Work and play, just have to sort out which is which!

Sea-Ice Monitoring

One of the extra jobs on station is that of sea-ice monitor. This involves heading out on the sea-ice and drilling designated GPS locations in the surrounding bays at Casey Station.

This information is then logged and sent to UTAS in Hobart for further analysis. We try to get out and measure the sea-ice depth once a fortnight. Three measurements are taken:

  1. Snow depth on top of the ice
  2. Freeboard (distance between the top of the water and the top of the ice)
  3. Ice thickness

The ice has been growing between 100mm and 200mm per fortnight. The ice at all locations is roughly 1m thick. It is a fun and enjoyable job allowing a few people to get off station to take in more of the amazing sights from a different view point.

Two quad bikes and an ice drill standing up on the sea ice with nothing else as far as the eye can see.
Riding a quad bike away from the camera through the fresh new snow with the station of in the distance.
A close up of Adam with his helmet on and everything frozen, including his beard.
A wave shaped ice cliff with a blue sky backdrop.
Jeff drilling a hole through the ice with a battery drill in the special ice drill bit
Jeff drilling the ice with the drill shaft almost gone as the ice is over 1 metre thick.

Cooking Classes

Whilst on station for the winter we have been lucky enough to gain a few extra skills: sea-ice drilling, driving Hägglunds over snow vehicles, and how to treat hypothermia. While these skills are handy, there isn’t much call for it back in Australia. Cooking on the other hand is a necessity.

Our five-star chef Donna has been running a few Saturday arvo cooking classes. There are many eager participants and you have to get in quick. Donna knows every trick in the book and has had to call on a few of them when things didn’t go exactly to plan in the class.

The first classes have been all about baking bread. Some of the different types of bread we have learnt to make are baguette, naan, black rye, ciabatta, white bread and pizza dough.

At the end of the class the bread is put out for dinner along with a selection of different pizzas made by the class. The crowd always makes short work of the fare up for grabs.

Danny cleaning out the mixing bowl with a wooden spoon.
Cameron slicing meat with a large carving knife.
Matt kneading the dough for the bread he is making.
Adam adding a little olive oil to his dough in the large stainless steel mixing bowl.
Donna the chef with six pupils in her bread cooking class lined up each side of the stainless steel work bench covered with cooking utensils.
The second round of cooking class with new pupils preparing the pizza topping to go on their pizza dough which they made earlier.
on