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March 4th
Hi everybody, this morning I  slept in until 10.30am, the sea was so calm and quiet, and when I looked out my porthole it was snowing! It was very foggy all day and I didn’t see one icebergMy friend Caroline, who is travelling south to assess the state of all the old asbestos buildings, saw a huge black fin. It was probably a killer whale playing on the bow wave of the ship. After lunch I rugged up and went outside and the ship looked very eerie with snow on it’s decks. The seas got rockier this afternoon and sent the poor seasick ones to their cabins. This evening four of us were nearing the end of a very close scrabble game ( the board covered with glad wrap to stop the pieces sliding ) when a huge swell sent the board sliding off the table onto the floor. It was a bit sad for Jamie, who was poised to win, but that’s life, until tomorrow, Alison

March 5th
Hi there everybody, last night was a wild blizzard. A big swell coming in from the side made the ship twist and roll all night, and it was very hard to sleep. I was sliding up and down my bed like a yoyo. This morning the decks were covered with ice and snow and it was too dangerous to go out. About lunch time the storm abated and we came into an area littered with ice, lots of bergs and broken-up pack ice. The ship slowed right down, but there were still some loud BONGS as growlers ( icebergs just below the surface ) bashed into the ship’s hull. The sky behind us is grey and heavy but ahead are clear skies with some high cloud. It might be a lovely sunset, so I’d better go and have dinner ( the food is still fantastic ) and get back up on deck, until tomorrow, Alison

March 6th
Hello everybody, it was a fabulous sunset last night, red, orange, yellows, streaking the sky and reflecting in the water, with ice bergs looking black against the shimmer and birds flying everywhere. It lasted for ages, the sun didn’t set until about 10.30 and by the time I came inside my toes and fingers were frozen, colder than they have ever been. Today I have been wearing my special polar clothes and felt toasty all day. The outfit starts off with thermal top and long johns, t-shirt, polarfleece top, freezer suit ( an insulated jump suit which makes everyone look like a telly tubby ), thick woollen socks, insulated snow boots ( sorells ), glove liners, gloves, neck warmer, beanie, and finally a big gortex jacket.

We expected to be at Mawson Station this morning but the ice is so thick that the captain is unwilling to go on in case we get stuck, so with only 25 nautical miles to go ( of a 2500 mile journey ) we have stopped. It’s very frustrating looking across the ice to open water and the mountains behind Mawson and not being able to get there. I helped clear the ice and snow off the helideck this morning ( had to peel a couple of layers off ) and then the choppers came out and ferried the scientists ashore. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll get on to a helicopter tomorrow, or that the ice will clear. Please wish me luck, with best wishes, Alison

March 7th
Hi everyone, I am jumping out of my skin because our ship is moored in horseshoe bay at mawson station! When I got up this morning we still stuck in the ice, going nowhere, but the wind blew and blew, and shifted the ice to make a clear passage for the ship to go through. I stood up on the Monkey Deck, the deck above the bridge, all the way in, and it was fantastic watching the ice and frozen islands. I have never been in wind as cold or fierce; I couldn’t hold the camera steady and I couldn’t stand up unless I was sheltering behind something ( or someone ). From where we were stuck in the ice, the mountains behind Mawson looked like they were poking up through mist, but as we drew closer we could see that it was snow. Imagine four jagged mountain ranges, ancient spires of grey rock, sitting a bed of white snow  thousands of feet thick. It seems a perfect place for knights and dragons .

