Antarctic video gallery
Antarctic road trip
Video transcript
EDDIE: I’m Eddie and this is Leon and this is what going on an Antarctic road trip looks like. We've got the trailer packed full of tents, and all our survival gear and all our cooking gear is in the back of the hagg. We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of oz!
So we're nearly at our destination — Mt Hordern. And, Alex, how you going, mate?
ALEX: Ah yeah, swell.
EDDIE: Alex gets a little bit car sick! So, we've nearly finished putting up our tents here and once you've pegged it down to the ground then you have to bury the aprons, which is what Alex is doing right now. You shovel snow or rocks on there to keep the tent from blowing away if the wind picks up.
HEIDI: It’s not a glass of wine, but a cup of tea is just as good!
ALEX: So we're inside the polar pyramid and we're building our sleeping quarters. So we're running four layers on the ground. We've got these — that I’m sure everyone is familiar with and loves very dearly, a self-inflating air mattress, two layers of sheepskin and then over here we run a double bag sleeping system with extension liners. There is one in here, an extension liner, outer, extension liner and you hop in there and you have a good sleep. How do I turn this off?
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Searching for super-cooled Southern Ocean clouds
Video transcript
Dr Simon Alexander: This is brand new research. We have so little understanding of clouds in the Southern Ocean. This is the first time we'll have this major experiment to look at these special type of clouds, which exist at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, yet they remain as liquid. They're called supercooled liquid clouds. To do this research over summer, we'll have three main platforms. We'll have the Aurora Australis, our ice breaker. We'll have CSIRO’s RV Investigator, and we'll have a United States research aircraft. From the surface, we will have LIDARs and radars on the ships, looking at clouds from the surface. We will also be launching radiosondes – weather balloons – over the ocean, so that we can get profiles of temperature and relative humidity all the way from the surface up to the top of the troposphere. We want to know about them so that we can produce a book called Climatology – how often they occur, where they occur, what altitudes they occur, how thick they are – so that we can then compare these data with output from forecast models and climate models.
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Antarctic station leaders – season 2017–18
Video transcript
Robb Clifton: In my normal role, it’s as the operations manager, and I work really closely with the station leaders daily to coordinate the program, to manage the projects that we’re doing; shipping, aviation, and station resources. So for me to kind of get back on the tools and go and do it at the coalface, if you like, on the ice, is a really great opportunity to reconnect with that.
It’s fantastic working with the Australian Antarctic Program and the challenge of actually delivering the program on the ice. We’ve got some really exciting science, with a large ice core drilling camp. We’ll also be working up on the glacier, looking at glacier dynamics. We'll be doing some seabird research. We're also running a project looking into a potential new runway site in the Vestfold Hills. It’s great to live in a small community, in a small remote community, and we recruit some fantastic people. So I really enjoy the people side of it as well. And then there’s just the pure leadership aspect of leading a team, of you know 80 to 100 people, a long way away from Hobart, with a lot to do, and the joys of the Antarctic weather making it difficult for us.
Rebecca Jeffcoat: Station leader was an opportunity for me, not having a trade, to go to Antarctica. I’ve always been interested in Antarctica. I grew up reading about Mawson and Shackleton and Hurley’s pictures. I was lucky enough in 1999 to do a resupply voyage on Aurora Australis, to get experience forecasting in the southern ocean. And then with the Navy, I did fisheries patrols down the Herd Island, McDonald Island. So I love, love, that environment. My experience in the Navy for the last few years has been in command and leadership roles. I just finished a role as the commanding officer HMS Kuttabul in Sydney, at Garden Island, and I was in charge of nearly 2500 sailors, keeping a port operation running. It’s a similar job, just a lot more isolated, less people, and a bit colder. Casey is very busy this season. With the aerodrome and the ski way, we’ve got lots of air operations coming through, and we are supporting some international programs.
