
As I’ve been told all year, Spring is the best time for getting out and about. It’s been a sharp rise from the 2hr days we had at the dead of winter, and in just a few days we will be getting more sunlight than Sydney, for example. For all those who ask “so how long are the days now?”, at the Vernal Equinox (21st of September) everyone on the planet will be getting 12hrs of day and 12hrs of night. However from there we will be gaining almost 10 minutes a day, while Sydney will gain only three.


The return of life is something everyone is looking forward to, and one of the hardest things we live without here. Two or three months ago, during a week of particularly strong winds, I remember how amazed I was to see a patch of green moss that had been uncovered as the snow and ice was blown away. It was nice to see some real colour, and some life other than our own.

Post mid-winter, after prolonged periods of little to no sun, and long spells of very cold temperatures (we’ve had in the minus thirties a few times), the ice in the bays around Casey become thick enough for us to start thinking about travelling on. Newcomb Bay, to the north of Casey, never really keeps ice in it for a long period of time. It is an open bay, and the absence of a substantial island mass in its mouth means that any strong wind (primarily katabatic, which always come from the east, off the plateau) will blow the ice clean out to sea. Hence we do not travel on Newcomb Bay across to Wilkes, but rather the safer land-ice route.
However there are several bays to the south of Casey, which hold the sea-ice very well. There are two bays between Casey (on the Bailey Peninsula) and Robbos Hut (on the Robinson Ridge Peninsula), and a further long sweeping bay to the south of Robbos, between it and Browning Hut (on the Browning Peninsula). These bays hold the sea-ice well due to large groups of islands at their mouths. The ice is very flat, much like the plateau, and travelling between the huts on these bays cuts both time and distance considerably, but instead of 700m of ice beneath you, there is just one - a concept which can be very un-nerving at times, since on certain sections you can be more than 2kms from any land mass.
Before sea-ice travel is approved though, the ice must be drilled and tested for depth. The rules are that the ice must be at least 20cm for walking on, 40cm for quad travel, and 60cm for a hagglunds – but at Casey we aim for >1m for quads, and simply don’t take haggs on the ice… there’s no way I’m getting in a hagg that’s going on the ice anyway! With all this in mind we began our sea-ice drilling and testing in late July and on the longest and most exciting of such trips I was lucky enough to be one of the four drillers.
Late one afternoon at the end of July Wayne, Bob, Curly and I set off on the jolly of all jollies: a sea-ice drilling trip for the bays south of Casey. We stayed overnight at Robbos and headed south early the next morning to drill the huge expanse of Penny Bay.
As luck would have it we managed to pick a rare 2-day weather window of light winds and clear skies. These are conditions synonymous with very cold temps (it was around –25C), but there’s nothing like a really crisp and cold day here – everything seems to turn to crystal, including one's breath.
As you can see we set off on quads, towing a trailer with a small generator and electric drill. One thing I’ve learnt is that tradies don’t like to muck around with the old fashioned manual labour when there is an alternative. Sounds like a cop-out, but I can tell you it would’ve taken a heck of a lot longer drilling 15kms or so at 100-200m spacing with a hand-drill in –25 degrees!
My token working shot!





After drilling for most of the day (probably only 6 hours of sun-up at this point) we finally reached the Browning Peninsula and the last true field hut I was yet to visit. There is still the Peterson Mellon – which I’ve since visited – but it isn’t exactly a “hut” as such.
















