Well, its Wednesday evening and we’ve been here for more or less a week. Its been pretty eventful!
After waving the A.A. behind from the seat of a helicopter, we had a 45minute and roughly 80 mile flight over dense pack-ice and some VERY large bergs. It was a perfect day and we got a fairly good view of Casey station from the air on our way in. 
Due to the possibility of a very short ‘change-over’, where we fly in and the old crew fly out within a few hours, there was a priority list made of exactly who needed to fly in first for what reason. As the in-coming Fire Chief to Casey I was a high on the list, and one of the first to fly in. There is a LOT to get your head around being Fire Chief for a station, but luckily we have a few people who have been to Casey before and are able to help with things I couldn’t take in. As it turned out though the change over took a few days, and the old crew didn’t leave until 3 days later.
Just a warning, this blog may cause death by sunset over-exposure. Sorry, but its coming into summer and im roughly 66 degrees south... its practically sunset 6 hours a day... The thing about snow is that it lends itself to being photographed at sunset. Apart from reflecting the colours well, the surface is always well lit, which eliminates the common problem of a well lit sky, but an underexposed landscape. But hey... like i know what im talking about...
Due to the possibility of a very short ‘change-over’, where we fly in and the old crew fly out within a few hours, there was a priority list made of exactly who needed to fly in first for what reason. As the in-coming Fire Chief to Casey I was a high on the list, and one of the first to fly in. There is a LOT to get your head around being Fire Chief for a station, but luckily we have a few people who have been to Casey before and are able to help with things I couldn’t take in. As it turned out though the change over took a few days, and the old crew didn’t leave until 3 days later.
Just a warning, this blog may cause death by sunset over-exposure. Sorry, but its coming into summer and im roughly 66 degrees south... its practically sunset 6 hours a day... The thing about snow is that it lends itself to being photographed at sunset. Apart from reflecting the colours well, the surface is always well lit, which eliminates the common problem of a well lit sky, but an underexposed landscape. But hey... like i know what im talking about...
On my second day here I managed to talk some of the old crew into taking me to the nearby Adelie penguin rookery for a few hours at sunset. The way things work here is that you’re not allowed past “station limits” on your own without being “field trained”, or without carrying a survival pack with you (15kg of bivvy bag, sleeping bag, ice axe, radio and all sorts of other things). Since station limits consist of an area maybe 200m by 500m it is kind of restrictive, but I guess there’s good cause for it, the weather can change quite fast here. 
The rookery, which is growing larger and larger every day, is about 1km away and on an island called Shirley Island. As it is only late spring we can walk across to the island over ice quite easily, but as summer progresses the water between the mainland and the island will thaw and zodiacs will be the only way to get across. It’s a perfect time to check them out really.
Last week when we visited them there were only around 1500 birds there altogether, sitting in groups of around 30 to 100 on top of any small outcrop they could find. Now I suspect there a lot more because on a day of light winds they can be heard from the station. 
As far as work goes I don’t have much to say except that its good to finally do something, as opposed to training and being inducted constantly for the past 3 months! We have worked out a roster which means long days on days of work, but more days off for field trips and excursions into the big white. While I basically knew how to do my job before arriving, there were also a lot of things specific to Antarctica which has been hard to take in. time zones for example: for different reasons I am working on Casey time (meals, sleep, aviation reports etc), Mawson time (aka Casey Bastard time, for 3 hourly synoptic reports), GMT/UTC (for balloon launches), and ACT/NSW/TAS time (for Eb and family and Hobart head office). I’ll get there I guess. If weather reporting wasn’t keeping me busy enough, my secondary job has been keeping me on my cold little toes. Just hours after the previous Fire Chief handed me over the “master key” and jumped on a helicopter to freedom, we had a small fire where a small portable fuel stove caught on fire during routine maintenance and checks. Not a big deal by any stretch, the fire alarms didn’t go off because it was in a specifically ventilated area, and I only found out several hours later. But it did mean a little paper work for me, and if nothing else it gives me something to put in my monthly report. If you had’ve asked me I would’ve told you that was probably enough action under the Fire Chief’s big red hat until things got settled… but no… ‘course not… last night after dinner I was alerted to a report of smoke in our Operations building. After a brief “sus-out” of the area, and being unable to find the source, we sounded the alarm and the station went into fire mode. A muster took place in the Red Shed of everyone not involved in the fire team, and the fire team reported to me.
We checked in the roof, the floor and each room, but found it to be a burnt out capacitor in the power supply for the old phone system. It didn’t amount to any flame, and nothing except the capacitor was damaged, but I think everyone was certainly a little nervous for a while. The good news however is that the fire team all responded very quickly and efficiently to the alarm, and im sure that if there had been any flame we would have gotten to it before it caused any serious damage. I should point out that two incident in a week is more than the total number of incident that occurred last year ALTOGETHER! Hooray, more reports…
