The Ice Beneath My Feet: My Year In Antarctica

By Diana Patterson

A riveting true adventure of a year in Antarctica, from the first woman to lead an Antarctic research station.
Antarctica is windy and achingly cold, incredibly isolated and inhospitable - yet its overwhelming stark white beauty speaks to our imagination. Bright and passionate, Diana Patterson was searching for her path in life when she was bitten by the Antarctic bug in her late twenties. She nursed her secret ambition and with dogged determination set her sights on becoming station leader at the Australian base Mawson-a lofty aspiration, considering this was most definitely a bloke's world. Being knocked back four times didn't deter her-she never gave up her dream, and at the age of 38 became the first woman in charge of this small, mostly male community of glaciologists, physicists, biologists and tradies, in each other's pockets 24/7, thousands of miles from the comforts of home.tHE ICE BENEAtH MY FEEt is an intimate and riveting account of Diana's year at Mawson. the day-to-day reality of life in this frozen environment and the adventures of the delightful, vital characters we meet along the way (men, huskies, penguins!) are utterly captivating, and a must-read for anyone who harbours their own Antarctic dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780730445425

Diana Patterson

Diana Patterson was the first woman in the world to manage an Antarctic research station and is now a motivational speaker and involved in Antarctic tourism. A committed conservationist, she has held a number of senior management and advisory roles with an environmental focus and keeps active through alpine and cross-country skiing, bushwalking and mountain biking.

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Introduction

Antarctica is a source of fascination to so many people. The proliferation of documentaries, books and opportunities for personal travel does not seem to have diminished the response I get when I talk about my experiences of living and working in Antarctica. Two decades have now passed since I made my first voyage, of what now numbers 16, across the stormy Southern Ocean to Antarctica. Over that time I have been asked by many people to write about my adventures, to record my stories. Apparently not satisfied with just the stories of the leaders of the heroic age of Antarctica, of Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen and Mawson, or the stories of the modern day adventurers who are in a variety of ways attempting to put their own name in the history books, I find that there is interest too in my story as the first woman leader of an Antarctic research station. So for all the people I have talked to over the years at schools, corporate functions, from the flight deck of a 747 aircraft as we take a day sightseeing flight to Antarctica or more recently on an expedition cruise ship, why, after all this time, have I finally responded to your request for more stories?

It has taken so long because when I returned from my stays in Antarctica, I felt it might be perceived as though I was trying to put myself above and apart from my Antarctic contemporaries. I didn’t want to be seen as a ‘tall poppy’, with all of the negative connotations that went with that label. Like most of the pioneering women who first worked on the Antarctic continent in the 1980s I had tried my best to promote the presence of women in Antarctica as ‘normal’ and nothing unusual, though indeed it was. The more compelling reason for the delay is that I thought writing about my time as a leader in Antarctica might prove to be a career limiting move. My story would certainly have been somewhat different if I had told it 20 years ago, with many events ignored or glossed over. As it was I both benefited from and was disadvantaged by my Antarctic service. Experience as a woman Antarctic station leader was unusual enough to arouse curiosity, so I was invariably short-listed for diverse and unusual jobs, but at the same time I found that some senior managers were quite threatened by me and my experience of management in such a remote workplace. I told myself that this negativity was not about me, it was about them. In many cases the most exciting thing they had probably done in their life was trying to cross a busy road in rush hour. I did not think it would be to my advantage for such people to know that I had been the navigator for a journey venturing 400 kilometres inland on the Antarctic plateau, or that I had run with sledging dogs 350 kilometres on the frozen ocean around the coast of Antarctica — never mind the more outrageous activities! Having fulfilled any ambitions I had for my career, concern for an adverse reaction is no longer relevant.

