UKC

Whereabouts in the Antarctic was the picture taken Colin?

Argentine Islands (later Faraday, now Vernadsky)

Did you Winter there ? What were your years?
I remember meeting a few of these on the way to the Maggy Huts. Certainly refines your cross country technique!!

I was there in '71-'72. We arrived late because of probs with the Bransfield on its maiden voyage. I was there when Ballasuaq went to the Great Doggie Span in the Sky.
" Maggy Huts", or "Hut" at Argie. Never had much to do with it, only en route to sonde store where night met men slept. Took a dip off the seal pile in Meek channel - very quick due to cold water and stories of leps frequenting that area of oggin !

Good to hear some of the old phrases again. I wintered 87-88. Second was 10 months long due to blown-in pack. The tide gauge was the most precarious nightly visit on the rota as you had to slide slip down to the tide cracks on the level of the creek. Leps would hide out there to collar the odd Weddel that beached itself.

To be quite honest, I never noticed how many geophysics huts there were.
I spent a year at Argie and went down to Adelaide for a year with the dogs
Were you there when Kenn Back was there ? I met him again in B.A. a couple of years back.

The maggy/seismo huts were white (!!) which were nice and straightforward to find,... easier at night. No, Kenn was a FID from an earlier time than me. As were the dogs from Base F, although a ghostly dog's tail was once seen wagging down a corridor late on a Saturday night. Spirits may have been to blame.

White ! that's why I missed them while negotiating my way to the sonde store ! We had Jorge, a young pup, as a present from some visiting Argies in a plane. ( I will dig out his fot, scan it and send it on - honest ! )He liked to get pissed on peoples' sherry of a Sat night. We used to accustom him to crevasses by throwing him into the wind scoop ! Pete dared John Zerfahs (Zed) to jump into the same. "Nah, you'll think I'm stupid !" "No, we won't. I'll tell you what, we'll turn away and not look " And Zed did it !
We did not puncture or flatten tin cans before throwing them off the jetty so that they would float further away and not impede the access of the scows at relief. Despite that had two fids standing on the rock opposite the jetty to pull the heavy grappling hook and the rubbish into the depths before relief. A process known as "frimbling". Did you do the same ?
At Adelaide we drank all our own booze and all of base booze for that year so Alan Weardon ( "Weirdie-Barkers") sold us next year's on tick. We drank all of that, finishing it the night before the ship came in. Getting up, hungover, the following morning Mike Jozefiak, the radio op, told us that the ship ( one of the two Bs )had turned back because of the ice and was not returning for six weeks. Mike was making wine for us out of beetroot (aka "witter wine") to the end. 3-4 units an hour in those days ! Why close the stable door when the horse is gone ?

Gash disposal was via the infamous 'pontoon'. Eight packed down 45's on a wobbly, slidey, uneven postage stamp powered by a seagull....and when one was pushed off it was hold on for your life....literally.
I remember bivi'ing in the windscoop one night and being surrounded by Wilson's storm petrels. Just hovering around my head like tiny angels.Magical.

Off Angola, transfering between two rigs in a bum boat, there were J.C. birds "walking on water" !