This involves heating, water supply, sewage treatment, waste management, on call duties and new infrastructure just to name a few. Here are a couple of fun hurdles we have encountered along the way.

In the lead up to summer the frozen lake where the station water supply comes from had its challenges! For one – the lake was frozen and required a section below the surface to be melted. This looked like a bubble of water in the ice that was heated, causing the ice walls to melt and make water. This was then pumped into storage tanks but the volume that could be pumped was restricted and at time, needed to have water from a higher lake transferred into this under-ice bubble. That meant a hole had to be drilled into the frozen higher lake's surface for pumping. The team has performed this during blizz conditions, days with gusty wind and blowing snow in excess of 70 knots (130km/hr),

This ice hole was drilled into a 3 metre thick layer of ice before breaking through into the water below! 

With the station’s personnel capacity reached, our waste water treatment plant has been put to the test with multiple looming “poonamis”. What is a poonami?? It’s like a tsunami but it’s poo! This is when the Red Shed sewer pump station has an influx of people showering, doing laundry while the kitchen pumps out meals, causing large volumes of sewage to travel down to the sewer treatment plant receiving tank, which fills more quickly than it can process it. With nowhere else to go, the sewer can start to overflow. With a swift team response this has been avoided! 

We have an amazing team of plumbers this season:

Adam is a winterer, AKA Ping pong champion of the Casey Station Summer Olympics 2023/24! When not doing his bit to keep the station plumbing network in order, Adam can be found upstairs in the EVS pumping out the beats on the drums with Ben on the guitar. These two are a good duo to sit and listen to.

Dave is a summerer. He enjoys a yoga sesh to start the day and isn’t too shabby with the stock market, resulting in a few people seeking hot tips. Dave did the 'diesel tank dipping' during refuelling, reporting to the ship as the tanks were filling to ensure precision of readings and that tanks weren’t over filled – a critical part of refuelling but done as if there were no pressure at all. Dave loves a good “reset” at work which brings a laugh to the team when he says this!

Gary is also a summerer. He enjoys the comfort of the ocean and participated in the water operations during refuelling. This involved patrolling the fuel line over the water from ship to shore, checking for fuel leaks and battling the threats of rogue icebergs as the wind and tide shifted them into the path of the fuel line.

Mitch is a winterer. He enjoys pretty much everything! Hard to catch him without a smile and enthusiastic about anything that comes his way. Between being the station's DJ at parties and dressing up as a penguin at station farewells, he loves to help keep the bugs happy in the waste water treatment plant. It's like his laboratory and after all we are here for science!

Ben is also a winterer. He loves a strum on the guitar and I must say, he isn’t too bad! He also loves a good game of darts and is pretty competitive which makes a good game to watch as you give him a bit of a stir. Ben is a bit of a professor when it comes to plumbing, he is pretty good at diagnosing an issue and down here there are no shortages of these!

Josh is a Summerer. He is our station Santa Claus and brought tears of laughter and an unforgettable memory as he played what we think is the best Santa in Casey’s record hands down! Josh has a big personality and brings good banter to the trade group. He loves any task given to him and is most excited if it involves a demo saw of destruction. Get out of his way as it's coming down!!!

- The Casey Plumbing Team  - 

As the summer sadly draws to a close it’s time to reflect on some of the memorable moments from a jam-packed four months.

A few weeks ago, five of us decided running a marathon here in Antarctica would be the icing on the cake of an incredible summer. Several of us had vaguely talked about running a marathon here since the start of the season. However, work has been busy for everyone and it wasn’t until we realised (much to everyone’s sadness) Darren was about to fly home that it meant the marathon had to be done soon – like the very next day! While the five of us (aircraft ground support officer John, DTC Stu, Chippy Darren, BOM Tom and myself) are all regular runners, a spontaneous marathon is always a stretch – and for speedy BOM Tom a very memorable first one!!

Apart from pulling together a motivational playlist and raiding supplies (thanks Supply Dave and Owen) for some flat coke, salted chippies and one sacred tube of electrolytes, we decided we were about as prepared as we could hope to be. After a restful night's sleep trying not to think about our lack of training or tapering, it was time to run!

The day coincided with the annual KBA challenge – a memorial day for the three KBA pilots who tragically died on their way home after an Antarctica summer. Each year there is a friendly rivalry between the Australian Antarctic stations to see which one can rack up the highest percentage of expeditioners to complete various physical challenges. At Casey it is usually a 10km (but actually 11-12km depending on your sports watch) walk/run/ski/bike back from the skiway to station and is a highlight of the season. It's not that Casey Station is competitive (we just like to win), but Casey came away with first prize this year for the second year running!

We had decided for safety and logistical ease to cut laps around the skiway – a 3.8km loop where we could run past our make-shift aid station which was complete with pumping tunes, lots of layers to take on and off as needed, and snacks. We also had a toilet and a warm operations building there in case anyone started to get too cold, and lots of support people around as part of the KBA challenge.

The weather was a tropical −10° Celcius, 5-10 knot winds with a few centimetres of fresh snow underfoot (just so the calves really felt it the next day) and relatively clear skies, about as perfect conditions as you could hope for in Antarctica. The five of us ran together for the first 25km, sharing stories, buoying each other up and generally frothing on the fact we were outside running a marathon in the snow while gazing out to icebergs on the horizon. We then separated into our own rhythms as we all hit the pain cave and pulled in some reserves to ensure we all ticked that 42.2km box.

A massive thank you to Bec and everyone who helped organise and run the KBA Challenge day, field training officer Maddie for being chief support officer and photographer, and station leader Dave for his support in making these experiences happen.

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend deciding to run a marathon the day prior, golly gosh it was a special undertaking shared with a fantastic and supportive team. I think the real highlight of this summer has been having an incredibly close-knit station full of great humans who have a zest for seeking out and creating memorable life experiences.

- Dr Jessie Ling - Station Doctor