Alarms, Orcas, and Aurora's part 3 - Orcas?

You would think that a blog titled "Alarms, Orcas, and Auroras" in three parts would flow like

1. alarms
2. orcas
3. auroras

Right? Wrong!

No one knows when or why the order got mixed up, but here we are with part three of my excuses for slow blog releases! And true to form, it's a full two three months behind schedule!

Orca Orcinus

Not too long ago I was informed by an overly pedantic biologist that calling a killer whale "orca" is equivalent to calling humans "homo" (from homo sapiens), and the correct title is orcinus orca. 

Or you can just call them the Big Dolphins. That's what they are, the biggest, teethiest dolphins.

The Big Dolphins are found almost everywhere that there are oceans, but there are distinct sub-types and behaviours. Nomadic pods primarily hunt fish, and settled pods hunt marine mammals. Our family is around most of the year, and are most often seen cruising up and down the east coast. Occasionally they'll stop to pick on a smaller marine mammal, which always gets the birds very excited.

Frankly, I know less about our local killers than I would like to, but I always get very excited when they stroll by. Station observations range from 2-8 animals in a pod, with one obvious large male, a few mid-sized females, and 1-2 calves. Through the winter they have mostly been far off shore (the following photos were all taken with a full frame camera at 500mm focal length!), travelling along the coast. But I have been promised that in November the "Macca drive-through" will open and, as the unsuspecting elephant seal weaners learn to swim, the orcas will come in close to feast.

Sea birds tend to flock to orca pods in the hopes of scavenging scraps. 

This is out happy little family. 

This calf is practicing "spyhopping". 

Here we have a wandering albatross that has been picking at the orcas kill.

And a cape petrel, a species that I haven't seen since I was at Mawson. 

 

A demonstration of the difference between males (front) and females (rear). 

A pretty picture on a foggy day. 

Alarms, Orcas, and Auroras. pt 2

Auroras.

While I was at Mawson Station I discovered that I really enjoy being outside, in the dark, in screaming winds, and freezing cold temperatures. 

I like not being able to see the controls on my camera, or being able to tell what's in my composition. Risking irreplaceable equipment on flimsy tripods and irreplaceable bones on slippery hard surfaces is thrilling.

Because nights like this are when the skies come to life.

Star trails from Maria Island, Tas.

Full moon over Hobart, Tas.

which turned into this super-blue-blood-moon.

Byron Bay lighthouse.

And then if you're extremely lucky... and extremely far south... and if the sun throws a fit, and if the clouds hide away, and if the moon isn't too bright... you might just get a night like this.

Rumdoodle aurora, Mawson Station Antarctica, 2015. 

These pretty lights, the Aurora Australis, bring me a great deal of excitement.

They're an adventure and a treat, a technical challenge and the promise of a thrilling night. And if the weather is decent and my camera is already tucked away somewhere safe, then they're a great excuse to rug-up and find somewhere to lie down and stargaze.

Macquarie Island aurora, 01.06.18. 

Macquarie Island aurora, 01.06.18. 

Macquarie Island aurora, 20.04.18. 

The Aurora Australis is the slightly less famous twin of the Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights). Often the same patterns appear in each hemisphere at the same time. It is caused by charged particles from the sun unloading energy into gas molecules in our atmosphere, which means -

• the more solar activity there is, the more visible aurora there is
• aurora's are most visible at the magnetic poles, because the earth's magnetic field deflects the charged particles away along lines of flux
• different molecules shine with different colours, by far the most common being green from oxygen at about 60km altitude.

Of course, Macquarie Island can be a little bit of a bastard. It's cloudy all of the time, it's rainy all of the time, and it's windy most of the time. But whenever the weather breaks I'm ready and waiting.

As a special mid-winter treatie I put together a few little photos with some nice chill-out music to show during our midwinter feast. Best viewed in a dark room on a big screen with a good soundsystem.

This next bit is for those who are playing at home and are keen to learn how to shoot their own auroras (which I can only assume is all of you Queenslanders).
Required equipment:

• camera that allows for manual adjustment
• tripod or other way of immobilising the camera
• clear night sky with minimal noise pollution (get away from the city!)
• intervalometer if you want to shoot a timelapse
• head torch! Never leave home without it!

Tips and tricks for beginners:

• Get to know your camera! It is substantially frustrating to try and find controls in the dark with numb fingers. 
• Give your photo an interesting foreground and focus the camera on it, preferably near the infinity focus point. If you are struggling with autofocus in the dark try and find a bright object at the right distance and autofocus on it, then switch to manual focus.
• Using very high ISO lets you use a faster shutter speed while you are deciding on how to compose the frame. Conversely, using a slower shutter speed allows you to decrease the ISO once you are satisfied with the frame, to reduce noise in the photo. 
• Using a self-timer or remote will prevent star-blur when the shutter button is pressed. 
• Use the 500 rule to avoid star trails if they're not your objective. 

