Life on Ardery Island

LIFE ON ARDERY BY JEROEN #2 AND BELINDA

In the 1998 summer season in Antarctica three people were living on a remote Island in Sparkes Bay, 10km away from Casey station. These people called themselves the 'Arderians'. The main Arderian was the 'big ass' (Jeroen #1) whose phd project on individual quality in petrels was the reason for the 'field ass', Belinda and the 'techno ass', Jeroen #2 being on the island. This unique society spent 5 months together on Ardery Island, otherwise known as the rock or Alcatraz. To give people living at a civilised station like Casey with running water, heating and indoor toilets an impression of how Arderians lived, a typical day will be described.

Reveille

Our day began at 10am by waking up in our sleeping bags....outside. In summer we were woken up by the intense sunshine and the sound of orcas swimming past Robbs landing. As the weather began to change more and more snow managed to creep into our beds so our comfortable nights rest was occasionally interrupted by trying to keep the snow and wind out and the warmth in. During blizzy days we wondered if the rocks on our beds were big enough to prevent them from getting airborne. Sleeping in 60 knots winds was a challenging experience to say the least.

Once we had managed to crawl out of our beds next on the agenda was the morning wash routine. Hygiene on the rock was certainly different compared to Casey and heavily dependent on weather. A lake next door to the apples provided a bathing place that we shared with a number of skuas who left little surprises in our bathing water. Luckily Antarctica is a very clean place and the morning washing routine was more than regularly skipped by the Dutch boys. At the end of the season the ice became too strong to break and our bathing place turned into a skating rink enjoyed by both humans and skuas. Jeroen #2 refused to shave on the island supposedly due to a lack of mirrors, although the back of cds did come in handy at times. Belinda postponed washing her hair until fine sunny days other wise it would freeze.

Brekky is a good way to start the day. The Australian field ass started by torturing her slice of bread which according to the Dutch is offensive to the local baker. They preferred a good Dutch brekky of peanut butter on bread (even if it was stale) and lots and lots of coffee. Sometimes even the Dutch boys had to toast their bread because someone (or all three) had forgotten to bring in bread to defrost, not to mention the oj which was always frozen. A normal brekky would take about one hour mostly dedicated to transforming snow into hot water. Preparing water the day before was of no use because it would freeze up again over night. Luckily for the Dutch boys peanut butter and cheese didn't seem to freeze very well.

Morning work

For this part of the daily routine the field ass definitely had the better job being outdoors for most of the day while the poor techno ass had to be content with fixing things and playing on his computers indoors. Nest checks were done first thing in the morning, Belinda doing the fulmars and Jeroen #2 the snowies. A nest check not only included counting birds and chicks but also checking which bird is on which nest by reading an electronic number on their banded legs. When the chicks were present they had to be weighed manually by Belinda, who also did vocalisation recordings to store the 'golden voices' of the fulmar chick's.

But a simple nest check was never that simple. Jeroen #2 would return covered in spit from his adorable snowies asking if it was ok if he spat back at them. It was a kind of a love-hate relationship. Occasionally Belinda took over the snowie check protecting her ears with a walkman to prevent the headache that normally followed checking the screeching birds.

Every day Belinda had to walk up and down a 'lightly snow covered, icy, slippery slope', (definitely the worst part of the island) to the fulmar colony at Robb's Landing. This was done many many times to get in good physical shape according to Jeroen #2. To increase the number of times she had to run up and down she often took almost empty batteries down to the colony for the tiris reader and walkmans (used for vocalisation). Sometimes she put the batteries in the wrong way so she could run (shouting for new batteries the whole way) back up the hill once more so Jeroen #2 could take them out and put them back in the correct way. The record number of climbs up the hill for one day peaked at about 10.

Towards the end of the season a group of 12 GPs decided that the chicks would make a tasty snack while they camped out in front of the colonies. This caused a few problems because they always tended to eat our favourite chicks and leave bits of their legs in front of the colony. GPs were also unfamiliar with the 100m minimum approach distance between humans and themselves designated in the Madrid Protocol. If we kept up this regulation we would have had to walk over water.

While both his asses were scattered over the Island working extremely hard all the time (!) Jeroen #1 spent a lot of his day behind the computer responding to e-mails and working out exactly what he was doing out on this island for the second year in a row.

Lunch

The usual Ardery Island lunch time was around 15:00 each day. Once again the Dutch boys consumed copious amounts of bread, cheese (instead of peanut butter) and coffee, while Belinda was happy with tomato worms (ie. spaghetti) on toast and packet soup. She enjoyed the packet soup so much that she swore never to eat it ever again on her RTA.

