PICTURE this – you’re looking out over a frozen lake covered by kilometre-thick sheets of crunchy snow as 70-knot winds blast your face. You throw a pot of boiling water in the air and it hits the ground with a thud as a solid block of ice. Sound cold?
Those are the minus 40 degree temperatures Tea Gardens plumber Barry White is facing on a daily basis during his 18 month stint in Antarctica.
The station plumber on research outpost Casey, Barry took up the position eight months ago to, as he put it, “try something a bit different.
“I wanted to go somewhere not many people had been.”
And that’s what he found. With a skeleton staff of just 19 people the father of two teenage sons is among a group that includes electricians, a chef and a handful of meteorologists, glaciologists and climatologists hired by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) to maintain the research base for the long winter.
With two other support staff, electricians Allen Millward of New Lambton and Nathan Saunders from Muswellbrook, Barry jumped aboard the tangerine coloured Aurora Australis – a purpose-built icebreaker and headed south last December.
“My journey was quite eventful, it took about two months as we had to travel via Davis station to pick up an injured expeditioner and return him to Hobart, but by the time we got to Davis we were just in time to see the Americans swoop in and fly him back to Australia,” he said.
“As we had gone out of our way we did not have enough fuel to go straight back to Casey, so we had to refuel at Hobart and then head out again two days later.”
Built on the edge of a vast ice cap 3880 kilometres south of Perth, Casey Station is surrounded by more than 50 low rocky islands and peninsulas that are home to thousands of birds, including Adelie penguins, giant and snow petrels.
Its location on the edge of Newcombe Bay means it is regularly battered by ferocious easterly storms and blizzards.
Almost at the halfway point in his stint, Barry works six days a week on maintaining the station’s drinking water, heating, waste disposal and recycling, air filters, fan pumps and pipes, which isn’t as simple a task as it was for him on the east coast of Australia.
“To extract the water from the frozen lake hot water is pumped into a meltbell at the bottom of the lake, which is only two metres deep and then the melted water is pumped out once a day to tanks where it is kept to supply the station.
“We also have storage tanks inside, which are filled with water for fire fighting and drinking.”
It presents a catch 22.
“I enjoy the challenge of doing ordinary things that you take for granted in normal circumstances at home,” he said.
“With that said, relearning and adapting skills that I already had so they can be used in the freezing climate here has been the most difficult thing about Casey.”
With all the responsibilities of life on the ice, there’s got to be some pay-off and when in Rome, or Barry’s case the Antarctic, what better place to brush up on some ski, snowboard and quad bike skills?
“The camaraderie on the station is very important. Because it’s a small population you have to work, live and socialise together with no real escape.”
But the desolate surrounds can understandably cause loneliness among support staff who are able to regularly contact home either via email, phone or traditional snail mail.
“It can be lonely at times but, surprisingly enough, there are always things to be done.”
When he does have time to think about home, Barry misses days at the beach with wife Sue and sons Adam, 19, and Daniel, 15, not forgetting the missed Jets games.
Despite all this Barry is confident he will make a return to Antarctica following his awaited March 2010 homecoming.
“It is a very cold but also an exciting adventure and suits team players, who can follow rules which are there for the safety of everyone’s survival.
“If you were to just go out on your own you could get in trouble pretty quickly,” he said.
Looking beyond the potential for frostbite, gale force snow blasting winds and periods of 24/7 darkness this English expat says the most surprising thing about his Antarctic adventure has been the friendships he has forged.
“The people I live and work with surprise me every day. I have met some very clever and resourceful people from all over Australia and other parts of the world who I would never have met otherwise.”
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