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Christmas Day at Davis. No holiday here though, we have a full day of flying cargo and passengers ahead. We sailed back to Davis during the night and parked this morning in the ice adjacent to the station. While we were at Zhongshan Davis has been busy handing over to the new wintering party. Today we will take onboard the outgoing winterers as well as people who have been doing summer projects and those who we dropped off on our first visit for short duration work on station or in the field. Our time at Zhongshan finished very well. All the Chinese food and other supplies were delivered and the outgoing Chinese wintering party were brought onboard. We were also joined by two homebound expeditioners from Mawson who flew back to the skiway near the Russian Progress station in a CASA 212 and were then flown onto the Aurora Australis by helicopter. For some it’s been a busy few days with two visits to Davis and our work at Zhongshan. Soon we will return to the more routine life at sea and the celebration tomorrow, besides being Christmas, will also be the celebration of the achievements of these last few days. Last night we had carols by torchlight with some surprisingly poignant re-writes of popular tunes. On the fourth day of Christmas the bosun gave to me four homecoming winterers, three ship’s mates, two idle choppers and a cable reel in a cargo net.
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.