…Out of bed 8 a.m. Found Curly and Smoky with broken chains – repaired them before breakfast. Frani on heat, creating a bedlam in the maternity ward. After breakfast worked all dogs…then off to Corinthian Bay to hunt “leopards”. No luck, but this afternoon managed to shoot a young male at West Bay,,,team pulled well. coming home had sixty mile per hour tail wind. Finger frosted during seal flensing. Tonight sewed dog harness. Blowing like hell outside…
And so went my diary – day after day. People think it impossible to get into a rut on a polar expedition – yet I did. Week after week, eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, I toiled with the dogs – until I eventually began to feel like one. My personal clothing became much neglected: filthy and torn. The active life and messy flensing operations reduced my stock of clothing to two pairs of trousers, including my bloodstained windproofs. Try as I could, i couldn’t keep my clothing free from seal blood. Seals have a tremendous amount of blood into which they store oxygen for long immersion under water. When the arteries are severed, the plumes of blood shoot out to distances of ten feet or more. ..
Lancaster Brown, 1957; 149
The outside world seemed far away. At first we regularly gathered in the radio shack at night to listen to the A.B.C. or the B.B.C. overseas news broadcasts. Soon, however, the attendance dropped, and finally the broadcasts went unheard; no one was any longer interested in the sordid happenings of the outside world – except maybe in the announcement that Sedgeman had won Wimbledon for Australia. We led a complete existence on Heard Island; life was too real and vital to take seriously the the commonplace utterings of politicians. We could walk outdoors and hear and see “life” in action – vigorous and untamed: the ceaseless pounding of the surf, the crooning of the sea leopards, basking in the moonlight and the elemental blizzards screaming their symphonies of hate against living matter.
Lancaster Brown, 1957; 157
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Colour in the landscape became important in its absence. Reading the entry below, I imagine adding animations to the Sculpture Garden set up by Stephen Eastaugh at Davis Station: animated portraits of past expeditioners.
The monotonous grey gloom of august crept into our very souls. Everything seemed dark and drab; even the snow in the eerie winter light looked grey – like a thick carpet of London smog.
To offset the monotonous dead landscape indoors, some of us decided to paint our bare-boarded bunks. Ingall always strictly conservative chose a pale green shade for his, while Borland, the bizarre type, painted his a vivid violet. I tried to hit the happy medium and used the only bright colour left – Post Office red. When our dormitory walls received two coats of cream, the place was transformed from an East End dosshouse to a penthouse apartment in Park Lane – or so it seemed.
Lancaster Brown, 1957; 160
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…at 400 feet we emerged from the cloud, How good it felt to focus our eyes on the multi-coloured landscape -the vivid green azorella, the sparkling grey-blue sea… What a world it would be without contrast!
Lancaster Brown, 1957; 186
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I shuddered to think of the jungles of concrete, brick and steel. The busy traffic, pungent petrol fumes, a pocket full of coins and teeming masses at the rush-hour. Appointments to keep, trains to catch… On Heard Island time meant little apart from Nature’s clock that influenced the Island’s wild-life.
Lancaster Brown, 1957; 192
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It was a little frightening to look too far forward – to life after the next few weeks. We should be returning to an environment that was false and unnatural! I knew I should long to be back; to stroll contentedly – free of commonplace troubles – and watch the implacable surf explode into a myriad of spray … It was at these moments of reflection I could appreciate the elemental solitude that the sealers had experienced a hundred years before me. I sometimes wished I could stay on the Island for ever … One thing is certain: life could never be dull.
Lancaster Brown, 1957; 207
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Lancaster Brown’s only reference to a personal life is per functionary:
“Joanna sends her love!” grinned the skipper (of the returning ship, the Tottan). The shock of his statement made me blush. Unknown to my myself the skipper’s wife was related to my Norwegian finacee’s family! Indeed a small world.
…He was an extremely friendly man. Six months later in Norway we met again in rather different circumstances. I needed poof for the rather adamant Norwegian authorities that I was not already married. Anderson was able to vouch for me, reassuring the officials, and the next day I ended my era of bachelorhood.
Lancaster Brown, 1957; 212