This week at Davis: 5 January 2018

We’ve had some fantastic weather lately here at Davis which has helped us celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Once again our chefs did a huge job with a Christmas spread that was amazing. Santa made a visit and had gifts for everyone, thanks to the tradition of Kris Kringle. A number of handmade gifts were really impressive. For New Year’s Eve we celebrated with a spit roast and some dancing late into the night with those who were still up toasting the New Year in from the deck in front of the living quarters on a balmy evening.

On the work front things have also progressed with lots of field activity by various projects including great work by the recently arrived glaciology team on the Sørsdal Glacier. It’s technical work for the field training officers, pilots and scientists to access and work on the glacier each day and they have now successfully installed a number of seismic stations with more to come.

On station the trade team have continued sealing one of our accommodation buildings’ roof while also installing the new phase of our waste treatment plant into a building. This plant came in two pieces each weighing over 4 tonnes and it was a very smooth operation that saw the two placed into the building and then one mounted onto the other. Also on station a small team have been crushing our empty fuel drums for return to Australia. The excess fuel in the bottom of the drums is reclaimed for use on station while the drum is crushed to take far less volume for return to Australia.

Looking ahead we have much to do in the coming weeks so we will keep you posted on happenings at Davis.

Robb (Station Leader)

Davis Research Station, Antarctica, is named in honour of Captain John King Davis (1884–1967). Master of the Aurora during the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911–14 and Second-in-Command to Mawson, he later became Australia’s Commonwealth Director of Navigation.

Widely regarded as one of the Antarctic’s great Captains, he made multiple journeys south including the Antarctic Relief Expedition Ross Sea during World War 1. This mission was to rescue ten members of Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, ‘marooned on the shores of McMurdo Sound’ for nearly two years. Seven men survived to be rescued; the Antarctic had ‘given them the full treatment’.”

The Davis Station (est. 1957) of today is a mixture of old and new, with interesting and sometimes quirky characters working away in the background — a busy part of Australia’s Antarctic efforts.

John King Davis: “But, infinitesimal though it was, we were proud of it.” (High Latitude, 1962)

We wish people back home a very Happy New Year for 2018.

Richard (Senior Mechanical Supervisor)