This is not a story from the heroic era of Antarctica, it’s not an adventure story about a four-week expedition to the South Pole; instead, it is a story about a dream of working in Antarctica, one which evolved into wanting to be the leader of an Antarctic research station. With the benefit of hindsight one might say it was an unrealistic dream given that when it was formed in my mind women had not yet been included on the annual expedition teams on any of Australia’s three Antarctic continental research stations. However, like many other young women in the 1970s, I believed women could do anything! An enlightened family and, of course, the emerging women’s movement made this possible. It did take time, almost eight years, to realise my goal which, once achieved, far exceeded my expectations.

My story captures a time when a new era was occurring with the human presence in Antarctica. It came long after that first ‘Age of Discovery’ with its great sea voyages and quest for the great south land, and almost 100 years after man first set foot on the Antarctic continent in 1895, thus beginning what is known as the ‘Age of Exploration’ or the ‘Heroic Age’. This period encompassed the time of the race to be first to reach the South Pole, with epic stories of both survival and of disaster. Following the First World War private expeditions continued in a new ‘Mechanical Age’ as aeroplanes and motorised vehicles were used to extend the exploration of the icy continent. In the decade following the Second World War the United States of America launched the first of the government expeditions by circumnavigating the continent, mapping the coastline as they went. The next era, the ‘Age of Science’, was firmly established when, by the International Geophysical Year of 1957, 12 countries had established a cooperative approach to scientific research at 40 Antarctic bases and at a further 20 bases on the sub-Antarctic islands.

My story begins in 1979 when I developed the ambition not only to be a woman working in Antarctica but to be the leader of one of Australia’s research bases. While a national presence in Antarctica with a focus on science remained, it was also a time of change in Antarctica, though not necessarily a ‘new age’. The make-up of the research stations was a major part of this change, with modernisation resulting in tradesmen outnumbering scientists and other support staff. Women were beginning to make their presence felt with their inclusion in overwintering populations, spending up to 12 months in Antarctica. In fact, five Americans and one New Zealand woman had wintered by 1980. It was not until 1981 that the first Australian woman, Dr Louise Holliday, wintered at Davis station. By 1987 when I finally achieved my ambition to work in Antarctica, only ten women had wintered on Australian bases, six at Mawson, three at Casey and one at Davis.

‘Think like a man’ was the advice given to me at one point, the implication being that it would make me a more effective leader of the primarily male workforce. Whether I succeeded in doing this or not I will never know, but while I had experienced some downsides in working towards achieving my goal, the time I spent at Casey station over the 1987—88 summer proved invaluable in both shaping my leadership style and in gaining acceptance as a woman leader in what was then very much a man’s world. My ambition had only been half met as I was there as the station leader elect, a somewhat supernumerary role, and it was only for a summer, and my plan was to be the leader and to spend a full year in Antarctica.

The following December I again set sail from Hobart, and this time I would spend 14 months away from Australia. The opportunities to combine work with adventure were innumerable, from abseiling on ice cliffs, journeying well south into the Antarctic interior, conducting a census of emperor penguins in the period of mid winter darkness as well as participating in one of the last epic dog-sledging journeys over the frozen oceans surrounding the coast of Antarctica. The isolated workplace and the small community of only 25 posed a challenge to my leadership style which continually evolved. It was this style which gave rise to a new nickname when, to some, I became known as Lady Di — not always said in the most flattering way. During 1989 developments were occurring that led to a new era of human habitation of Antarctica. While it reaffirmed the focus on science, environmental protection of Antarctica became a very significant concern of groups such as Greenpeace and the Australian Conservation Foundation. In establishing their own small base in the Ross Sea, Greenpeace were drawing a great deal of attention to the inadequate operational practices of many countries. A growth in tourism on the Antarctic Peninsula had also given rise to concerns about detrimental impacts on the pristine environment. In the early 1990s the increased attention on preserving Antarctica led to a moratorium on mining and new, stricter environmental controls, initiatives that I greatly applauded, though there was an unexpected consequence: it transpired that I would run with Antarctica’s last huskies. So while writing about a new and emerging era in Antarctica this story is also about the dogs, particularly Blackie’s team.

