Some cool things I didn’t imagine doing in Antarctica.
When planning what I’d be doing in Antarctica, I figured it was a standard job with a few extra challenges, contributing to science, BYO hobbies, and maybe seeing some penguins in my spare time.
The range of weird and wonderful things down here has far surpassed my expectations, and sometimes I just need to pause and remember how weird the things we now consider normal are. A few here below:
We’ve all been trained in firefighting. There are no local RFS crews down here, so it’s us, ready to respond to emergencies. We did a week of firefighting training back in Tasmania and all now have a place on rostered fire crews, fully trained and ready to respond. Kit is ready to go, and we’ve donned it for on station training and once for an actual fire alarm (false alarm, all was well).
An engineer, a comms technician, a weather observer and an electrician walk into a surgery… it’s not the start of a bad joke, it’s our crew of Lay Surgical Assistants – we were trained up to support our station Doctor and have helped with actual surgeries! Whether it's handing instruments, drawing up medications or monitoring patient vitals, we’re at the ready to keep each other safe and healthy.
In a first for me, I received actual training and qualification to operate a few handy machines. It was fun to upgrade my "bush tickets” from the farm to being certified to operate quad bikes and telehandlers in Antarctica. We are a proper workplace after all, require proper qualifications, and the terrain here can be challenging to negotiate.
Speaking of quads, our on station operational quad bike training was of course on a glacier, then out on the sea ice. Frozen ocean! It’s not a surface I’d ridden on previously.
Sea ice was also a new surface for me for cross-country skiing and riding a fat tyre bike, weaving between the islands and icebergs frozen in place. These are just some of our outdoor activity options now when the weather is good!
Inside sports were also more than I expected. Practicing your golf swing inside a warehouse? Indoor rock climbing? Badminton? Volleyball? Basketball? Endless options.
Perhaps most unexpected is the green stuff: yes, we grow tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and lots more. We’ve even started seeing eggplants lately! Hydroponics is a fun little building to hang out in with warmth, humidity and light. Good for plants, and good for us too, along with learning new skills in how to make it work. There's nothing like picking a fresh cherry tomato in the middle of a blizzard.
Never a dull moment. Life in Antarctica is stranger, tougher, and far more interesting than I imagined. For the crew who call it home, these unexpected moments aren’t stories—they're just part of our days here.
Jac Madsen, Mawson ESS (Engineering Services Supervisor)