Esther Rodewald: I’m most excited about going to Antarctica, and specifically Mawson, because everyone has told me how extraordinarily beautiful it is, and that it’s basically on a mountain and the landscape everywhere is amazing all year round. The idea of going to Antarctica was looking for a challenge, looking for something new, and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. We go down on the Aurora, so it’ll take about 10 days to get actually from Hobart down to Mawson.
We’re looking at mostly monitoring projects, automatic systems that go all year round. So there’s climactic systems, there’s atmospherics, there’s seabird monitoring, as well as geoscience and ARPANSA who’ve been there for years.
So I was lucky enough to spend last year living on Macquarie Island, and it’s a lot like living in a David Attenborough nature documentary. It’s extraordinary. Living down in Antarctica, I imagine will be different to living on Macquarie Island, mostly because of the weather and the restrictions that that imposes on what you can do. On Mawson, as the other Antarctic stations, you have to travel in pairs. You have to be together. And I believe Mawson’s very windy, so you're often quite restricted just to even how you can travel around the station. So I think that will present its own challenges, just as to how the group connects, and how you actually function when you're in each other’s pockets the whole time.
Jason Ahrens: This will be my fifth trip south. I've been station leader at Davis on another occasion, and I’ve also been at Macquarie Island, and Casey last season. What gets me back to Antarctica is the environment and the remoteness of the place. I really enjoy the fact that you are so remote, and you’re a small community who have to look out for each other, and you are a team, one team. There’s no one coming down to help in anything we do. It’s just us.
I think one of the biggest challenges for me is having to leave my family behind. It is one of the toughest things about working in Antarctica. It’s a joint decision for my family and myself, to be able to go to Antarctica and work down there. So, at Davis, we don’t see the sun for six weeks, which certainly has a — plays a bit of a part on people’s moods and how they feel and how they go. And we certainly enjoy when the sun comes back up, and we know we're starting to head out to the other side of winter. Sitting up in the lounge, looking out the windows, over the bay when it’s all nice and frozen, is just magnificent. And watching the sun go down shining off the icebergs — what more could you ask for?
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Icebreaker — RSV Nuyina
Video transcript
Nick Gales
I am really excited about this.
We had about 800 entries from right around Australia; every state and territory participated. About a fifth of the names used indigenous languages from all around Australia.
Nuyina is a name from the palawa kani language, a southern Tasmanian aboriginal language, it means Southern Lights. It’s the aurora australis.
It’s wonderful for so many reasons. It’s wonderful because it continues the theme of the aurora from Sir Douglas Mawson’s first ship the Aurora, through to our own wonderful current ship the Aurora Australis.
It celebrates the view of the children around the importance of linking it back to Australia’s first people and its worth remembering in terms of links between Tasmania and Antarctica that some 20,000 years ago when Aboriginal Australians were living here they were the southern-most people on Earth at that time. They would have been seeing the Southern Lights which are very much a link between here and there.
I think it’s something that all Australians can look at the name Nuyina on the bow of our new ship and really celebrate something that we can all be really proud of and identify as our next major iconic ship.
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RSV Nuyina announcement
Video transcript
Daisy Allan — Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre
The word Nuyina was first shared by Aborigines with government agent George Augustus Robinson in August 1831. He wrote in his journal, the natives last night saw an electric spark in the atmosphere, the natives of Cape Portland call it nuyina.
The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP — Minister for the Environment
Now we are using the beautiful Tasmanian aboriginal language with Nuyina, to be the name of our new vessel. And what is so special about this name is that it continues the tradition that started with Mawson, because Mawson’s vessel was Aurora, which also means Southern lights, today’s vessel is Aurora Australis.
Haider Alnasser — St Virgil’s College student
Once in a lifetime opportunity, most people never go to Antarctica. For us to be so young, but to do something so amazing is just a life changing experience.
Daisy Allan — Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre
(In language) Safe travels and all the best for Nuyina, the icebreaker, as you travel under the southern lights that our old people spoke of many years ago.