Today the Australian Antarctic Division continues to recruit people for their research stations each year, and while new communications technology has led to the replication of greater bureaucracy that we now see in our workplaces, the isolation, the weather conditions, the wildlife, the awesome Antarctic landscape and the experience of living in a small community remain. I hope I can inspire others to follow their own Antarctic dream.

1

A quest for adventure

My earliest memory is feeling absolute pleasure as I sat gazing through the leaves of my own little tent. This first adventure took place in the veggie garden of our suburban Hobart home when I was not yet three years old. I doubt that Dad had me in mind when he trained his runner beans up the wooden tepee-like structure but I claimed it as mine. I still seek adventure and I still love tents. It is not surprising, then, that when asked to name my most memorable moment during my time in Antarctica, the image that immediately springs to mind is a bright red polar pyramid tent erected on a remote islet surrounded by a frozen ocean. The wind howled and buffeted the tent as I lay snug in my two sleeping bags but it was not enough to drown out the chorus of 18 huskies who, one after the other, joined in a doggy chorus. I felt at one with the dogs — after all, we had just completed a 350-kilometre dog-sledging journey. The ten days had been physically arduous as we travelled long distances over the heavily snow-covered frozen ocean.

At night we faced another challenge with the temperature, at times, dropping to below -20°C. While my body had been greatly challenged and I was exhausted, I felt that my inner spirit had been incredibly refreshed. It came from a combination of experiencing the silence of Antarctica and a sense of awe brought about by the vast icy landscape and ever-changing skies. I felt as though my quest for adventure had been achieved. But this was a long time coming: 36 years had elapsed since the chubby toddler played in her runner bean ‘tent’.

Real tents weren’t part of my childhood, as it happened. Not so long ago I asked my mother why our family had never gone camping. ‘Tents were the stuff of nightmares,’ she answered. ‘Your father had enough of tents during the war at the siege of Tobruk and in the Pacific islands. In fact, ill with dengue fever he spent days abandoned under a bush in fear of Japanese soldiers. After the war he had no desire to go camping!’

I was born in Hobart, Tasmania in October 1950, the third daughter of my parents Fay and Les; Janet, the eldest sister, is four years older than me, Sally not quite two years. As with many other third-borns there are very few baby photos of me in comparison to the others, and as a child, I felt put out by it, as though I was a disappointment because I wasn’t born a boy! This feeling prevailed; when I was 18 I remember asking my uncle, ‘What was Dad’s reaction when I was born and he learned that he had another daughter?’ It came as no surprise when Uncle Sid replied, ‘He said at the time that he nearly ripped the bloody phone out of the wall!’ Dad got his wish for sons when, three years after me, Mick was born, then, another eight years later, Andrew.

I guess that accounts for my response when asked what caused me to be so competitive and determined: as the middle child, I had to work to be noticed. This is the only way I can explain the hours spent pitching a softball at a target on the brick wall of our house when I was nine years old. I was striving to excel at sport. Dad had been a champion footballer in his younger days, then played bowls, and both he and Mum took to golf in their thirties. Weekends then had a routine of working around the Saturday sporting activities. Early on when the family was still living in Hobart, Sundays were devoted to visiting our two sets of grandparents, numerous aunts and uncles and cousins, then later we would explore the countryside wherever we lived at the time.

With Dad working for a bank our family was regularly on the move. Each was a new adventure and no doubt contributes to the fact that I have never experienced homesickness and have always been very independent. I had lived in four different houses in Tasmania when Dad was transferred to Maryborough, in the goldfields area of western Victoria, when I was six years old. It was a great time for us kids with the excitement of boarding a ship to cross Bass Strait, staying in a flash hotel in Melbourne, then driving through a very different landscape to the one we were used to in southern Tasmania. A small country town, Maryborough brought more freedom and lots of adventure for little kids. In terms of my formative years two memories stand out. The first is related to being tough — never let anyone see that they can make you cry. It was a lesson well learned. I had a beautiful blonde-haired doll I called Gloria, and I loved her. I was only seven when my sister Sally threw her out of one of our backyard trees, breaking her. The accompanying taunts were such that I was determined not to show I cared. I didn’t cry and I never had another doll. I also became more secretive about what was really special to me.

