Sunday 3rd
December 2000
From
Paolo Calisse.....
 John
and I arrived at Terra Nova Bay just yesterday and we are
scheduled to leave for Dome C on top of the Antarctic Plateau
at 8 pm today (Sunday 3.12.00). We should reach Dome C one
day *earlier* than originally planned.
Unfortunately, our instrumentation
will not come with us in the Twin Otter.
The bad thing is that 3 toilets will
be loaded instead of our instrumentation. This is something
that should prompt us to reflect on the way that we think
about scientific instrumentation. The good thing is that the
people there didn't get confused as to which one was our experiment
and which one was the toilet. In the end, there will be on
the aircraft: 4 people + the pilot - and 3 toilets. Better
than on a 747.
I tried to contact Dome C's Head (Augusto
Lori) by radio to get permission to send the SUMMIT, but he
convinced me otherwise in just one minute. The idea was that,
as John suggested, we will arrive too tired to start with
the SUMMIT installation, but not too tired to use the toilet...
In any case, the weather is not so
bad and we should receive the instrumentation by the next
flight, tomorrow morning. The Twin Otters allow us to bring
1 ton each flight. Today we have been involved in an introductory
meeting for all the people that arrived on our flight at the
"Pinguinattolo" (literally... well, there is not a
direct, literal translation, but in Italian it sounds like
"the penguin's place"). It is a wooden chalet where
people meet trying to get funny. The meeting could be boring,
but I was so happy - after a year and a half unsuccessfully
trying to understand people talking Austr... English - to
see Prof. John Storey, Head of the School of Physics of UNSW,
unable to understand the easiest word, that, at the end, I
felt very well.
 In
my previous mail, I wrote "it has been a short trip"
in the Subject. That's actually not true: it has been, for
me, a very long trip, starting when I left Terra Nova Bay
Station last time in 1991, promising myself to get back, soon
or later. When I arrived here yesterday, just 9 years later,
I felt as comfortable as I would had I left only a few weeks
before. Despite my memory not being outstanding , I recognized
many details of the place, any door, any stone, and I could
write down the map of the station with millimetric accuracy.
I was also able to find the nest of the Skua living close
to the station, a station that probably looks to the Skua
something like King's Cross does for Sydneysiders.
The station lies in a wonderful spot.
On one side there is the Campbell ice tongue, a white strip
underlying the horizon, on the other the Melbourne mountain,
just a tall white cone, with a cyan crevasse on the side.
After an hour, I reached the top of
the hill with John and then proceeded to the harbour on the
other side of the hill that is still iced in this season.
Sometimes John would get some footage with his camera. When
he filmed, I tried to be silent, to let him record the "noise"
of Antarctica. The temperature was mild, and the wind just
a gentle breeze. When he stopped to get footage of the stones
that the wind has worn in unusual but delicate profiles, it
was possible to hear the absolute silence. In front of me
there was a mountain, lying around a frozen harbour. A small
iceberg was locked there earlier this summer, waiting ice
melting to disappear definitively. A small depression surrounding
the iceberg was unexpectedly green.
The surprising thing when you get to
Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica, -74S latitude, is how such a deserted
and remote place can look friendly and gentle in the summer.
Forget Shakleton and frightening stories. A part of me would
like to feel like an "antarctic hero", as somebody
once called me. But unfortunately, this is just not the case:
I could spend years in Terra Nova not getting annoyed, as
the Italians have choosen a region in one of the best places
on the coast to build their first station.
When I was coming here in the 90's,
the organization was still not perfect and most of the results
were due to the skills of individuals. Now, after several
trips to the US stations, I was feeling that things have to
change, and the Organization be improved to deal with the
needs of the group. But when I stepped out off the C130 onto
the thin layer of ice with the other fourty people flying
with us, I found just about all the personnel of the station
waiting like it was the only aircraft that had ever landed.
I probably embraced 30 people, anybody was recognizing and
greeting anybody else, a lot of neurons in my brain were co-operating
to recognize people lying there (sometime successfully, more
often not).
That's what it is to belong to a nation.
Or a group. The same things you have been considering a defect
(e.g., a natural tendancy to lack in an organization), can
transform into an exceptional skill in another situation.
And you realize that people are essentially the same and the
only real difference resides within ourselves.
Paolo
Sunday
3rd December 2000 - Pt 2
From
John Storey.....
The story so far:
 Paolo
and I arrived at Terra Nova Bay just after 6 pm last night.
It is the quickest trip to Antarctica either us of has ever
made---in Paolo's case just 23 hours door-to door from UNSW.
This is considerably faster than he could have gotten to Rome...
