This week we celebrated being Antarctic darts champions, practiced our search and rescue skills and play spot the emperor penguin chick!

In the bag

An alarm sound this week at Mawson to initiate a training exercise to practice our team search and rescue skills. The pretend but very convincing patient Doug had fallen on a rocky embankment on nearby Teyssier Island and the first response team practised how to locate, access, stabilise and transport (LAST) the patient back to station.

Keeping Doug warm and protected inside a red mega bivvy bag was important, but with gusting winds, it made rescue conditions difficult for the search and rescue team with the tight squeeze and the persistent noisy flapping of the bivvy bag. It was a great team effort to safely transport the not so patient patient back to station.

Team bull’s-eye!

This week ‘Team Mawson’ celebrated a clean sweep of the Australian Antarctic Inter-station Darts Competition, defeating the teams representing Macquarie Island, Davis and Casey over the past few weeks.

Led by team Captain Mark, with months of practice and plenty of bar snacks for sustenance, the darts pairs handled the game day pressure and also had a great time. Another cup for the Team Mawson trophy cabinet!

Emperors on show

Emperor penguins are the only Antarctic animals breeding in winter. Over the coming months we look forward to featuring the growth and development of the chicks at the Auster emperor penguin rookery near Mawson.

The rookery is currently huddling to incubate the eggs and then to hatch, brood and crèche the chicks — can you spot the chick?

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