The second memory is of the pleasure gained from being outdoors, collecting tadpoles close to home, having picnics in the bush, making cubbies out of fallen branches (which were reminiscent of my first bean tent), playing in the dry eroded creek beds while Mum and Dad played golf. Later, when I was given my first pushbike for Christmas, it was the freedom, together with friends, to explore further afield.

After three years in Maryborough Dad was transferred back to Hobart and we resumed the family and sports focused life with weekend picnics in the foothills of Mt Wellington. At school I was a very ordinary performer and did not demonstrate any of the academic ability shown by my older sisters. Instead, I developed a passion for sport and discovered I was good at it. Or rather my endless hours of pitching the softball at the wall or shooting goals into my backyard netball hoop paid off. When I was not practising I was reading. We were a family of readers, the regular visit to the library being a feature of my childhood, as were the well stacked shelves at home. ‘Girls own adventure’ books were my particular favourites. Comics were also widely devoured by my siblings and cousins. I loved Phantom comics and there is no doubt that my first female role model was Diana Palmer, the Phantom’s girlfriend. She was attractive, always glamorously attired and she was sporty, the latter being something I especially related to. But the Phantom was still the main hero and like many other kids I saved up and bought a Phantom ring. It was a prized possession, one that was best enjoyed when the skull’s eyes glowed in the dark. I did spend a lot of time in the darkness of our kitchen pantry!

Another three years elapsed then my family was on the move again. This time it was back to Victoria, to the northwestern town of Mildura. We were to remain there for six years. I loved living in Mildura. In summer our lives revolved around the local pool, so much so that after one disastrous holiday to the coast near Melbourne my parents decided it was better to save their money rather than endure the wailing and complaining that we would all prefer to have stayed home. So at age 13 I went on my last family holiday.

Mildura High was an ideal school if you were into sport. In summer I played softball and basketball. In winter I developed a passion for hockey and for the annual school sports carnival, devoting myself to training for every event in the athletics program. Sport continued to dominate my life; it was a passion that obviously suppressed any excessive hormone activity that can affect teenage girls.

Not surprisingly, physical education was my favourite subject and my teacher, Miss McCubbery, well and truly replaced Diana Palmer as my female role model. She was a feisty, very attractive brunette, and always looked fantastic in a variety of skimpy teaching outfits. She was a wonderful teacher and was a source of inspiration to many of my contemporaries. With Miss McCubbery you dared not risk her scorn by showing you were timid, and instead I tried my best to gain her approval.

It was through sport that I developed the tenacity to succeed: to set a goal, establish a plan and follow it through. Alice, one of my school and hockey friends (who had a great deal more natural talent than did I), recalls with bemusement my aggressive determination. Looking back it was indeed the case. I decided that in my last year at school I was going to win the school athletics championship. It was an ambitious goal as I had rarely won any of the individual events but I reasoned that if I entered in every one I could gain enough points to do it. Part of my strategy was to identify the weakest events and as a result I focused on shotputting. I obtained a booklet on technique and most afternoons carried a shotput home in my schoolbag. Much to Dad’s chagrin the back lawn became pitted with holes. With my short stature (158 centimetres) and weighing 52 kilograms I did not fit the stereotype of a shotputter; however, my strategy worked. I won this event and set a new school record.

The 100 metres was another target and as well as increasing my training I focused my attention on the likely winner. That was easy as we had been competing with each other for five years. By the time the athletics carnival was held I could not bear the thought of being beaten by her. Before the days of sports psychologists I was pretty good at visualisation! More surprisingly, this strategy also worked. I won that race and the overall championship, establishing what became an enduring trait of setting goals and working to a plan.

