September, as I write, is already a teenager: full of promise and impatience. It’s nearly time for the flying and swimming wildlife to come back to Casey, and nearly time for us, the walking, talking wildlife that have kept the lights on over winter for the 77th ANARE, to return to what our lives looked like before this icy Antarctic madness began.
For now, for me, it’s as though time has drawn a breath – a breath to be held, waiting for summer to arrive with gaggles of excited new people, skies full of soaring, watchful skuas, lilting, tilting, rafts of tuxedoed penguins, and flops of sluggy seals with their briefly fluffy puppies born into 24 hours of sunlight, for just a moment in time.
For us, the 77th, who were that gaggle of people last summer, we have now been together, alone, for nearly a year.
We have worked, repaired, checked, observed, connected, tagged, maintained, counted, and cleaned. We have briefed, broken, fixed, solved, debriefed, created, and discovered (there was a spare melt bell there the whole time!)
We have shovelled So. Much. Snow.
We have invented, filmed (and won!), puzzled, quizzed, stamped, and collected snowflakes. We have worked out, sweated, timed-shared a treadmill, pushed-up, camped-out, hung-in, and run-out (of Tim Tams). We have cooked, devoured, washed, slushied, complained about the chooched Hobart dishwasher (then fixed it again), and washed a thousand dishes after a thousand meals. We have gee-ed-up, supported, challenged, pizza-nighted, and hallway-partied. We have put in super-human efforts for the simple joy of growing fresh lettuce. We have skied, camped, gamed, darted, dashed, sung (some), swum (most), bared much for research, shaken our fists at aurora-blocking clouds, Hagged, hiked, and hutted. We have laughed, cried, loved, shared, argued, made-up, and made fun of ourselves and each other. In all the ways that count, we have become a family – complete with all the usual strange family characters – and it will be, for me, bittersweet for this year to dissolve into next. But it must, for better and for worse, and I am nearly ready for time to exhale.
Nearly.
San Clarke