That'll will probably do for now. As always, let me know if you have questions or comments. 

Alarms, Orca's, and Auroras. pt 1

Alarms, orca's, and auroras. I'm pretty sure that's what I promised you last time, and I've been too damn busy with work to have any new fun since then, so let's do it. 

<Another blog post in three parts, because I write too much, too slowly.>

Alarms

Hydrogen is wonderful. It is abundant, as a gas is lighter than air, and it can be isolated by forcing electricity through water.

Hydrogen is terrifying. It is outrageously explosive. It is odourless, colourless, and tasteless. It burns with invisible flames, and embrittles metals. 

I regularly use hydrogen to fill rubber balloons because of the virtues I listed above.
I wear a full flash coat due to the drawbacks.

Personal protective equipment is the least effective method of risk mitigation though, so as well as a flash coat, hood, googles, gloves, and antistatic boots, we use deionised airflow and implement a network of hydrogen sensors and alarms.

As part of my regular maintenance workflow I perform monthly checks that:

• the sensors are detecting hydrogen at calibration level as they should
• the emergency stops are activated correctly if alarm level is reached
• audible alarms and flashing lights are activated if hydrogen is detected.

In early April I performed my first set of hydrogen alarm verification on Macquarie Island, and, alarmingly, the alarms didn't work.

It's a complicated little manoeuvre to pull off, especially when everyone is still new to the station. I go in to the hazardous area, pump 1L/min of 2% hydrogen in air through a sensor, which hits 20% of the lower flammability limit (LFL) of hydrogen. This should trigger the warning level of our gas detector, which activates the emergency stop, buzzers and sirens in our office, and voice alarms in the mess and accommodation block.

If everything is according to plan I then increase the flow rate of calibration gas to 2L/min, reach 40% of the LFL of hydrogen, and the detector goes into "alarm" state - more voice alarms, more sirens, everything gets very exciting.

It's my first time on the island, my first time doing one of these checks in years, and its a safety system intended to prevent me from exploding; I was being pretty meticulous this time around. And eventually it became clear that everything is not hunky dory.

This put me in the uncomfortable position of needing to debug an alarm system that makes a lot of noise in the main living quarters on station, but I can't hear from point of activation. Only way to tick this box is to ask a lot of people to hang out and listen for loud noises, and make a lot of chatter on the radio.

I was able to determine that everything worked fine at 20% of the lower flammability level, but all the voice systems went silent at 40% (Alarm == silence is the opposite of what I want).

This issue sent me on a multi-day adventure, tearing apart rat's nests of black-magic circuitry, potentially hacked at by various techs over the years, looking for... something that didn't look right. I started off assuming that a component had broken, but you know what they say about assumptions...

Skipping a whole lot of electrical best guessing and estimation, I eventually found out that a previous tech had (hopefully) unintentionally tied the power rail of my alarm relays to the "normally closed" pin on the gas detectors 40% alarm relay. Basically means that everything is fine, right up until the alarm goes off, when all the alarms get switched on, but disconnected from power.

This guy here is the gas detector.

And this is the Met alarms. Lots of lights, everyone is very excited.

Welcome to the rat's nest. The two boxes on the right are full of wiring as well. 

... the front panel is wired up too... 

Relays that activate my alarms.

Found the culprit! That red wire shouldn't be there...

Fortunately figuring out what was wrong was by far the hardest part this time, I fixed it by moving that long red wire ("F") down one connection, and everything makes sense again. The alarms are annoying when they should be annoying now, and I should hopefully be that little bit less likely to blow myself up.

I feel like that may have been a particularly boring blog post. Lots of discussion of work things and wires, very little Macquarie Island or Antarctica. In the name of entertainment here are a few snippets of what I actually do with the hydrogen -

This is where I was taught to release weather balloons. 

This is where I really learned how. 

And this is where I'm doing it at the moment :)

Field Training Take 2 (Part 2)

... so... I've been a bit distracted, there were alarms and orcas and auroras and it's all slowly making it's way down the pipeline to you. But I've neglected this story far too long (possibly out of embarrassment? You'll see why in a moment), lets kick on ...

Happy campers one and all.

Straight back into the featherbed! We're trudging along early on the second morning. It's a lovely day and I'm enjoying just being outside so I've zoned into walking, I'm at the end of the group and lost in thought, just following footsteps.

We're walking through water at the time, I can literally see the ground ripple with every step, but i'm in gumboots and I'm feeling good. Half a step ahead I see a very narrow, clear little stream. No dramas, gumboots, no need to adjust trajectory.

...

One of the valuable lessons that I learned while field training at Macca is that clear little streams are in fact dirty great lies. They are, in fact, portals to subterranean oceans.