In addition to the seemingly limitless opportunities to play sport, living by the Murray River, with its grand redgums, billabongs, towering red cliffs and white sandy beaches stimulated my love of the outdoors. The regular family Sunday drives and picnics took us to the surrounding countryside and I came to love the Mallee bushland, the red dusty sandhills and the more arid country north of the river. Translating a love of the outdoors to adventurous activities was firmly established at the age of 15 after a school excursion to Mt Painter and the Gammon Ranges, part of the northeastern arm of the South Australian Flinders Ranges. The arrival of a new teacher from South Australia had meant that the hiking trip became an alternative option to the usual school excursion to our capital city, Canberra. The planning and preparation stage had affirmed my decision to sign up when we received our first newsletter, Us Hikers Expedition, ‘Us Hikers’ also being referred to as ‘Us Maniacs’. The enthusiasm of the writers was contagious as I devoured articles about hiking in Tasmania, how to make my own rucksack or tent, even articles about the physiology of endurance. I immediately got a copy of the recommended training text, the Canadian Royal Air Force 4BX and 10BX program — in fact, I was still referring to it 23 years later when, in Antarctica, I doubted my fitness for an upcoming challenge: a dog-sledging trip.

One of the most exciting things about the proposed hike was that we were not preparing for just another school excursion, we were preparing for an expedition! This was reinforced by the fact that our program talked in terms of departure at 0900 hours rather than 9 am! I was very excited as I began to compile my gear, starting with the purchase of army surplus leather walking boots, and minimising the weight of every item on our gear list. With the newsletter indicating that the maximum weight we could carry was 16 kilograms including food and water, this left an upper limit allowance of nine kilograms of shared and personal gear. Totally caught up in the planning I set about cutting the end off my toothbrush and examining every item until I had reduced this allowance down to only six kilograms. Over 40 years on I still enjoy reading these old newsletters and the ‘log’ I wrote to capture the experience, my first real adventure.

The adventure began with a six-hour bus journey to Adelaide, where we boarded a northbound train to Port Pirie. There we quickly alighted and rushed down the platform to join the train bound for Port Augusta. At 0230 hours we arrived at our destination, a small railway town called Copley some 500 kilometres north of Adelaide. It was a totally new landscape with treeless gibber plains and rocky and rugged mountains, all incredibly dry and desolate but relieved intermittently by vast and beautiful gorges. Occasionally we would find a waterhole but more often than not the only evidence of water was the debris that a flash flood had left behind high amongst the trees.

The hike itself was a physically challenging experience but any thoughts of weariness were replaced by the exhilaration of standing on top of the escarpment soaking in the view of distant Lake Frome, or of lying each night in my sleeping bag gazing up at the southern skies. I thrived on the new challenges, clambering up dry waterfalls, striving to not only keep up with the boys but to be the first to reach the top of Mt McKinley. I discovered my capacity for endurance was good when, after a day’s walk of 17 kilometres, I had the stamina to repeat the distance. On reaching the campsite I joined a smaller party of nine to walk a further four kilometres to Arkaroola, a sheep station, to collect our rations for the next stage of the hike. When we arrived back at the campsite the remainder of our party had still not arrived so five of us — myself, one of the other girls, two boys and one of our leaders — turned around and returned to Arkaroola to collect the remainder of the rations. At 0200 hours we finally arrived back at the campsite, tired but with a great sense of personal achievement. In fact I think it was better for my ego than winning a sporting event!

The fact that we were on an ‘expedition’ was reinforced when everything did not go according to plan. It also led to new role models for me as I came more and more to admire the skills of our leaders. I felt that I had finally had a real adventure, so much so that I repeated the experience by going on another hike back to the Gammon Ranges the following year. So at 16, while other girls my age were getting interested in boys, I was more interested in competing with them and in challenging myself. I was afraid, I think, of compromising my own values as I witnessed other girls, who in my eyes belittled themselves, looking for acceptance from boys as if this determined their identity. I would have none of that. Whilst I had no specific focus for my ambition I was determined that I was not destined to be a housewife and mother living forever in Mildura. In fact I never thought that I would marry and have children. Although my friends and I used to check out the nearby church weddings on a Saturday, I did not ever dream of being a bride myself.

