Bren in Antarctica

We’re all packed up and it is time to head home. Farewell Macquarie Island station, I hope you guys have an awesome winter season.
The ship is now heading back to Australia, and should arrive on Wednesday.

Well it’s the final day here. Just need to finish off refuelling the station, do a final passenger retrieval, then we’re away.
It’s been a busy but rewarding resupply week.

After a busy week of long days, cargo operations are now complete. Probably the most interesting lift I got to see was the station’s new Polaris vehicle, lifted off the deck by one of the squirrel helicopters.
Thursday was a “no ops” day, our first rest day off since leaving port. It was a good chance to catch up on laundry, email, and playing a boardgame.

Yesterday we had really good weather conditions to get passengers ashore, so I took the opportunity to “head into town” for the day. After a few small comms jobs and helping to unload the food into the green store, I made the most of the sunny afternoon to explore within the station limits.
Macquarie Island is like something out of a nature documentary, with seals, penguins, and birds all around the island, even around the research station itself.
Unlike the Antarctic content stations like Casey and Mawson which are surrounded by lots of white ice, Macca is abundant with colour, sounds of animals calling, and earthy smells. Just hold your nose when walking past the elephant seals – that stench takes your breath away!

Favourable weather conditions this morning gave us a really great start to resupply, with our ship arriving into Buckles Bay on schedule. If you have a mobile phone in your pocket you’re automatically greeted with a “Welcome to Macca!” text message when you come in range of the station GSM network, which is a nice touch on arrival.

We made the most of the good weather and got the required equipment and expeditioners ashore. I spent the day on the ship, but made the most out of some free time taking a few photos of the island, despite the low-hanging cloud sticking around all day.

If all goes well I might get into station tomorrow.

We’ve now been at sea for two days now, and making good progress as we head towards Macquarie Island. It’s a very short transit compared to the Antarctic continent stations – leaving Hobart we get to Macca in under three days. We make the best use of this time conducting briefings, finalising plans, and preparing equipment as resupply will kick off tomorrow.
With a short transit this means there hasn’t been too much downtime. We did play boardgames tonight after dinner which was good fun.
Assuming we’re on time, we should arrive in sight of Macquarie Island around 09:00 tomorrow, and drop anchor at Buckles Bay at 10:00.
Looking forward to a busy and productive resupply.

After 30 years as Australia’s Antarctic icebreaker, the Aurora Australis, affectionately known by expeditioners as the “Orange Roughy” departed Hobart 5pm yesterday afternoon for her final resupply voyage south.
We had plenty of farewell waves from the Shipping team on the Macquarie 2 dock as the ship cast off, turned around, and headed down the Derwent river. Regulars from the Division who came down to Kingston Beach to see us off got a few blasts of the ships whistle as we made our way past and headed out to open waters.
Departure day had been quite a long one, with an early start, many briefings on the ship, and getting settled into our rooms for the next few weeks. After all that it was definitely time for an early night.