A recollection of the great Antarctic Road Side Emergency. A tale of survival, heroism and Antarctic ingenuity which pales in comparison to the legends of the great Mawson, Shackleton and John King Davis himself to which our home takes his name.
Scene: Watts Hut. Nearest RAC depot: 5,000 km away. Nearest Jason: 23 km away.
This intrepid tale starts on Saturday, when a group of brave Antarctic expeditioners awake to find the generator that was running their electric, fan forced, hut heater has come to a coughing end. It was up to a lone brave, and chilly expeditioner to don 13 billion layers of clothing to venture out into the great cold wilderness to top it up and let us enjoy a nice cosy, warm morning. The warm, cosy morning was interrupted once more at a rude 0800 with the radio blaring into action: Watts Party, ready for Sched? To which we replied no, we asked for 0900! Punctuality isn’t the junior radio operators’ strongpoint. And little did we know, one hours sleep in would have been needed to prevent the upcoming emergency!
It’s the crack of dawn and three hours later. The time in between being spent consuming copious quantities of bogan dust coffee. Being the Antarctic heros that we are, we don’t have espresso machines in the huts, so the Nescafe has to do us! With the Red Hagg now warmed up and ready to go on the sea ice, little did we know we would not be returning to station the way we planned!
Scene – Lake Druisby, nearest hot cuppa: 7 km away. Nearest Hagg spares cache: 35 km away. Temperature −23 degrees Celsius.
Back seat driver – “Turn left more”
Actual driver – “I am”
Back seat driver – “No, do it more”
Actual driver – “Umm the Hagg’s not turning anymore”
Other Back Seat Driver, now prompting the chief Mechanic to get out and check!
Self-appointed supposed chief mechanic – “Oh no! The Hagg’s Broken!”
It was at that very point, that our brave and noble crew stepped into their training, follow protocol and do what the training says! It was indeed time to ‘make the call’. Time to speak to a real mechanic and time to ‘fess up’ to the chief mechanic that we had indeed ‘broken a Hagg!' We had just committed the ultimate Antarctic sin.
Scene - Davis Station Theatre, Nearest espresso: 14.7 m. Temperature 19.
“VLZ Davis… Ops ‘not’ Normal. We, we need to speak to Chewy! The Hag is Broken!”
At this point the comms were back in the capable hands of our senior comms tech who was on a day off, while also maintaining radio watch (on his day off) which doesn’t sound like a day off!
Shortly after the call, the mechanics’ brain trust was assembled and there were discussions as to what might be broken! Ordinarily, the mechanic would look at a broken vehicle and say, “oh, that’s this bolt. There it is on page 234, and we have eight of them in stock". But this time we had to play radio-Pictionary in an attempt to describe what bolt, what it looked like and whether we thought it needed replacement! And all in darkness and sub-zero temperatures.
In practically no time, our rescue team arrived, RAC-Antarctica! This group consisted of a battle tested mechanic, one plant operator and morale officer, equipped with tea, biscuits and a torch. RAC are used to call-outs but imagine an hour and a half of cruising through Icebergs, Fjords and frozen freshwater lakes en-route to work! Ah, the Zen of it right? Wrong! Within minutes there was flailing arms and the air was full of profanities that would even make Samuel L Jackson blush.
What little twilight we had, disappeared and the temperature dropped even more so it was time to regroup, rethink, retreat! The rescue team headed back to station and the stranded expeditioners headed back to Watts Hut and our cosy warm fluffy sleeping bags.
Scene – Back at the stranded Hagg next morning.
The next day our intrepid repair team returned with more tools, parts and gallons of tea. But most importantly, a drill. With mouth wide open and tongue held slightly to the left, Jason the bravest, smartest and best looking of the deiso’s, managed to free the seized bearing. As soon as the part was out, the new two-piece part went straight in and the Hagg was good to go!
The convoy departed without further a-do for Watts Hut to retrieve the now thoroughly cabin-fevered, mildly insane, expeditioners. A cup of tea and a few packs of Tim-Tams later, the convoy was off to station. All well and good!
Scene: Station Mess and coffee machine
In retrospect, this breakdown simply occurred as ‘just another day’ for everyone involved. But really it was a long long way from ‘being normal’ by any one’s measure! We are all well prepared for these things to happen now at the end of our time in Antarctica! While this this isn’t normal in the ‘real’ world, it’s become the ‘new normal’ in our world. Heading out in the howling wind and bitter freezing cold to help your mates and get the job done, for we are the mechanics!
We’re the Mechanics, we’re the ones.
We do the jobs everyone wants done.
We do the jobs no one wants to do.
We are the magicians, we are the few.
(Poem By Dave Proffitt)
Jason Poke
