And so it came to be that yet another week had passed by at Casey station.
The days growing longer currently with a grand 7 hours and 24 minutes of sunlight, sunrise is currently 0901, and sunset 1625. While the longer days are a welcome change from the dark depths of an Antarctic winter, time seems to be flying by currently with only a few weeks left until the four Wilkins team leave station to set up the Wilkins buildings and construct the ice runway.
While closed between March and September, Wilkins Aerodrome is winterised between April and August, but outside of that operates as a field camp. Located around 70km away from Casey, the sastrugi and icy conditions making the trip a four-hour drive one-way on a good day. Once Dane, Glenn, Sam and Matt leave Casey, they will live at Wilkins until the first flight of the summer season (scheduled late October) with a trip back to Casey each few weeks for supplies.
As such, this week the team is busy preparing equipment, loading gear and packing supplies. A few recent trips up there to deliver some equipment show that the snow build up on the blue ice surface is minimal. However, the snow build up inside some of the winterised buildings is a different story.