Mapping

Casey

LIVE WEBCAM
Courtesy Australian Antarctic Division

COMMENT

Casey 66O17'S, 110O32'E

Series 02: 99 separate still images (taken on the 1st Feb 2007) of the ice flowing in and around Newcomb Bay at Casey Station.

Whenever I am asked what I enjoy most about being in Antarctica, I pass over the icebergs and penguins and reply honestly (and initially to my own surprise) that it is the community; people I live and with whom inevitabley I trust my life and who similarly trust me, working together for the common good, doing so much to keep morale and spirits high and showing so much care and consideration towards others. 'Love' is not a word that comes easily to me, but I can say with assurance that Antarctic stations are full of it. At least, that has been my happy experience.

There are stories of bullying and bitter division, of mental illness and violence. Bad things can happen. The internal and organisational poloitics are labyrinthine. I hear whispers of what sounds rather like mutiny at one station some years back. Personalities can clash. Nobody can leave, not even when they have had a gutful. The winter is long and dark. The most recent Antarctic death, a little over a year ago, was a suicide. I'm mindful of this as I walk to the mess for breakfast, looking out at the icebergs on the bay, feeling blessed. Crowded House is playing. 'Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you.'

Chris Wilson, Deputy Station Leader with the Australian Antarctic Division. Casey Station 2007, Sharing his unpublished diaries with Jo Chandler, writing for the article, Ice Diaries, published in Good Weekend, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 8, 2008

More photographs by Chris Wilson, and other Antarctic experditioners, can be seen at the Australian Antarctic Division's on-line exhibition, Antarctica: a place in the wilderness

Stephen Eastaugh, Casey studies,

Series of ink on tarp, 2000