Unfathomable depths.

I was saved from a watery grave by virtue of it being quite a narrow bottomless abyss, so I only fell knee deep before my other leg got stuck on what passes as ground in the featherbed. So began stage two of my impromptu practical education on Macquarie Island: gumboots are waterproof in both directions.

The boots I was using are pretty neat. As far as I'm aware they're a New Zealand made workboot for dairy farmers, but it boils down to a half-shin length rubber gumboot with laces so that the boot can provide some support. They're not the super fancy-pants Goretex mountain boots I bought myself for the trip, but in many ways they're better suited to the terrain here.

That is, as long as you can keep the waterline below the boot line. Unfortunately falling knee deep into a landlocked ocean is not in compliance with this requirement. So - status update - I've got a boot full of water, a pack full of gear, and a full day of off-track trekking ahead of me. What's the plan? Find some (comparatively) dry ground, empty the boot, put a dry sock on and push onwards of course! Which leads us neatly into the third and final part of my Macquarie Island Society adventure (MISadventure) (get it?) trifecta.

Buzzy's.

Buzzy's are a bit like the bogeyman for incoming expeditioners. Over and over again you'll hear about them from experienced travellers who were leaving the island. "Oh, the buzzy's will ruin that." "No, you can't do that because of the buzzy's." So, naturally, you ask some questions.

Through my carefully cultivated network of informers the best I was able to determine was that they're "like... some kind of prickle?".

And yeah, it basically is. But it's an endemic, prolific, sticky little bastard that will hook its seed balls into anything (even plastic outer layer) and then spread throughout your gear, until everything you touch is a spiky ball of discomfort. Buzzy's in your gloves, jacket, hat, hair, boots, pack, thermals, socks, spare socks, and the socks still in the drawer at home.

Of course, these are all things that I learned moments after deciding "hey this nice firm high bit of ground looks perfect for taking my pack and shoes off". It didn't take long for me to realise that I had made an error in judgement, and I attempted to minimise the damage by keeping all my things stacked on my pack... but some mistakes can't be unmade, and I spent the rest of the walk having these lessons reinforced by the jabbing of a million tiny needles.

The show must go on though, and on I kept going, down the Aurora Cave Track towards the Flat Creek Jump Up, where we would break off trail and work through navigation exercises to meet up with our Ranger in Charge down island. This was an important opportunity for the Field Training Officer and Ranger in Charge; they were able to demonstrate that off-track doesn't lead to forbidden vistas and towering peaks, but to long slogs of endless featherbed and undulating buzzy fields.

"And if you turn left here, life will be more difficult."

Our accommodation for the evening was at Brother's Point, about equal latitude to Bauer Bay but the other side of the island. The hut is a "Googie" or "Smartie" hut, an exotic design that I've only ever seen used by the AAD. It's one of the two little flying saucers we have at Macca, but is pretty similar to the Googie I stayed in on Bechervaise Island at Mawson.

Home away from home away from home, and a welcome opportunity for a warm drink.

We were pretty knackered after a long day of hiking, and settled in to playing hut games before crashing out at Macca Midnight (9pm).

Dawn broke to our perfect weather turning a touch windy, and with forecasts of deteriorating conditions through the day. Eager to avoid exfoliation via sand to the face, we fixed station firmly in our sights and started north along the east coast. Along the way we paused for a morning rendezvous with our old friend RIC to discuss the tourism at Sandy Bay, to pay homage to the local colonies of King and Royal penguins. Most of the rest of the trek home was across beach boulders with short stints of inland go-arounds through tussock and bog. And then, before we knew it, North Head and station were in sight, and we were back home. Eager for a shower, a nap, and another chance to get off station.​

This is much more familiar terrain for me.

Sandy Bay Kings. I'm anticipating spending quite some time here.

Don't judge too harshly, I'm still learning how to drive the GPS.

Fin.

Let's do the Time Warp - Field Training Take 2 (Part 1)

Three years ago I was sitting down to my laptop to write blog posts to discuss my first experiences on the Antarctic plateau and the pleasures of sleeping in a Bivvy bag. 

Some things change in life, for example: I'm using a Mac now, I'm in a much warmer place, and I'm a kilogram or two more "prosperous" than I was back then.

And some things are destined to repeat themselves: generations blaming their problems on those who came before or who will come after, the great romances and tragedies that are told in tales, reruns of Friends. And I go on field training. 

Early in my time at Mawson I spent three days in the field in Antarctica ticking boxes for the AAD and learning how to not die in the ridiculous place they had left me in. And very recently I spent three days in the field on Macquarie Island.... you guessed it, learning how to not die.

On a lovely Macca Thursday I met up with another group of three field training hopefuls and our instructor, we kitted up, discussed our plans, turned our tags and wandered out of station. 

