Half a million penguins and a bone saw.
After working in Antarctica on the MV Spirit of Adventure in 2009 I was left with an itch to get back south – those of you who know me best will be aware of that. After years of trying I was eventually offered a job working for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) as a boating officer on the Island of South Georgia. While South Georgia isn’t the ‘real’ Antarctic it’s still south of the convergence and at 110 miles long as well as being surrounded by incredibly rich waters it’s home to millions of penguins and seals, dozens of mountains and glaciers, the occasional iceberg and a handful of humans.
It’s an island famous for two things – being the first territory invaded by the Argentineans in the 1982 Falklands conflict and the great explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton who finished his epic ‘Endurance’ survival story (If you don’t know the story buy one of the many books about it, you won’t regret it.) on the island and where he was buried after his death on a later expedition.
A picture tells a thousand words, so they say. I’ll try to keep the writing to a minimum and let the photos tell the story, having said that this post will be quite heavy in both pictures and words as I’ll try to set the scene for future posts and make up for lost time!
It began in mid November with a Military flight from RAF Brize Norton airbase in the the UK to the Falkland Islands before joining the BAS research ship James Clark Ross (JCR).
2 Comments
Love your photos Matthew – hope you will do more – are you going back to SG? I haven’t worked out if you were with BAS or ? I was lucky enough to be with BAS as Radio Op/Engineer from 1972-74 (2 summers, 1 winter) at KEP and loved SG – was back there v recently aboard MV Ushuaia with the BAMT South 2015 lot on 1st March and we had a great (but short) day at KEP/Grytviken visiting the museum and base. We checked the overwintering FID photos on your bar? wall and my year was only a copy of a photo but you can see me, fairly tall with beard, 6th from right – looking slimmer and fitter in those happy days! 🙂 Best pics for me (although all good) are my favourite views from top of Mt Hodges – (I have similar) of KE Cove and East Cumberland Bay with Barff in background and the one of the climb up with Sugertop behind. Fond memories! I spent my winter jolly on the Barff at Soerling and Hound Bay huts. All the best… Jon
Hi Jon, thanks for the kind comments. I’m still here! I possibly saw you in the dining room when you were looking at the photos from your winter! I was having a cup of tea when the second groups passed through (late afternoon). I’m one of the boating officers (glorified taxi driver) with BAS, I have a few months left and will leave in July or August after being here over 20 months! If I get my way I’ll be back at ‘first call’ in November time for another 12 or 8 months. We have a new hut at Hound bay now, I was over there a few months ago and was one of the first visitors – it lacks the character of the older huts like Sorling, Greene, Harpon etc but is a good 1/2 point between Sorling and St Andrews Bay, if you’re walking over. There are a few pictures in Novembers blog post if you’re interested – South Georgia – peaks penguins and friends of old (link to it near the top of the page on the right hand side) Cheers, Matthew.