Davis station celebrated Midwinter in style

Midwinter 2022

With the lead up to Midwinter being a busy period, making gifts and prepping celebrations, it got me thinking. What is Midwinter all about? As I tried to uncover its traditions as to why it is such a big deal I didn’t get many answers and the ones I did were conflicted, and I like that. Let’s make it ours, this is our community, this is our journey, this is our day!

So with more questions than answers there was two things I was keenly aware of. Midwinter is a time for good food and celebrations. The food was better than good and the celebrations were bigger than Ben-Hur.

The day started off with hook-up with all four stations and Kingston, where our very own Dani Yannopoulos received the Director’s Leadership Award. Whilst the entire team here at Davis knows why she deserves it, I reached out to Charlton Clark for comment; “It’s great to see Dani receive the award for her leadership - very well deserved. It also reflects really well on the whole team at Davis.” As a proud bunch of expeditioners we braved the sub zero water temperatures and jumped into Prydz Bay for a quick swim in almost prime conditions -15 air temp and 10Kn of winds.

Close to the best part of the day was the messages from our friends and family, it was hard to find a dry eye in the room and was lovely to see the people behind the community that make up the 75th ANARE. From here we rolled into gift giving and while we shouldn’t have been surprised due to the simple fact this community oozes with kindness, charity, skill and talent, the creativity and workmanship of each gift was astonishing. Following this it was all beers and skittles, we ate great food, followed by great food and finished off with great food. The Slippery Picks and the Piano Man played late into the night and we celebrated it all, the highs, the lows, the good and the bad. This is our community, this is our journey and that was our Midwinter's Day.

Codey Simpson

Expedition Mechanic

on