Antarctic expeditioners have many talents

The Slippery Picks

One of the many traditions in Antarctica is to form some kind of band to perform at our Midwinter celebration. I was lucky enough to have two very talented people on the station; Jason Davey who works for the Bureau of Meteorology and Derryn Harvie who does the sciencey wiencey stuff and myself, Jamie Terry who is the Building Services Supervisor for this season at Davis station.

Derryn is on bass with his fantastic drum machine (little Lee), while Jason plays the electric guitar and vocals, with myself on acoustic guitar and vocals. We managed to scrape together a few songs to play at this year’s Midwinter festival. We did do one small gig before and had a very great response from the station. They convinced us that we were the best band on Davis station this year (not much competition but that is beside the point). It did make me see how important live music is in so many peoples' lives and it has been a privilege to bring some joy by performing with my friends.

As this was the first time I had ever been in a band I was not sure what to expect. One thing I found fascinating was the different music tastes in our band, from Dido to Slipknot and all in between. We had quite a job on our hands to try and work out a playlist of songs that everyone was happy to play.

I’ve had only been playing my acoustic guitar for about two years now. I picked it up for the first time whilst I was on Macquarie Island for a summer/winter season in 2020-21. I had always wanted to learn to play an instrument but I never thought I’d be able to… it is NOT true what they - say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

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