Famous rocks of Mawson Station

Scattered around the station are numerous large glacial erratic rocks that have been deposited by glaciers. Some of these rocks are significant in the station’s folklore while many others have been bulldozed out of the way or blown up such as “Piss rock”.

West of the EVS is chock rock, a huge boulder that threatens to roll down the hill at any time, destroying anything in its path. It is held in position only by a few small rocks at its base. Early in the stations history some good humoured person has painted on the rock “Do not remove chocks”.

Down below the mechanical workshop there is a huge boulder with the words “Stor Klippe” painted on it. The language is Danish, most likely from a crewman on one of the four Dan ships that used to resupply Mawson (Kista Dan, Thala Dan, Magga Dan and Nella Dan). In Danish,“Stor Klippe” translates to "large rock", which shows that the painter had a good sense of humour.

Near Stor Klippe is another rock with RTA written on it. (Return to Australia) Probably the best known rock of all is split rock, two immense rocks north of the EVS. John Bechervaise called it the “Johanna Stone” and described it as “ponderous granite erratic”, well rounded and about 10 feet tall, which has at some remote and lonely time broken cleanly into two parts like a cut pear”.

There are many other un-named erratics around station and these mentioned are just a few.

Where do we get our water from?

What’s that you say?
Where do we get our water from?

Getting a drink of water or having a shower in Antarctica is still not an easy task 66 years after the first expeditioners settled the station. Back then they had to melt snow by boiling it. Although we are surrounded by trillions of litres of water, we first have to melt it to get access to it which uses an awesome amount of energy. Lucky for us we don’t have to collect the snow first like the expeditioners before us. Melting snow is very inefficient as snow will only produce 10% of the same volume of water as ice will produce.

Well it all starts with a thing called a melt bell. Hot water is produced by an electric boiler driven by our wind turbines. If the wind stops blowing then a diesel powered boiler automatically kicks in. This hot water circulates through the melt bell heating it up which caused the melt bell to melt the surrounding ice causing a water well to form in the plateau's blue ice. This melted water is then pumped into our three water storage tanks. Half of the water in the storage tanks is always reserved for fire fighting. From the storage tanks, water enters the site services ring feed mains supply. 

This piping system supplies water to every building on station and the water is circulated through heat exchangers in the power house extracting heat from the engines and also from boilers that run on wind power or diesel power if the wind stops. This stops the pipes from freezing and bursting. All the pipes in site services have heat trace installed in them as well. Large storage tanks hold water in the basement of the red shed and there are sewer and grey water holding tanks as well. Sewage from the flushing toilets and grey water from the showers etc, is pumped to the sewage treatment plant and the treated effluent is discharged into East bay.

Melt bell

Water well

Electric / diesel boiler in the pump house

Pump house on the left and the tank house on the right

One of the three cast iron storage tanks in the tank house

Site service pipes

The waste treatment plant

The shit pipe (effluent outlet)

Sunday 16th February 2014

I managed to have a bit of a sleep in today which was great. I worked on my blog for a few hours trying to get it up to date and then had a shower and put on some washing. For lunch I heated up my last Fray Bentos pie that I have been saving for ages. It was great and worth the wait. The wind outside was still blowing strong but now down to about forty knots. At about three o’clock I ventured out and wandered down to the transmitter room. Compared to yesterday, propagation was very poor. I persisted for a while only managing to contact half a dozen Japanese stations and also a guy in Jakarta. Eventually I gave up and went for a walk along the water’s edge before heading back to the red shed for some dinner. After dinner I watched this week’s episode of Coast and then we watched an interesting documentary about building the new Scott / Amundsen base at the South Pole.

All the four thousand Adélie penguin chicks on Bechervaise Island are now dead and probably every chick within a two hundred kilometre radius from Mawson due to the sea ice not having broken out. This could possibly be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dead penguins. Around Mawson there is no wildlife at all compared to last year. Normally the adult Adélie penguins come in to moult this time of year, but as they have to fatten themselves up first out at the ice edge it’s probably too far to walk in so they might have all gone to the closest Island to the ice edge. We normally have dozens of Weddell seals laying about the station also and this year there is only one lone seal showing up now and again.

The Aurora Australis is now at Davis station waiting for the weather to improve to make an attempt to reach Mawson. All we can do is wait in limbo to see if they will attempt to get us out or head off back to Hobart. They are still talking about a fly off but we have strong winds and a blizzard warning for all this week. We are down to our last sixty mouldy onions and not much else.

Here is the display for the IPS HF Ionospheric Radio sonde showing elevation and frequency. A sweep signal is beamed strait up and a receiver measures what is reflected back. This is a convenient indication for me to know in advance what conditions are likely to be on the various bands.