My own trip was a few hours slower,
simply because I took a flight to Christchurch earlier in
the day so I could visit the Whispertech company. This proved
a very enlightening visit---the Whispertech Stirling-engine
power generator is a wonderful piece of technology that could
one day be an excellent replacement for the thermo-electric
generator (TEG) we currently use in the AASTO. (Regular readers
of the South Pole Diaries will know that the TEG is not one
of our favourite things. This stems mainly from its habit
of spitting the dummy on a regular basis and spewing hot hydrochloric
acid and HF over our electronics.) The Whispertech donk may
well prove to be one of the best things to come out of New
Zealand since Andre.
The Managing Director spent a couple of hours showing me around
their research and production areas, and was very optimistic
about their possible application in Antarctica.
The Whispertech co-generation unit
consists of a four-cylinder double-acting Stirling engine
directly driving an alternator. Part of the extreme cleverness
is in the wobble-plate crankshaft, which sort of gyrates around
like a belly-dancer's hips while the pistons go up and down.
More of the cleverness can be found in the fact that all the
moving parts are fully sealed, keeping the working fluid (in
this case nitrogen) from leaking out and turning into hydrochloric
acid or whatever. The whole arrangement produces 750 watts
of electricity and a handy amount of heat, all the while burning
modest quantities of propane or diesel fuel and making less
noise than your average fridge. I want one.
On Saturday morning Paolo and I arrived
at Christchurch CDC (Clothing Distribution Centre) at 8 am.
We were fitted with our gear in record time and went straight
to the flight check-in for a scheduled 10 am departure. There
was the usual last-minute delay (this time to add more fuel
to the Hercules, after a fuel gauge had mis-read), and we
were away by 11:15. Being unable to understand any more than
a few words of Italian I was able to relax completely during
all the announcements, even finding words like "incendio"
and "emergenza" quite soothing. I must find out what
they mean some day.
We landed smoothly on the sea-ice runway
after what seemed a very quick trip. The unloading of both
passengers and cargo from the plane was extremely efficient,
with the result that we were quickly settled in to the station.
(That is, I was quickly settled in. Everyone else was hugging
and kissing and greeting long lost friends. It was great to
see.) Unfortunately the station was temporarily a bit over-crowded.
Paolo and I (and, as we later found out, the other two folk
travelling with us to Dome C tonight) are sleeping in a modified
refrigerated shipping container---one that has previously
been used as a dormitory on an overland traverse. Oddly enough
it is fitted out with Australian power points, useful enough
under the circumstances.
After a quick breather Paolo and I
took a stroll up the valley and over some small hills. It
was a crystal clear day and the view was spectacular. From
the hilltop we could see how the ice was receding back from
the ocean as summer proceeds, eventually to engulf the runway
on which we had just landed. The runway will only be useable
for another few days. The scenery was breathtaking; the hills
dotted with extraordinary rock formations where the wind had
undercut rocks to create quite implausible overhanging structures.
Terra Nova Bay station itself is built
on the rocks next to the sea, in what is possibly the most
beautiful location of any Antarctic station. Dominating the
horizon is the active volcano, Mount Melbourne. The station
itself consists largely of shipping containers bolted together
and popped up on stilts, giving it the appearance of a giant
Lego model. Every room is the same size and shape (modulo-n),
though it's remarkable how different the character of each
room can be. As befits an Italian station, there is an industrial-strength
coffee machine in the common room, and the washrooms are thoughtfully
provided with a hair drier alongside each basin.
Just above the station are a small
group of buildings modelled along the lines of Tyrolean ski
lodges. Some are dormitories, others are just so you can get
away from it all, play guitar, sing and enjoy the view.
Dinner was full of cheer, helped along
by the wine and an enormous (and delicious) cake baked by
the chef to celebrate the birthdays of a couple of team-members.
This was washed down with Prosecco (an agreeable Italian sparkling
wine) and strong coffee.
 This
morning all the new-comers had a 90-minute briefing by the
station leaders. I suspect it was not particularly riveting
even for those who speak the language. For me, I was happy
to pretend I was at an Italian opera for which the music was
yet to be written. Occasionally everyone would laugh (usually
after the station doctor had just said something) causing
me a moment or two of concern about what potential medical
disaster I might be about to unwittingly expose myself to.
On the way back to the main building we came across an Adele
penguin who was wandering around the station---just checking
it out and completely unconcerned about the human inhabitants.
After lunch we discovered that we'd
been bumped up to tonight's flight. Unfortunately our equipment
won't accompany us immediately: our flight will be fully loaded
with the four us, three high-tech electric toilets and a bandsaw.
Oh yes, and a few boxes labelled "Eiskernkiste". I'm
not sure what this means but "Eis" is German for ice-cream
and "Kern" is German for nucleus, so I think what we
have here are a couple of nuclear-powered ice-cream makers.
When we arrive in Dome C we won't be in a fit state to start
work immediately on our equipment, so as long as it follows
us tomorrow we'll be fine. We may even have tried out the
toilet and the ice-cream makers by then.
John
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