Midwinter festivities are a genuine Antarctic moment, shared and celebrated by wintering expeditioners and stations across the sub-Antarctic and Antarctic continent. As a first-time expeditioner and Station Leader, you hear about it all the build up, but it's not until you are at station and in this place that you fully appreciate the significiance. It’s the sort of thing you want to get right, but there’s no “how to" manual, so you need to be creative, seek contributions from everyone and trust your instincts . You’d be crazy not to look to the past for inspiration, but you also want to make sure the celebration reflects our group, our station and the things that are important to us.
Honouring the tradition of this place, while writing our own chapter in the history books, was where we decided to go for the Mawson Station 78th ANARE Midwinter event 2025.
The highlights:
Sharing greeting cards from the international stations
The greeting cards came flooding in from the international stations in the week leading up to the event. Smiling faces representing different flags, set amongst all sorts of Antarctic infrastructure and landscape settings – fascinating and it makes you feel part of something much bigger than our station bubble. It also dawns on you how significant it is to be part of the 78th ANARE, when you compare the relative expedition years from other national programs – French @ Kerguelen 75th, Russians @ Vostok 70th, Americans @ McMurdo 70th , NZ @ Scott Base 69th , Japanese @ Syowa 66th , Indians @ Bharati 44th Chinese @ Zhongshan 41st to name just a few. Australia is truly one of the originals and Mawson Station is at the pointy end.
The formal dinner – wow!
Kerryn Oates our fabulous chef, creatively and expertly crafted her way to a six-course dinner that showcased the best of the best dishes that can be conjured up using produce that had been purchased and packed over eight months prior. The quality was fine dining, the setting was perfect in amongst the flags of all the Antarctic Treaty Nations and the company was amazing. Cheers to Kez and to all the Antarctic chefs.
Mid-winter invitation responses
We committed early to getting as many and varied responses as we could. Families, friends, supporters, colleagues, politicians, musicians, celebrities - the list was expansive. And so were the responses. We had written and video replies from Presidents & Prime Ministers, actors, comedians, friends and most importantly family. Everyone extremely generous with their time and their best wishes, but no one equipped with an icebreaker or alternative means to get to our little party among the sea ice cliffs of the Mawson coast. Although Twiggy Forrest did give us the impression that if we had given him slightly more notice he would have “made arrangements” – and we sort of believed him!
The swim
Slightly delayed due to poor weather, we managed to find a window where the wind wasn’t blowing a gale and took the plunge into the ice cold Antarctic waters of Horseshoe Harbour. The water was a brisk -2°C, but felt unbelievably bearable against the -17°C of the outside temperature. All things are relative in Antarctica.
Sir Douglas Mawson's descendants
One thing to link us to the tradition of Midwinter and the legacy of past expeditioners was to connect with the descendants of Sir Douglas Mawson. I received contact details of the Mawson family representative and sent them an invitation and explanation letter for our Midwinter Celebration. It turned out to be an amazing connection, with multiple generations of the extended family across Australia, Europe, England and America engaging in the event and coming together in a quasi-family reunion to record a Midwinter greeting for us. Their pride in their heritage was evident in the photos hanging on the walls and the reciting of stories from Douglas and his wife Paquita, which had been retold down the generations and then shared with us. Humbling and amazing. To quote Sir Douglas Mawson’s granddaughter Paquita Boston, “Grandfather Mawson had daughters, no sons, and so the family name only lives on where it has been applied, most importantly at Mawson Base.”
This realisation underlines the importance of knowing our history and maintaining the links to all the layers that make up the AAD, ANARE and the expeditioners that take on the challenge and responsibility.
Midwinter is a time to celebrate, reflect, be grateful and enjoy all that it means to be an over-wintering Antarctic expeditioner. I feel so lucky to be here, with this group, at this time.
Cue the photos….
Dave Roberts - Station Leader