And then rather rapidly and rudely we ran into one of the glaring differences between field travel on the continent and field travel on Macquarie Island. It's called Doctor's Track, and it's a bastard.

That's home way over in the distance.

You see, in Antartica you get cruise around in the comfort of a Hägglund or astride a quad bike like some kind of petrol powered super hero. It's the high life for sure. On Macca you get to cruise around on your own two feeties, dragging all your crap essential survival equipment with you along the way. And if you can't be arsed trudging up 400ft of mud and grass in the cold, wet, and rain, then mate, you're staying at home.

Doctor's Track is so named because after using it you're going to need one... and it's the main highway off station.

Still gaining elevation...

Like the wolf of Three Little Pigs fame we huffed and puffed and blew our knees out, but we did eventually make it to the top of the rise and were rewarded with level track for our efforts. We slogged along in majestic sub-antarctic wilderness for the rest of the day, making it to our nights accommodation around four in the afternoon (sunset!). Bauer Bay Hut is located 1/4 of the way down the west coast of the island, is built in what I would call traditional remote hut style, and features an external "Shangrila" that ideally is stuffed full of field food.

On the north end of the island plateau the tracks are remarkably well maintained.

Gorgeous sunset colours lighting our decent to Bauer Bay.

This is another difference between continental field huts and Macquarie Island field huts: Antarctic huts have a stash of absolute basic provisions that don't mind fluctuating temperatures from -40°C to 15°C (eg. milk powder, instant coffee, sugar, tea, potato powder) and expeditioners are expected to bring all their meals with them. On Macca we have stashes of most of everything in Shangrila at each hut, and carry treats with us on our backs.

At Bauer we baked bread, cooked dinner, dried our gear, reviewed good radio communications practices, discussed our plans for the following day and settled in for an early evening to recover from our first day of walking Macquarie Island!

Day 2 dawned with uncharacteristically civil weather, and saw us clear of the hut by 0900. Our intentions for the day were to make our way south along the Aurora Cave Track, experience some featherbed, and break east off track up Flat Creek to practice navigation. Eventually we would end up back on the east coast of the island, overnighting at Brother's Point Hut.

Featherbed is an interesting phenomena of short grasses and herbs growing thickly over a layer of water, and feels remarkably similar to hiking over a waterbed. It is an incredibly inefficient medium for walking on, and worthy of it's own blog post some day.

Deposited out of The Labyrinth...

onto the featherbed.

Working hard by this point.

<Insert two week writing break here. Wow, I've been busy!>

I'll have to bid you adieu here, I've written more than I should have about the trip and I've been busier than I should have been. I'm going for another walk over the weekend so we'll continue when I get back on station next week.

Wish me luck!

The Revival

Friends! Readers!

Hi!

It's been a while.

Here's some of what's happened since we last spoke:
I was in Antarctica.
I got on a ship to leave Antarctica.
We crashed the ship...

Oops

... I was back in Antarctica.
Party on station and show off to new friends for a week.

Crowded now

Helicopter ride out to a Japanese ice-breaker.
Party on ice-breaker for a week.

Hackey sack = party

Helicopter ride to Casey station.
Party on Casey station for a night.

See? Hackey sack = party!

Then ride in RAAF cargo jet (C-17) with three helicopters sharing my space back to Hobart.

Too awesome to caption.

Yep, that was a full-on time. If you're very lucky I might one day do a full write up.

So so so! There's a whole lot of intervening adventures between then and now for sure. Hurt myself in North America, Europe, and Australia. Camped, couch surfed, live in hotels, made all sorts of amazing friends (you know who you are). And through it all, you know what I missed?

Being bastard cold and miserably wet. 

Well... not really. But I did miss the adventure that working for the Australian Antarctic Division facilitates.  

Solution? Apply for a job in January 2017, sign a contract on 31 July 2017, board a ship on 9th March 2018, hello new home on the 12th!

And what a home it is.

Sure, she's cold (normally 0-8°C) and damp (some form of precipitation every day!).
Sure, the accommodation is riddled with asbestos.

Sure, it's a tiny speck in the middle of the Southern Ocean, prone to inundation and earthquakes, four days sail from the nearest help, with a tenuous internet connection and 13 other social misfits sharing my space for the next 12 months.

But it's beautiful. And it's wild. And for the next year.... it's mine. 

Here's a taste of what's to come.

LARCs loaded on the Aurora Australis for a amphibious resupply.

First sighting of my new home!

My view to see the ship off home.

And some of the locals who've visited me.

Some of them sleep a lot.

Others like to parade.

And pose.

The local big boys are surprisingly stealthy. 

Fur seals are a bit more active, local dogs. 

And this is home!

And station from the other direction.