Summer. Endless daylight: 54 days. Belching elephant seals and moulting adélies. Sea birds on the wing 24 hours a day, harvesting the rich fecundity of the sea, as we watch from a dry weathered and timeless earth-scape. Snow petrels and cape petrels are elusive and ephemeral now. Wilson’s storm petrels with a delicate flight pattern, a strange dance, somewhere between a forest butterfly and musings of a drunk puppeteer.
Winter. A vagrant sun: 38 nights punctuated by twilight. Now a few weeks later, I reflect on light, time and space in this impossible place.
Even with the sun below the horizon, a ghosting twilight projects the softest orange, warming the underside of altostratus blankets. The most vibrant pinks and reds in streaks of cirrus to warm our hearts and minds. The sun only illusive reflections, still active in our thoughts.
Across 50 years of time, I remember my childhood, sitting in the classroom, staring out the window at clouds, a daydreamer and often in trouble. Lost in my imagination, I could never have imagined this place.
Autumn rewarded us with colours and light effects unimagined. The strange refractions of ice clouds, waves of irisation, sun dogs, halos and coronas. Beams of low angled precious light, coloured fingers through the stratocumulus. A soft blue illumination of dark fractus cloud below grey stratus. Open ocean on the horizon is betrayed as sea ice reflects a colour transition in the clouds. Infinite refractions and a new palate of light and colour I have never seen before. Diamond dust and hoar frost as the ice precipitates from the atmosphere.
Walking to work in the dark with no moon, enjoying the dance of auroras and assessing the clouds by starlight, I navigate blizzard tails around the buildings. Snow squeaks underfoot, the sound reminds me of my smiling daughters’ description while munching on haloumi at a summer barbecue in Tasmania, “squeaky cheese dad!”.
As we pass winter solstice and the sun slowly returns to us, our thoughts already begin to turn to home. But first, our imagination has been captured by the possibilities of new exploration over the sea ice, which is now well-formed, a bridge to new places and endless possibilities over the coming months.
I trust we will all hold a lightness in our hearts as the celestial bodies carry us through time to another endless summer day, and eventually return to Tasmania. I know already we will feel a pang of regret when we leave this place in the ship’s wake, and we understand now why so many feel they must return.
Steve Turner - Technical Officer
