FINAL EXPERIMENTS, RESUPPLY & GOODBYE

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Monday 5 th Jan

Slept in and missed the flag raising ceremony which was held at 7.30 am. Casey has 7 new flag poles complete with flags outside the red shed. We missed the champagne breakfast and speeches. Had to wash all my warm clothes which had got wet and oily in last night's adventure. Went back to the SSSI and found the liverwort we have been searching for. Worked in the lab for the rest of the day. In the evening Cath went to Wilkes for a final stay in a field hut.

The melt streams were too bad for land transport so they were dropped off by Fishbuster and Tricky driving the Southern Comfort which is a research vessel used by Tim for acoustic work..

It was a lovely ride with pancake ice forming on the water and fluffy snow falling.

At Wilkes you get a very different view of the station from the sea.

Tuesday was the last day before the ship arrived in Newcomb Bay so most of the winter group were busy packing, whilst other people prepared for the ships arrival with last minute road filling, moving of containers down to the wharf and getting the fuel farms ready to receive the years supply of Special Antarctic blend (SAB) diesel which will be unloaded off the boat. Meanwhile the scientists were still busy in the lab doing final measurements and collected final samples. Mike and John skied over to the SSSI on Clark Peninsular to collect some final samples.

That night was the last station supper, a special meal to celebrate the end of the year for the old winter crew, and to farewell the expeditioners who would leave on Saturday. The night turned into a big party and didn't finish until early the next morning.

The Aurora Australis arrived at about 7 am on Wednesday with the 1997 wintering expeditioners from Mawson and Davis aboard and the remaining 6 new Casey winterers.

The boat moored in the middle of the bay and refuelling started almost immediately.

The fuel is pumped through tubes which float on the surface of the water and then along the ground to the fuel farm (big fuel containers) at the wharf. From there fuel is also pumped to another fuel farm close to the workshop.

Whilst refuelling is taking place all these fuel farms have to be monitored 24 hours a day and the fuel line has to be patrolled to ensure that small icebergs (growlers) don't run into it. The other station crews come ashore to help the Casey expeditioners with refuelling and unloading.

Meanwhile unloading of the ship occurs on the barges followed by loading of all the rubbish containers. All metals, plastics and glass is returned to Australia on the AA for recycling. There are also personal possessions of the expeditioners, and old machinery which is taken back for reconditioning.

While all this was taking place at the wharf and around station, Cath and I went to the SSSI 17 on Clark for our last samples. The trip to the SSSI was eventful, the large melt streams at Wilkes made that route difficult and so we drove up to the moraine line and followed the moraine so that we could cross the melt streams at the highest points where they are relatively shallow. It was a very exciting ride, each melt stream being a challenge to cross. Getting vehicles bogged during resupply is not a good idea because all of the deisos and the vehicles are too busy for rescue attempts. We took John B and Ian Geoffrey with us in case we did get stuck, skidoos are heavy and Cath and I weren't sure we were strong enough to pull them out on our own. John and Ian were keen to see inside the SSSI because access to these areas is restricted.

Once we got level with the area we wanted to visit we drove down off the moraine and found that there were a couple of crevasses (slots) blocking our path. Time to park up the skidoos on safe snow and rope up to cross the slots. Having the Field Training Officer with you is always useful in these situations because they are always brave enough to go first across the slots. It made a fairly ordinary trip into something quite exciting and gave us a chance to revise our field skills one last time. The slots looked wonderfully blue as we crossed them.

The SSSI was beautiful, the moss beds are really extensive and there are also a number of small lakes which the skuas use to bathe in.

There are some large meltstreams running through this SSSI and we saw a lot of examples of moss dispersal via water. The moss in Antarctica does not have a long enough growing season for sexual reproduction to occur and so colonisation of new sites can only occur if small fragments of moss are dislodged and blown or carried on water to new areas.

In the large melt streams a lot of clumps of moss can be seen being carried down stream.Here a clump of grimmia moss in the melt stream in the SSSI17, these clumps break off and can recolonise if they end up somewhere conducive to growth.

We had a really interesting walk, collected our samples and then retraced our steps back to the skidoos. On the way back to Casey we saw two moulting emperor penguins on a very high rocky section of the moraine. They had an excellent view of Newcomb bay and the resupply operation.

On Thursday Cath and I were completed our final drying experiment this was another 48 hour marathon with measurements needed throughout the day and night. We were working shifts to make it easier.

Refuelling had finished by lunchtime but there was still lots to move on the barges. In the evening I got a ride out to the boat so I could see the reloading first hand. The old weasel which was dug out of the ice at Wilkes Station last year was being loaded by Rachel the storeperson along with 2 of the old skidoos.

In addition the glaciology container which contains frozen ice cores from Law Dome and other sites on the plateau went on the large barge.

The weather was getting pretty rough as we went out and it was fairly choppy out in the bay. The barges usually operate in winds below 30 knots. The ship had moved further away so that it didn't get pushed onto rocks if the anchor dragged, so we had a long run out to it and further out the sea was definitely choppy.

We unloaded all the machinery and the glacio van and then on the way back the engines on the AAII, the small boat which pushes the large barge, gave up so we had to tow them into the wharf. At that point it was decided to call it a day.

On Friday we finished our experiment and packed all the equipment away. Then we packed our clothes and personal gear. In the evening there were drinks in the met building and then a last night party in the red shed. Lots of people were too tired to party for long, having spent 3 days working shifts on the boats, driving the heavy machinery around and watching the fuel farms.

As predicted by our trusty Met forecasters the weather was bad on changeover day which was Saturday 10 th. The night had seen snowfalls and really bad visibility, so bad that we couldn't see the ship in the bay most of the time. The morning was windy, gusts up to 50 knots which is not what you want when you are trying to load people onto the ship via a rope ladder. In the morning everyone was doing their last bits of packing, busily cleaning up their rooms and washing bed linen in readiness for leaving.

The changeover ceremony started about 12 am with speeches from the Assistant Director of the Division, Kim Pitt and the outgoing station leader Ian Sutherland, with a presentation of medals to all the wintering expeditioners, in this case, Bruce the deiso.

Then the old station leader hands the key to Casey Station over to the new Station leader (Graham Beech).

At that point we were supposed to finish our champagne and get on the boat, leaving the new winterers to move into their new dongas and get settled in after a month outside in the container sleeping vans. Of course because of the wind we then had to sit around waiting for a break in the weather. At 5.30 the wind died down enough and we all went down to the wharf for the final goodbyes. It's always sad leaving a station especially when you are leaving new friends. The outgoing winterers are leaving their home for the last year and for them it can be very emotional even though most are very anxious to get home. Everyone climbed aboard the barge and we waved goodbye to Casey. Adrian brought his trumpet down to play the Last Post as we cast off in the barge.

On the ship we waited for a few hours while the barges and AAII were loaded aboard. We moved into our new cabins, met our new cabin mates and wandered around the ship. Finally we were ready to leave and Casey Station put on a show firing off flares and red smoke as we started to steam away. There were lots of bergs as we left but the weather was still pretty windy and grey that night.

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	December 1997