I was fortunate, this being the 1960s, that I did have role models who were career women and single. My Aunty Margaret, Mum’s older sister, was a source of great inspiration. She was a single career woman, the matron of a large repatriation hospital in Sydney, and she had style! I always admired the way she dressed as well as her forthright manner. (But then my aunts, Mum’s five sisters and my dad’s sister and sister-in-laws were all particularly forthright women!)

As well as Miss McCubbery, two other single teachers stood out as focused and successful. Both were strong characters and always seemed to mix well with, if not overshadow, the males. Perhaps I was also influenced by the fact that Dad played bowls with one and golf with the other and he clearly admired them and expressed pleasure in their company. The first, Miss Nettleton, or Maude as she was universally known, must have been in her fifties, but she had style too, carried off with a fairly dramatic blue-rinse hairdo. Rumour had it that she was still single because of the death of a fiancé during the war. We automatically assumed that it had been the First World War and this added to her mystique! The other was our headmistress, Miss Borschmann. She was much younger, perhaps then in her early thirties. She was tall, short haired, with a no-nonsense demeanour. She could be quite terrifying so it was not surprising that she was commonly referred to as ‘Basher’. She too had a great sense of humour which, when I was brave enough, I played upon when I was being chastised for some misdemeanour.

There is no doubt my mother was also a major influence on my aspirations. Although she was a mother of five children, in my recollection she never once used the all too commonly heard ‘When you grow up and have children of your own…’. One of six daughters herself, Mum held similar aspirations for both her own sons and daughters. Despite wanting sons Dad also did not differentiate between us in terms of his expectations of us, and he had the knack of making us all feel special. Though not directly stated there was a clear assumption that we would all go on to university. Dad had completed an economics degree at the University of Tasmania when he returned from serving in the army in the Middle East and Papua New Guinea, while Mum had to curtail her own studies when she joined the airforce. At the war’s end, marrying and having children put paid to any thought of her returning to complete her education.

Approaching my final two years at school it became apparent to me that if I wanted to be more than a shop girl or office worker living in Mildura then it was time to do something about my very, very average academic record. Janet, my eldest sister, had completed a psychology degree at Melbourne University and Sally was studying agricultural science. Despite performing poorly in mathematics in my fifth year at high school I insisted on taking the maths and science stream as I figured that it would leave me with more career options. Teaching, nursing or office work were the usual destinations for country girls, but with Sally studying agricultural science the more non-traditional work areas appealed to me more. I struggled through my physics, chemistry and maths and it came as no surprise when at a parent—teacher interview my parents were informed that ‘Diana is a very nice girl but…’. Clearly they did not think I had the ability to matriculate the following year. This no doubt accounted for Dad saying to me at about this time, ‘We don’t mind what you do as long as you do it to the best of your ability,’ then, with his characteristic exaggerated grin through gritted teeth, he went on, ‘and just remember you are my daughter.’ Little wonder that I retained a confidence that I could set my mind to achieve what I wished to.

It was time for another plan. I saw no reason to abandon my sporting pursuits but I figured that I had to have an ambition as I needed a goal to ensure that I did enough study get my matriculation. A job in the outdoors was preferable but clearly I was not going to be a forester or a geologist so reasoned that perhaps being a physical education teacher was the answer. It was not an entirely new thought as I had hero worshipped my first PE teacher, Janice McCubbery. So I changed my subjects to humanities and worked and worked, though I still played every sport, representing the school at hockey, athletics, softball and basketball as well as continuing to swim during the summer.

