It does not take much imagination to consider Antarctica as a remote and isolated place. To deal with the isolation humanity has done many things in the past and keeping up with the tradition we have inter station darts competition. Midway through August, each Aussie station organised a 6 person, 3 pair team to play with the teams in other stations. Video conferencing units were adjusted to show the dart board and scoreboard of the respective station during the competition. In the end Casey faced Davis as the final decider of the darts championship. It was a tight first game where it looked as if Davis was going to start with a loss in the three game set, however, a barrage of bulls-eyes by Pat James and Rhys Harding made sure that victory was snatched from the jaws of loss. It was a riveting game that left us shaken with excitement and joy.
Second game was played by Cameron Gray and Dylan Hill and they made sure that the near miss of the first game was not repeated. By the end of the second game the destiny of Davis as darts champions was set. The third and ceremonial game played by Jay Chellappa and Ben Harrison was lost to Casey. All through the game almost everyone in the station was planted around the dart board to not miss the excitement of the games and the final pleasure of basking in the glory of the win. In the end the feeling of emptiness took over and some were wondering, what next now that we are the champions? We live another day to conquer another goal. Such is the fun of living in Davis.
And then just a few days later....
As you read in the Icy News of 14 August, each year the Antarctic Stations hold a 48 hour film festival and last Sunday saw the awards ceremony for the Winter International Film Festival of Antarctica (WIFFA). Organised by Concordia station (French/Italian), this took the form of what may have been the world's most ambitious Zoom call between sixteen Antarctic stations*, representing ten different nations – possibly the first time anything like this has been done. Our hosts at Concordia put on a very entertaining show, clearly channeling the Eurovision song contest, complete with theme music, costumes, dramatic pauses, and all the while snacking on "Bruesli", Antarctica's favourite breakfast cereal. All that was missing was a wind machine and bloc voting – still early days though. Davis' entry, "Totally Cooked", took out the awards for "Best Film (48-hour category)" and "Best Editing". A great reflection of the effort and enthusiasm put in to the film by the cast and crew. We look forward to seeing the trophies, hand-made by the doctor at Concordia, eventually making their way to Davis! If you haven't seen it already, check out the winning film and all the others at www.wiffa.aq
Special thanks to the captain of our darts team "Jay the Javelin" and our amazing film director "Dan the man" for their efforts winning both competitions and writing this article.
*Possibly a world first and also the only known zoom meeting where no one intorduced their puppy, got interrupted by a kid or apologised for their bad connection!
