Photos at last!

This was day of departure (30th Oct 2009) at the Wharf in Hobart. The ship is over 8000 tons and capable of breaking up to 2 m of ice!  Very comfortable compared to all the Navy ships I have been on. I can actually stand up straight and walk around with out being hunched over.  My bed is fairly comfortable and the food is awesome. It is a challenge to make it to Antarctica without putting any weight on while on this ship!!!

Departing from Hobart.  Unfortunately family members were not allowed on the wharf to wave goodbye as was the case previous years.

This is the ship in amongst "pan cake" ice.  It was the first big lot of ice that I had seen. Ironically it was a Sunday and a day I normally make pancakes for my two children.  It also ended the seasickness I was experiencing as the ice flattens out the swell. 

This was one of the more interesting  icebergs to be seen along the way.  I would say this one was about 6 times bigger than the ship. Each one of them has unique shape and sometimes colour.  There are some that have very rich blue, some bright white and others almost green tinge.

Hard to believe with the size of some of them, you are only seeing about 20% of  the iceberg!

This is a hard day at the office on the bridge of the Aurora Australis. To the left you can see the bench where the Met guys work and record their observations.  In front of me is where one guy does about 7 jobs on a Royal Australian Navy Ship's Bridge and about 20 on a US Navy Ship's Bridge.

Unfortunately the choppers were not able to fly much due to the weather.  As you can see in the picture, when the sun was out the glare was blinding.

Above is the Ship's track of over 5300kms travelled.  You can just make out a few little detours where the ship was trying to avoid either large areas with snow on top of the ice or just too much ice.

Stepping off the ship for the first time in 3 weeks.  Hard to believe in about a month's time this will be all water.  The walk across took almost an hour.  By the time I got to the shore, I was fairly hot except for my left cheek and nose which were exposed to the wind. Temp was -2 with wind chill about -10. A fairly mild day.

Looking at the ship in the ice reminded me of the scene out of Pirates of the Carribean, where the ship was stuck in the middle of the desert.

The 4km walk to the station across the ice. Along the path we had a greeting party of a few penguins. It was almost as if they were coming over to welcome us to Antarctica.

Above is Davis Station and my home for the next 4 and a bit months. This is looking from about a 1km away.

This is looking from Davis back to the ship. The ship is barely able to me made out in the centre of the horizon. The weather was superb. It didn't last long though. This morning we had blizzards conditions which put a stop to the resupply and refueling operations. The wind was blowing over 50 knots. This can sometimes break up and move the ice and potentially dangerous to operate on. Hence the reason we were confined to the ship today.

I apologise for the poor resolution of the pictures. The network connection is painfully slow and uploading these photos took 3 hours! I will have plenty more to follow.