At one time Miss Borschmann took me aside and questioned the amount of sport I was still playing, expressing concern that it would detract from my academic results. She wasn’t to know of the rigorous regime I was following with my studies at the time. She was somewhat taken aback by my response — ‘A healthy mind needs a healthy body’ — but I convinced her that I was still studying hard. Much to everyone’s surprise not only did I matriculate well, even getting honours in history, I was accepted into the physical education diploma at Melbourne University and was awarded a secondary teacher’s studentship. I had a vision of myself returning to the country, preferably somewhere like Mildura, where I would wear cute sporting outfits and soak up the sun while the students were swimming in the pool.

That vision did not prevail. While I enjoyed the camaraderie of belonging to a small and tight-knit student group, the course left me feeling unfulfilled. Within a year I realised that I would get bored sunning by the pool — it was not the career for me. I was still sports mad and played both hockey and basketball for the university. In fact in 1970 my team won the intervarsity basketball championship, I was named in the All Australian team and later awarded a Full Blue by the university. Increasingly, however, I was caught up by the social activism on campus. In May, together with another 100,000, I joined in the first of the Moratorium marches to protest against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Whilst my friends at Melbourne University were relatively conservative and not interested in politics, an old school friend, Terrie Davey, was mixing with a very politically active group at Monash University and I joined her at a number of demonstrations.

As well as my growing politicisation, a greater influence on my decision to broaden my studies and undertake a political science degree was my shock, when I was 19 years of age, at discovering that my mother was more socially aware and perhaps more radical in her thinking than was I. Perhaps I should not have been surprised for my parents had long subscribed to major daily newspapers and to Time Magazine, and with my elder sisters at university in the mid 1960s, the discussions over the dinner table were clearly of a socially liberal nature. Even so it came as a shock when, visiting my family in Sydney where Dad had now been transferred, Mum initiated a discussion on abortion and women’s rights. It was very topical at the time with Melbourne’s Dr Bertram Wainer campaigning against police corruption and backyard abortion rackets. It was very confronting to discover that Mum was so much better informed than I was — I was a young university student, she was a middle-aged suburban housewife!

Yet again it was time to revisit my goals. With the studentship I was bonded to the Victorian Education Department for three years after I finished my training, and being fiercely independent I did not want to seek financial support from my parents. My strategy was to start enrolling in one subject of an arts degree while at the same time completing my teacher training; I would then try to get a posting to a Melbourne school while I continued to study part time. My perception of myself as not being very bright was probably reinforced by the fact that in physical education I only ever did enough to pass, so I set about this new challenge with the same rigour that I had shown in my final year at high school. I found my first subject, modern government, incredibly stimulating and studied really hard, but even so I was totally overwhelmed when I got my results: I had been awarded first class honours. Amazing! This achievement was great for my confidence.

The next part of my plan was also successful when I was posted to Altona North High School in Melbourne’s western suburbs. While I enjoyed the teaching it was not satisfying and the experience reaffirmed my commitment to further my studies. However, I made a poor choice when I opted for philosophy. It proved far too esoteric for me as I struggled at my evening classes to come to terms with Descartes’s dilemma about whether indeed he did exist when I had spent the day in a very working-class suburb teaching physical education, and had no doubt that I existed! By third term I had become quite depressed and thought perhaps the solution was to return to the country, revisiting an earlier goal of teaching at a school on the Murray River. I applied for a transfer and was appointed to teach at Cohuna High School in 1973.

At the same time I convinced another university friend, Cheryl, to join me on a hitchhiking trip to Western Australia over the school holidays. I had not forgotten my days hiking in the Gammon Ranges but had, despite equipping myself with a tent, rucksack and sleeping bag, not been on any similar adventures. I had looked at joining the Melbourne University Mountaineering Club but found, during rock climbing weekends, the other members to be distant and unwelcoming. The basketball club was a very different experience and it proved far more fun to go on weekends away playing at country tournaments. Not having companions who were interested in bushwalking, on my first university vacation, I worked picking cherries to earn enough money and then talked two old Mildura friends, Terrie and Marg, into joining me on a month’s holiday hitchhiking around Tasmania. We had a great time and with similar expectations Cheryl and I set off for Perth. Self-sufficient with our tent and camping gear, we spent a glorious month travelling around Western Australia. Meanwhile I decided that I had to confront the fact that I did not want to be a teacher and that my interest was in returning to study. I did not have any career in mind, I just wanted to learn for learning’s sake.

