This week at Casey: 30 September 2016

As usual there has been plenty of action up the hill this past week – the noticeably longer days signalling summer is coming! The lads have really made the most of the good weather this week, continuing to blow snow from the runway surface and moving the camp into its summer position, no easy feat when it’s −30°C each day!

The Wilkins gents also marked a very special occasion this week celebrating Steve’s birthday — as you can see Steve was very impressed with his aeroplane cake and the rest of the crew were impressed with their ability to make a cake!

We have had an amazing year down here and with a little over five weeks to go (weather permitting), we will be back in the world of Aus, and so we thought it best to use this time to reflect on some of own adventures while down here.

One of my favourite moments was when we were pumping water from the top lake down to our lower melt lake, as the melt bell was unable to keep up with the demand for the amount of people on station. As we were walking the line checking for frozen fittings and leaks, a small group of penguins came up. Cam and I both stopped and knelt down and the penguins walked along the line and straight past us, after giving us the fins up happy with the work they were seeing.

Another time was when the beauty of Antarctica was on full display during the traverse to Law Dome. On the drive back from the seat of the tractor I was taken aback as I watched the sun going down.

This week there was a trip to the Clark Peninsula near Wilkes to check on the three penguin colony cameras before the penguins start arriving back for the summer.

Andy (communication technician), AJ (electrician) and Katie (weather observer) spent a few hours walking to reach the cameras to replace the memory cards, wipe the lenses and check the batteries and solar panels. All three enjoyed the beautiful sunny day with not much wind.