Few things on over the last couple of days:
Day8 (-16) work was a continuation of the previous couple, more scraping & cleaning.
After work Matt & I went over to see the Discovery Hut over near McMurdo Base. This was the hut Captain Scott built in 1902, the problem they had with this hut was, they’d purchased a kit-set from Aussie, so it was designed to let the heat out not keep it in! So, the hut was used mostly for storage/supplies rather than sleeping in.
The hut got its name from the boat they travelled to Antarctica on, the Discovery. Talking to some of the team over here, there’s a lot of good history on this.
The hut still has the decaying bodies of some old seals outside, & a stack of seal blubba (bad spelling I know) inside, the fats/oils are still coming out even after all these years.
We had planned to then visit the observation tube, this is a tube that goes about 5m under the ice, but there’s an 8 hour stand down if you’ve had a beer so we will try again later… could have been a Winnie the Pooh story for me :o)
Day9 (-12) as you can see it’s getting quite warm down here.
We finished the main room today, (scraping and cleaning), just the kitchen (plus all the nice stuff in it) and the cold porch to go… yep it’s called a cold porch because it’s a porch & bloody cold when getting changed.
Found out a fun fact today, Scott Base is located at a place called Pram Point – not the type of pram you push a baby around but after the type of Norwegian dinghy the old explorers used which had a low flat bow that could be sailed up onto the shore to be unloaded.
The main thing I’m missing, apart from my lovely wife & kids, is colour. I miss the green trees and coloured landscape, white is so last year.
Cheers
Ric
