This week at Davis: 21 October 2016

Over the past week or so it has become more evident that summer is upon us here at Davis station. The sun rises earlier — even radiating a little warmth each day, as well as setting later at around 2130. The night skies have turned to twilight and temperatures are slowly rising. But the most exciting thing is that the wildlife has started to return.

So last night being a beautiful sunny evening Paul B, Aaron and I decided to head out after dinner to visit a local Adélie colony at Magnetic Island to see what was going on.

There were masses of Adélie penguins scooting along the ice on their tummies, making a beeline for the island to get the pick of best nesting spots and rocks to impress the females.

We also saw some Antarctic birds flying around — snow petrels, painted or cape petrel, and possibly an Antarctic skua… as well as some Weddell seals out on the ice ready to pup.

What a magnificent sight and realisation that our winter is almost coming to an end…

But then the summer begins… Happy times!

Lesley Eccles

After some less than favourable weather a few of us, Chris, Paul Dev and myself Scotty, decided to make the most of the blue skies and head out on the quads to Trajer Ridge Hut (melon).

The log book states the hut was built in 1989. It supports field training sessions and offers refuge to parties travelling on the plateau.

The hut was named after Frank L Trajer who was a weather observer at Davis station. He visited the ridge on foot on the 4^th of November 1961 with M Hay.

Following the Watts waypoint line and then the Trajer waypoint line we travelled across the amazing blue ice of Paulk Lake to arrive at the hut for a well earned feed, thanks to Leslie, and a quiet drink. 

With a late brekky to start, the ride home was via Watts Hut for a quick cuppa and then back to station.

Well with less than five weeks before the expected arrival of the Aurora Australis, team dieso are working hard in getting all the machines ready for resupply.

It’s not quite as easy as back home because over the winter months the engine bays and occasionally the cabs fill full of snow. This can take some hours to melt it out so we can start them.

Herman Nelsons are our friends in times like this, basically it is an industrial sized hair dryer that melts all the snow and enables us to get them going.