Afternoon work

An afternoon job involved recalibrating the artificial nest system to check if they were still giving the correct weights or if dirt and snow had influenced the weight. These nest recalibrations were always dreaded, mainly by Jeroen #2 as he had to sit inside the apple while Belinda was out soaking up the sunshine on the cliffs playing with the birds. Jeroen #2 could never work out how Belinda managed to balance on a cliff, hang on to an adult fulmar, a chick, speak on the radio and put calibration weights on the nest all at the same time, as well as running off to take penguin and whale photos.

Bird-banding also became a favourite pass-time. This involved trying to catch both adults and chicks and giving them a number of rather attractive metal and plastic bracelets. The unique numbers enabled identification of that bird in the future. The chicks were easy to catch, mainly because they couldn't fly, but they sure could spit. For nice jobs like chick banding we asked volunteers from Casey to come and help us. Some were still complaining about the distinctive bird smell even after they washed their clothes several times. During banding of the snowies Jeroen #2 was promoted to 'chief snowie chick catcher'. The snowie chicks not only sound like a shotgun being fired but they spit, reload and spit again (bright orange smelly fish like substances) before you can get out of the way. By the time the birds reached Belinda and Jeroen #1 for banding their spit supplies had diminished....sometimes.

Jeroen 2 also became an experienced stomach flusher, of birds that is. Although it was suggested that if we ever got bored we could always try stomach flushing each other, especially after a big meal and the accompanying vodka and wine. When big ass was too busy with his computer work one of his asses would do the third bird colony on Ardery, the Antarctic petrels. The Antarctic colony is located on a cliff site 40 m above sea level. Abseiling down a cliff was necessary to reach this colony, however one of the hazards of this job was to avoid stepping on birds nesting in this area.

Another favourite never ending task was data entry, thoroughly enjoyed by all asses. The only bad thing about the field work was that everything had to be put into the computer. At regular intervals screams were heard when Belinda vented her feelings towards the computer. During the season Belinda developed an intense dislike for her (#@$!%^) computer. The poor computer had problems with the cold, so Jeroen #2 said.

Resupplies were always a joyous occasion on Ardery Island because it meant fresh(ish) food for us Arderians and contact with other people. However, one of the most dreaded sayings the Arderians came to hear was that... it's on the next boat to Ardery... mainly because we never new when the next boat was.

Dinner

Despite what a number of people thought we didn't eat freeze-dried food. Sometimes Meredith would provide us with pre-cooked meals, which were especially handy at the end of the season when everything was completely frozen. Each of us cooked every third night on Ardery. For Jeroen #1 and Belinda this wasn't a problem, but Jeroen #2 started panicking early in the morning when he realised he had to cook that night. Some of his more outstanding dishes were tomato pasta with peaches, and curry with pears. We were not sure whether he was inventing new meals or trying to cheat us out of desert by including it in our main meal. Although we did manage to find some tasty desserts in the rat packs. Jeroen #2's cooking was often accompanied by his Dutch music which can only be described as 'different' or even worse his techno. Even Jeroen #1 couldn't understand the Dutch music. During the wining and dining conversation flowed and many stories about life in the Netherlands and Australia were swapped. We also had some unusual calls from Casey, usually late on a Saturday night. One memorable conversation being from Houston, Texas and Mars Explorer wondering if we had seen a missing 'Buttercup' in our neighbourhood. After dinner the three Arderians were often spotted running over the island taking numerous photos, after all you can never have too many sunset photos. During the peak of the season however, our nights were taken up with work, sometimes we were in the colonies until midnight. The two Jeroens even stomach flushed at 1:00 in the morning by tilley light on snowy mountain.

When we eventually made it to our bedrooms which were in various locations on the island we couldn't escape the fact that we were in Antarctica. Jeroen #2 dreamt of penguins driving their chicks in racing cars to the beach, while Belinda dreamt of hundreds of penguins wearing her red turtleneck that went missing the previous week.

End to the season

The end to the Ardery season didn't turn out quite how we had expected. Jeroen #2 made a last effort to return to Casey for some R & R in case we were iced in and couldn't 'escape' until the choppers arrived. However, instead of returning to his beloved island Jeroen #2 stayed at Casey, as boating back to Ardery was stopped due to a rather large amount of ice blocking the wharf area. Bulldozers and the IRBs couldn't even break through. Meanwhile work in the field had stopped and for Jeroen #1 and Belinda ice-watching became a favourite pass-time. On the 8th of April a break in the ice was spotted and our ever willing and able Casey boating crew initiated the rescue. Two rubber duckies were lowered down an ice cliff on Mitchell Peninsula and dragged over a few ice floes that threatened to halt the rescue attempt between Mitchell and Ardery. Even Jeroen #2 was on board, but he was rather reluctant to finish his stay on the island while Jeroen #1 and Belinda went back to Casey. So, finally the Arderians were reunited. Back at Casey the dedicated Jeroen #1 continued his phd while Jeroen #2 and Belinda came close to setting a new record for daily jollies.