Saturday 15th February 2014

Today it was blowing the clappers. The wind was gusting sixty knots with blowing snow. There is a chance a few days of strong wind might blow out the sea ice that is trapping us and there are a couple of leads inshore that have opened up so far. For my Saturday duties I cleaned and vacuumed the upper corridors of the red shed, did some washing and went and made myself something to eat.

It was so crappy outside I spent most of the day in my room catching up on my blog and then in the late afternoon I ventured out and went down to the transmitter building. Propagation today was off the dial and there were many stations on ten meters so I spent the afternoon working a huge pile up with stations from Europe, South America, USA and central Asia. Tonight was a few documentaries in the cinema washed down with my second last bottle of red wine.

Friday 14th February 2014

Today was Helens birthday and yesterday we made her a happy birthday photo with my old sign and she really appreciated the thought. I had two job interviews today so I spent a couple of hours in the morning doing a bit of research and brushing up on the technical side and trying to get myself prepared.

The first one went pretty well but they caught me out on a few curly technical questions which was a little embarrassing but that's the way she goes. I have now been shortlisted with two other guys and I guess I will hear back from them next week. The second one was more of a first stage informal chat and it looks like I will have a more in-depth interview next week. After lunch I spent most of the time catching up on all my emails and also did some more work on the signs I am going to put up in all the old huts.

Thursday 13th February 2014

Today was the 60th anniversary of the first landing and establishment of Mawson station. We declared today a public holiday for all Mawsonites and we planned to celebrate with a series of events to honour those that came before us. We were planning on having a BBQ in Weddle hut and then watching some old movies in Biscoe hut. Both of these huts were the first huts erected in 1954 during the first landing.

I printed a heap of colour photos from the 1960 expedition and put them up in "exactly" the same position where they were taken. It was a fun challenge to work out the locations and an eerie feeling too as these two building have changed quite a bit over the years. When you look at these old buildings all you see are old buildings, but when you see photos of all the life, happy times and celebrations that have gone on inside them over the past sixty years they really come alive and have their own character. 

Once done setting up I went and had brunch at eleven o'clock which was a special spread of croissants and smoked salmon. At eleven thirty I had arranged to have a conference call with Syd Kirkby and George Cresswell who were fellow expeditioners with my step father Bill Kellas here at Mawson in 1960. Syd has had an incredible career as a surveyor and holds the honour of exploring and surveying more Australian territory than any other explorer including Burke & Wills or Charles Sturt. 

George is an honorary research fellow at CSIRO and was an Auroral Physicist here at Mawson. He has had an amazing 4 decade career as a physical oceanographer working in Australia and SE Asian water. George also has the honour of bringing the first motor bike to Antarctica. Both Syd and George are very funny and witty men and true gentlemen. 

Our phone call lasted over an hour and they had everyone captivated with funny stories and anecdotes about early station life. Chairing the call was fun and I managed to dig up some dirt about each of them and we all had a fabulous time. We the 66th ANARE were honoured to have two such great and inspirational expeditions join us for the 60th anniversary of Mawson station. 

After the call I went down to the old station to fulfil a promise I made when I first got here to clean out all the old buildings. The three original remaining accommodation buildings Shackleton, Wilkins and Dovers all looked like squatters have been living in them and I spent six hours thoroughly cleaning them out and they now look fantastic. I have also made up signs to place in them telling the name, the building use, age and a note about them being heritage and to look after them. 

I took some time out as we all gathered out on the end of West Arm to unveil the new Mawson sign Terry had made up to replace the aging and faded old sigh. We all raised a cup of champagne and toasted those that came before us and also our family, friends and loved one left behind. Late in the afternoon we all gathered in Weddle for a BBQ and a few drinks and afterwards we all moved into Biscoe where I played a few old movies including "Blue Ice" about the original landing at Mawson in 1954, a movie of the 1960 expedition, Harry Munstermann's narrative slide show from the 1960 expedition and a slide presentation by Dave McCormack. 

It was a nice day and worked well and later everybody gathered in Klub Katabatic for a few beers, darts, pool and movies.

Wednesday 12th February 2014

This morning I once again worked on the telecoms handover documents for several hours which also led into cleaning up the file server. After smoko I went and got a spare TV out of the green store and set it up in Biscoe hut in readiness for the 60th celebrations tomorrow.

Back in the office I gave the telecoms handover documents a rest and went on with the annual report for a while. Late in the afternoon I made some preparations for tomorrow's teleconference with Syd & George who were Mawson expeditioners with Bill my step father in 1960.

Horse shoe harbour sea ice refreezing