SEA ICE IS OPEN: 19/04/2020

Hi there,
The sea ice is now open for operations!! We have been given permission from head office at Kingston to start travelling on the sea ice. It was a fair process getting the approval. Usually the division won’t allow any sea ice travel until the start of May but since we’ve had really good weather and have been locked in by the ice for about 6 weeks we were first given permission to go out just to drill and measure the ice two weeks ago. We used Mark our FTO as the canary – he suited up in a dry suit and we had one other person dressed up and waiting with an ice recovery skid in case he went through and needed a rescue. Mark went about 30 meters off the shore in Horseshoe Harbour and took his first drill measurement: 47cm. We only need 20cm to walk on the ice so that was plenty. We could even ride quads on this ice as we need 40cm for quad travel. After the first measurement Mark was happy to walk out into the middle of the harbour – or just shy of as the rope we had on him ran out by then, close to 100m. He measured 45cm in the middle of the harbour so he was very happy and confident we had good ice in the harbour. Next we went to the other side of Mawson and out into East bay and Mark took a second set of measurements again measuring over 40 cm of ice. So this data was sent back to the division and we waited for their decision. They soon came back approving us to start doing our sea ice training. A few of us did go out with Mark one day onto the ice before doing our training as we needed to put a marker in the middle of the bay to identify one of the sites we will be taking our sea ice measurements throughout the year to help with studies being conducted back in Australia. Unfortunately this is one of the only really scientific things we will be apart of this year if no people are allowed to come in for the summer season because of this Corona stuff. A few of us have put our hands up and are now on a roster to go out once a week and take measurements in 4 or 5 places around Mawson. This last Friday we all went out and did our sea ice training in Horseshoe Harbour. It was pretty basic training and went for about an hour and a half covering protocols on planning going out and logging trip information and scheduled radio checks every hour. We also had a go at manually drilling the ice and measuring it as well as practicing self rescue and rescuing others in the event of breaking through the ice. It was all good fun and quite a cool experience standing where the Aurora Australis had been moored a couple months ago. The only other note worthy event in the last couple weeks has been a game we have all played over this weekend called “Mawson Assassin”. We were all given a butter knife with someone’s name on it – this person was our target. The object of the game was to sneak up and assassinate this person (figuratively of course) without anyone else witnessing the kill. Bedrooms, Bathrooms, the mess and work places were all safe zones where no kills could take place. We started at 10:00 am on Saturday and by 10:10am someone was already dead. Actually after the first day only 6 out of the 18 people playing were still alive. It was a lot of fun watching peoples reactions and paranoia set in as suddenly no one trusted each other. I actually got a mirror out of my tool box and used it to look around corners and took to constantly changing which cold porch I entered and exited the red shed to make my movements harder to track. My target was Brett the Carpenters supervisor. I didn’t expect people to drop like flies as quick as we did – I thought the game would go on for a fair bit longer and was planning for a longer period. My plan was not to kill Brett straight away as I wanted to make him sweat for a couple days. So whilst he was outside I made up a little note with a picture from a movie called ‘The Purge’ (basically a couple people wearing creepy masks holding machetes) and wrote on the picture “Come out and Play”. It was at this point I thought to myself: “I probably really shouldn’t have passed the Antarctica Psych test”. Unfortunately I was killed off a couple hours later by Rocket our chef. I had just come back from the gym, washed my water bottle in the mess and as I was walking back to my room via the hallway I heard the TAP TAP TAP behind me. I swung around and saw Rocket (still in his butchers apron) running at me brandishing his knife yelling as he charged towards me. Needless to say I shat myself!!! I panicked as I couldn’t get through the doorway quick enough as the gas strut of the door fought me to open the door faster. In the heat of the moment I completely forgot my room was a safe zone and ran full pelt past my room down the other end of the hallway. As I got to the end I tried to plan my escape but realised there were at least three doors between me and outside. Knowing how much trouble I had with the last door I didn’t have a hope of getting enough distance between me and Rocket. I was trapped!!! So I gave up and surrendered my knife to Rocket. So as you can tell it’s all high octane adventure down here. 😁
Hope all is well back home.