I'm Bob Jones, I'm the Mawson station leader for 2012.
I grew up in Sydney and went to high school and university there,
and I'm a veterinarian. I've always had a great interest
in Antarctica and the subantarctic islands, and I was fortunate to
go to Heard Island in the 1980s 3 times, 2 with the
Australian Antarctic Division, studying penguins and elephant seals.
And then I was sort-of keen then to winter, and I was also keen to
take on a leadership role that didn't involve my area of expertise.
So that's what started me off in 1992.
And I went to Macquarie Island, and I've been to some of the other
stations as well as a station leader. This year at Mawson.
we haven't got any scientists during the winter period.
The scientists will come in in November and do their projects then.
But some of the people at Mawson have to maintain some of the automated
experiments which are going on. There's a lot of physics projects,
meteorological projects where these have to be checked.
We're very fortunate at Mawson to have emperor penguins,
and this is one of the really big highlights of Mawson.
And there's been ongoing research by the Australian Antarctic Division,
and we have to go to 3 of the colonies that are close to Mawson and
continue with this monitoring program and take photographs of of the
penguins during the breeding period. Another important piece of
research is medical research, which will actually be done on us.
And this is a joint project with NASA, Monash University and the
Polar Medicine Unit here. And so they're trying to understand
the relationship between fatigue, sleep, sleep disorders, psychological
wellbeing and safety of our group to gain understandings of that so they
can better prepare the astronauts. There are many reasons I'm interested
in going to Antarctica and going back to Antarctica this year.
It's a great adventure and I think adventures are really
important in life. It's as pristine an environment
as we can get in the world today. So that's very, very special.
And it's a privilege to go down there because not everyone can
can go there. So this makes it all the more
important. One of the things that's really
important for me is the actual community that develops down there.
So we've got 15 people at Mawson. Everyone's got a specific job.
Everyone knows that the whole community is depending on them to
do their job to the best of their ability. Nothing's locked up.
I can trust everyone. So it's very, very special and
it's great to be part of that. And it's inspirational because
you can achieve so much together. It's a scenically spectacular place.
You know, it's just 900 metres by 700 metres of rock, which the buildings are on ice
cliffs either side of the station, mountains behind it, wonderful
stable sea ice, once it forms, emperor penguins are breeding on the
sea ice. What more could you want?