The decision made, I regained my focus and the next three years were very demanding as I worked part time as a barmaid during the university term and full time over the vacation. Sport was still important to me as an outlet and I continued to play basketball. Between study, working as a barmaid and basketball my life was very full-on but it was also the time that I had my first serious relationship. My boyfriend was also a basketballer but university was my main focus and eventually the relationship ended. Confident in so many ways, this was not the case when it came to relationships. While other friends started to get married and have families I was invariably the ‘single’ but, despite the failed love affair, I was happy that way. I never felt out of it and was content in my own company.

I was 25 before I had finished my studies and started looking for a ‘real’ job. It was late 1975 and the new growth area in the public service was community-based services so with an honours degree in political science I began work as a research officer in the newly established early childhood services section of the Victorian Department of Health. I found the job very stimulating but after two years felt that my life was once again unfulfilled. I never saw myself as an urban girl yet now I found myself working long hours and socialising at inner-city pubs. While I hadn’t envisioned returning to work in Mildura, that is what I did at the end of 1978. I guess I was trying to reclaim a sense of that driven teenager and I did rediscover a love for the outdoors and the Murray River, and opportunities to play tennis and basketball again. However, work as a social planner in the Department of Social Welfare dominated my life and my friends were mostly couples so I spent a lot of time on my own. In fact, at weekends I was quite satisfied living alone in a small old weatherboard house on the edge of the irrigation district looking out to what is called the sunset country. I enjoyed my job but after some time I again felt unfulfilled, although no new direction was apparent. I was still ambitious career-wise but reluctant to return to the city where there were more varied job prospects.

In 1979 a new direction presented itself, quite unexpected and unplanned. I was aware that Enid Borschmann, my former school headmistress, had spent the previous year working as a chef on sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, one of the four stations of Australia’s Antarctic research program. Together with many others I went along to listen to a talk she gave about her experiences. I came away totally captivated. I had little knowledge of Antarctic exploration or of Australia’s Antarctic research stations and knew nothing about Macquarie Island, but Enid’s descriptions and slides opened up a whole new world of opportunity, one in which I could see the possibilities of combining my career ambitions with my still very strong desire for adventure. The prospect of living and working on Macquarie Island suddenly presented as an ideal alternative to travelling alone to Europe or Asia. Yet here I was, proud to be a Tasmanian, widely read on Tasmanian history, but knowing nothing about the island considered to be part of Tasmania, so I undertook some research.

At 54°30’S and 158°57’E, Macquarie Island is roughly 1000 kilometres southeast of Hobart. Thirty-four kilometres long and five kilometres wide, it has a colourful history dating back to 1810 when it was discovered by Frederick Hasselborough, captain of a sealing vessel. His discovery led to the island’s abundant wildlife being commercially exploited for the ensuing 100 years. Prized for their pelts, the fur seals were the first to be harvested. In 1810 it was estimated that between 200,000 and 400,000 lived on the island, but within a year 120,000 skins had been taken. Less than four years later it was no longer profitable and by 1821 the fur seals were commercially and zoologically extinct.

Focus then shifted to the population of perhaps 110,000 elephant seals as there was a demand for oil which was derived from melting down the blubber. The oil was used as a lubricant, for lighting, ship caulking, paint manufacture, preservation of ropes and sails and for timbers. By 1830 most of these seals had also been exterminated and with harvesting no longer commercial, penguins were utilised, first thousands of king penguins then the smaller royal