notes and images
It’s 2020. Why would you take film to Antarctica? No, it’s not because I am some superannuated 40-something wishing I was a hipster – despite what at least one friend definitely thought when he read that first question. I do love film, for many reasons, but the most modern digital cameras surpass it in most ways, at least for an Antarctica visit. So why do it?
I wanted to write that a glacier is like a living thing, because of the noise it makes, that jarring, creaking sound of ice grinding against ice. But living is the wrong word because any given glacier today is dying. This was only a small one, but once it was bigger, and there is no going back.
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“Good morning, everyone. Good morning!”
Her Canadian voice was my favourite wake-up call, piped into our room each morning usually pretty early. The gruff Russian guides never seemed to do this; this was probably to the benefit of all aboard. Everyone wants to avoid waking up on the wrong side of the bed, but in Soviet Russia, wrong side of bed wakes you. So, no Russians. Sometimes it was the up-beat young American guy and one time, the three guides named Sarah scared us all by doing a freaky trio. But the Canadian was my favourite, her tone always perfectly setting the scene for another great day.
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Some things defy easy explanation. My trip to Antarctica was at once overwhelming, frantic, fascinating, confusing and, it must also be said, in some ways strangely disappointing. I’d wanted to go for a long time, but felt no release when I got there; I was as prepared as I’d been for any journey, but came back with more questions than answers.
August 2005. We’d left government office jobs in search of adventure. How did we end up back in government office jobs? After a few months doing that in London, we remembered why we’d left Australia and what we wanted. So on August 12th 2005, after some serious decisions, we took the train to Stansted and embarked on the journey that would ultimately deliver us to Beijing in February 2006. But that was still some way off. Our first stop: Iceland.
We soon discovered it was lucky we’d brought camping equipment and a whisperlite stove. Two burgers and fries at a rustic burger hut on the Reykjavik docks set us back over $60. Remember the days before the GFC wiped out Iceland’s banking sector and demolished its currency? We do. They were expensive! But it was a great place to travel. Read on to find out why.
Continue readingThe fastest wind speed ever recorded at Tarfala was over 180 kilometers per hour. As I leaned into it, unable to move forwards, and barely able to stand, I thought it must not be too far short of that record. Strangely, there was no howl; there was nothing for the wind to hit except me, our daughter in my pack, and Yon about twenty paces behind. No howl, just a sudden horrendous flapping as the red sheet protecting my child flew loose at one corner.
“Are you scared, baby?”, I yelled. “No”, she said. “Well just a little bit”.
We were 26 kilometers into this hike; even for Arctic Sweden it was getting dark by now, nearly ten hours since we set off at noon. I was wet through, and, as Hicks and Hudson classically exchanged, either my motion detector GPS was reading wrong, or I was reading it wrong.
Where was the damn hut?
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One hundred kilometers in ten days through Arctic Sweden, with full camping gear and a three year old. Sounds like a good plan right? Hmmm, maybe not so much. Sometimes – just sometimes – the determination not to be those people who gave up everything they loved after having a child in favour of the Eternal Lightness of Brunch can go just a little bit too far. In this case, 42 kilometers of painful load carrying too far.
But seen another way, we pulled off a five day, 42 kilometer trek through Arctic Sweden with our three year old. She, and we, actually had a blast. Mission accomplished. Just.
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