Being an electrician in Antarctica isn’t all that different day-to-day as you would find in a normal working environment. You wake up like anyone else would, head down to the mess and eat your catered breakfast prepared by the highest quality chefs, put on your high vis, throw your Carhart jacket and overalls on, beanie, glasses, balaclava and you’re out the door. While walking down the snowy road to the workshop to start the day, you notice some friendly penguins waddling around checking the station out. While admiring the cheeky little things, you look up over the snow to see “Iceberg Alley” in the distance, hundreds of icebergs, large and small floating around in the ocean. Once you finally get down to the workshop you get a call to say they need some help at the Ski way, their genset is playing up. So, like you would at home, you load up your work car, aka an Antarctica spec, quad-tracked Hagglund, and head out to the job.
It’s definitely a pinch yourself moment every day you’re here. It wouldn’t matter what your day looks like, you can always look up over the horizon and question yourself, “is that real, or a painting?” Unless it’s a blizzard day with over 50 knot winds outside, when visibility can become slightly difficult. The environment here is our main risk, we go through training to become more aware and to learn to adapt.
One of the first training exercises any expeditioner has to complete down south is called “Survival Training”. Within the first few weeks of being on station, we went out in groups with one of our field training officers (FTOs) to learn how to survive out in the environment if we get stuck when the weather takes a turn. The training consists of hiking with our survival kits to some beautiful locations right in our backyard using different navigation systems such as GPS, map and compass and AVENZA. On this trip we encountered seals, penguins, snow petrels and some outstanding views. We even conducted some sea ice drilling to test the thickness for future travels on the ice. Once we reached our final destination for the evening - “the survival shelter” - we set up for dinner. The menu consisted of a variety of beautiful dehydrated premade survival meals cooked using melted snow (I had beef and beans, which was surprisingly good) and then got ready for a night on the ice. The 5-star resort arrangement we had the pleasure to sleep in consisted of a lovely yoga mat to lay on, with a sleeping bag to keep warm, all inside a bivvy bag, aka “the chip packet”.
It’s a once in a life time experience. Much like being an electrician, everyone dreams of it, but only the chosen prevail!
- Jake Mills and Michaela Ellis
