Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditioners (ANARE members) stood to applause as their years were called. Some rose once, others many times.
The “Calling the Years” began with most recent parties, and moved backwards over time, to before the ANARE Club began.
So concluded my first “Members Only” Melbourne Midwinter Dinner.
Name tags, canapes, speeches, drinks, flags, ANARE souvenirs, lucky ticket drawers, meat and vegetables, jokes, plum pudding, group photos, reminiscences, coffee and farewells, perpetuate a long tradition.
The mostly older men, of vastly different characters, had shared a landscape of isolation and adventure. An air of deep connections, despite all personal differences, pervaded the occasion.
I met the once young glaciologist, David Carter, who had boarded with my grandmother in 1969. Another man knew my father at the Marconi School of Radio.