Our summer has officially ended with the departure of V3 and the summerers last Thursday (2 March). The transfer of passengers from the station to Aurora was done by helicopters and it took just a couple of hours to move 50 people across. One by one the ranks at the helipad got thinner and it was an odd sensation to walk back to the accommodation building with just 19 of us there. Aurora departed a few hours later and we stood on the beach letting off some handsome smoke from expired flares. We radioed in to remind the Captain to come and pick us up next season and he replied by wishing us a good winter providing a kind of official closure. Whilst it was sad to see Aurora go I did feel a certain profound and intense joy - this is what I came here for, to work on my research over winter and to experience the stunning beauty and majesticity of Antarctica. With the summer crowds now gone I feel the same peace and calm I so well remember from my first visit to the McMurdo Dry Valleys back in 2002. Life is good!


We have been cleaning and scrubbing the station for the past week and as a native Finn I took great pleasure in recommissioning the sauna here after thoroughly scouring all the benches and changing the rocks in the stove ("kiuas" in Finnish). As a reminder of our vulnerability and the fragility of our existence in Antarctica we had a real fire alarm incident last weekend. A strong smell of an unknown chemical was detected in the greenstore (which contains most of our supplies) and the fire chief sounded a full fire alarm. After consultation with the Tasmanian fire service and the head office in Kingston three teams with BA (breathing apparatus) took turns to contain and clean the spill inside whilst the rest of the fire team assisted outside. I was in the second BA team and it was good to have a chance to refresh the skills which hadn't been used since our fire training in Hobart last year. A few hours later the spill had been completely cleaned up, the greenstore ventilated and the fire chief called standown and our wintering team had thus had its first Antarctic incident response. Hopefully it will be the last one too!

In between all the business associated with the ending summer and the sporadic attempts to continue my data analysis I have helped our resident engineer with his annual radar mast inspections. For safety reasons he needs to have someome with him when he inspects the masts and I also got to climb a small one - a task I thoroughly enjoyed!

I have also built my very first VLF loop which consists of 39 turns of insulated copper wire in a shape of a hula hoop (which it very much looks like!). Around the whole shebang a layer of a single piece of chef's aluminum foil does the job of the electrostatic shield and now I'm waiting for access to the chippies (= carpenter) shop to build a small (but steady!) mount for the antenna. Stay tuned for further news (no pun intended)!