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Davis Airdrop
Video transcript
Dr Kirsten le Mar:
For station, the airdrop means a greater connection to Australia and less remote. The team feels very excited to be involved in this first airdrop for Davis. We have been measuring sea ice and grooming the roads out to the drop zone. The greatest challenge has been the sea ice, we have had 20 blizzards this year and our sea ice has broken out twice to date. What we are most looking forward to is mail and fresh fruit and it’s fantastic for the AAD to have this capability into the future.
We are undertaking this airdrop to deliver cargo to Davis station, which is something we previously haven’t been able to do. The C-17A can’t do this alone, so an air-to-air refuel is required to actually achieve this, so this is a first for the Australian Antarctic Program. The cargo that will be dropped in this airdrop is predominantly food stuff, so mainly dry food and some cooking items such as potatoes and things like that. Also included in the cargo is some telecommunications equipment and medical stores. For us to be able to reach Davis station and potentially Mawson station outside of our normal operating time of year is very exciting for the organisation.
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New bus bound for icy desert
Video transcript
Cameron Frost:
I’m here in Calgary, Canada, carrying out the final inspection on our new bus. The new bus replaces our existing one, which we have in Antarctica, which is known as Priscilla. Priscilla’s been there for a little over 10 years now and is due for replacement. The bus transports passengers from Wilkins — our intercontinental blue ice runway to Casey station, which is a journey of a little over 70 kilometers. The bus that we've purchased is a Terra Bus. It’s a specific cold weather machine and with a number of modifications to allow it operate in the cold climate. It has 36 seat capacity which is 17 more than our current bus. It also has large balloon tyres, which allows it to traverse through challenging conditions. We plan to ship the bus to Australia and transport it to Antarctica in the middle of November.
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Icebreaker Keel Laying
Video transcript
Dr Nick Gales: We’re here for a very important moment, to mark the keel laying of Australia’s new icebreaker.
Keel laying is a very old, maritime tradition. The idea is to place coins, originally under mast of the ship but with modern ships it is within the keel, and they are there to bring good luck to the ship its life. We’re not just placing one coin, we’re placing four coins on the keel of the ship today. An Australian coin, of course, as it will be the Australian Antarctic Program’s ship. A coin from Romania to mark where the ship was built. A coin from the Netherlands to mark that Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding have designed and are responsible with the shipyard in Galați for the building of the ship, and also a Danish coin to mark that the original design from Knud E. Hansen came from Denmark — so it’s a truly international affair.
The laying of the keel is a really important milestone and it really marks the start of building the whole new ship — taking the ship from many many years of work and drawings, through to a real thing, so today is really the serious start of the construction phase for the new icebreaker.
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Science Week – Dr Gwen Fenton
Video transcript
Q: By how much would sea levels rise if all the ice in Antarctica melted?
- 130m
- 60m
- 16m
- 3m
Dr Fenton: Hi, I’m Dr Gwen Fenton and I’m the chief scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division.
If you guessed (b) you’re right. The icy continent is where most of the world’s fresh water is stored as ice. Researchers estimate if all Antarctica’s ice melted, sea level would rise by around 60 metres.
Future Earth is the theme for National Science Week this year, and Antarctica and the Southern Ocean play a critical role in understanding what might happen on that future Earth. The region is the engine room for global climate. By studying it, we can unlock the secrets of the past, which can help us predict future changes.
Researchers here at the Division study the chemicals in ice cores, which tell us about past temperature, sea ice extend, volcanic events, and the impact of human activity on the Earth.
As part of Science Week, we are really excited to be hosting a Facebook Live tour of our Antarctic krill aquarium, here at the Kingston headquarters. The scientists are currently undertaking research into how a changing Southern Ocean will impact krill and the larger animals, like penguins, seals, and whales, that eat them. I’d love you to join us and our science team on the Division’s Facebook page, on Thursday the 17th at 11:30am Hobart time, to get the Antarctic view on the Future Earth.
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