Antarctic Thesaurus
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map Mawson McMurdo measure melt stream methane mood
measure
Fred Elliott, Lenticular cloud, Heard Island 1953 1997 Pen and ink on paper
L.R. What do you think about the idea that the aesthetic connections some expeditioners feel for Antarctica may give some kind of dimension to the scientific data they collect?
F.E. That's an interesting one isn't it...bringing the figures to life. The figures are all measurements of the landscape, but while they're just figures they're cold.
L.R. Do you mean the data...it brings the cold data to life?
F.E. Yes. I think that's probably right. Because you measure things, because you measure, say, the air temperature, and humidity up to 100,000 feet you know something about...it's not just open space.
L.R. You felt it.
F.E. You'd measured it. It's what you are aware of that you feel about ...most. 'Cause if you're not aware of it, you don't feel about it.
L.R. That makes sense. So if you're measuring something, then you connect with it...you feel it. You're not a machine...
F.E. Quite...
L.R. ...putting out a signal, beep, beep, beep.
F.E. No. That time I think I told you, about sitting behind a rock in West Bay ...just levitating it was because of that...because I...It was (19)58 and I was a bit fed up with the station, things that were going on. It was a big station. Some people you hardly saw, except at meals. We used to work broken shifts. And some people we'd hardly ever see. They'd be complete strangers. I can't even remember their names...half the time. And there were the usual sort of things and ... Anyway, I had a favourite spot over in West Bay where I could sit behind a rock and get out of the wind and have a quiet smoke and I'd be right. And I was just sitting, having a peaceful smoke, and I was looking at what was going on around about me. And the wind was coming down had, I knew because I'd done the measurements, and the wind was coming down and over the top and blowing out again. It had come in from the tropics, come right down over - dropped down to the poles - and then flowed out from a high pressure area, down out to get warmed up again in the tropics, in this great cycle, and the speeding up with it cooling down next to the ice and then the gullies that flowed like rivers - and this was our katabatic - and the ice was the same - it had been up there for 1000's and 1000's of years and it was gradually flowing down and the ice cliffs had once been snow that had been falling for a million years...I don't know...way back in Gondwanaland time...and the sea ice stretching right out to the horizon, apparently solid, but you could hear the creaking of the tide, with the effect of the moon rising and lowering this huge expanse of ice as big as the whole Antarctic continent itself. And I just flipped. I could see myself sitting behind the rock. I literally could see myself from up there sitting down, and I could see all around about me. And me sitting there. And then bang - back down inside myself again. I didn't tell anybody down there because they would have thought I was crazy.
L.R. So did you feel really connected with the landscape?
F.E. Oh, yes. It's the same again down at Davis. Playing Beethoven, I felt completely at one with the whole landscape. Music's so important.
Conversation with Fred Elliott, who worked in Antarctica as a weather observer and photographer in the 1950s. Melbourne October 2008