The islands near the harbour have no plants at all, just plain rock and penguin poo. They are fringed with white, which at first I thought was waves, but is actually ice frozen in splash shapes. We passed so many different types of ice today; some groaned and banged as the ship pushed it aside, and another type splintered like glass as we crashed through it. One lot of pancake ice was so soft that it didn’t crack at all. Anyway, I’d better go, I need to get ready for my first day ashore, yours, icily, Alison

March 8th
Hi everybody, and many apologies for getting so far behind but we have been having some wild times. We all bounded out of bed early and were ready to go ashore at !0.30am. There is no jetty, so just getting ashore was an adventure. We all ( about 30 of us ) lined up in the mess, dressed in our polar clothes, passed our packs forward, and then one by one, stepped into a space where a hatch had been removed so there was a big hole in the side of the ship. We put our life jackets on, then climbed out backwards and down a rope ladder with wooden steps, on to a slippery wooden platform ( a barge I guess ) that had been tied to the Aurora Two, a little tug boat that normally sits in the bow of the ship. It had been lowered into the sea with a crane. It was very cold and windy, though not as fierce as the evening before, when the captain had brought his huge ship into tiny Horseshoe Bay in 50 knot winds, and parked it like you’d park a car. We had to crouch down on the barge so we wouldn’t fall off, and the Aurora Two chugged us to shore and there I was, standing on Antarctica! We grabbed our bags and headed up the hill to The Red Shed, a huge two story building where all the Mawson people live. The ground was very rough and rocky, with patches of snow. Thick ropes linked all the buildings ( so in a blizzard you can get from one building to another without getting lost ). It was a relief to get out of the wind but as soon as I got inside I started to feel sick and giddy, and then I realised that the building was heaving like a ship, up, down. It was crazy, I didn’t feel seasick on the ship but I got seasick on land. This feeling stayed with me all the time I was ashore and I also kept wanting to push things to the back of shelves so they wouldn’t slip off when the building swayed, and hook chairs to the desk with octopus straps, like we do on the ship. Anyway, the station leader, Cookie, welcomed us and told us what was what, and after we’d helped carry medical supplies into the hospital we set off to go exploring. My friend Georgie, who is going to be a ranger at Macquarie Island, and I wandered along West Arm, a low, rocky bit that curves around the harbour just like an arm and looked at the three graves there, big cairns of stone with white crosses behind them. It was sad to think that these people had come so far and never gone home. One boy was only twenty years old. We watched a fat Weddell seal scratching his whiskers with his flipper, a beautiful little cat’s face on a very fat body. All the Weddell seals I have watched here look as though they have stomach aches, they roll and wriggle and moan, as if to say “boy, I wish I hadn’t eaten those last five fish’.

My next adventure was going up on to the plateau behind the station, where the ice levels out. Geoff, the station doctor, drove us in a Hagglund vehicle, two blue boxes on tracks like a bulldozer. Seven of us squeezed into the front cabin, and our bags went into the back one. It was very noisy and bumpy but went smoothly over the snow as we headed up and away from the station, until we got to a place where the fierce winds had blown all the snow away and I realised the hill was made of pale blue, hard, shiny ice. The Hagglund’s tracks couldn’t get a grip on the ice, and we slipped back until we hit snow again. This happened a few times until we did one huge backwards slide, for almost 100 metres. I was looking back at the sea thinking how bad it would be to slip into freezing water when we stopped sliding and Geoff gunned it to the top, with us all cheering. We drove for a few kilometres to where some huts and machinery, all on the same bulldozer tracks, were parked. Before we got out, Geoff gave us chains to hook under our boots, because the ice is so slippery. It’s not like walking on snow, its just hard blue ice. I walked ( very carefully ) towards the mountains for a little way and it felt wonderful to have all that enormous, empty landscape in front of me. Looking the other way, we could see the ship and the station, and out across an ocean littered with islands and icebergs. It was very cold, and when I took my glove off to adjust something on my camera my hand nearly froze.

In the afternoon I explored around the station, taking photographs and at 5.00pm it was time to go back to the ship for dinner. We were ferried back in Zodiacs, little rubber boats with an outboard motor at the back. The expeditioners working on the boats have to wear immersion suits ( like a wetsuit but with air inside ) in case they fall in. It was good to get back to my cabin and warm up but I had to be ashore again in no time because Frances ( my cabin mate ) and I had volunteered for fuel duty from 8pm until midnight. A huge black hose had been run from the bow of the Aurora to the fuel farm, pumping diesel into the tanks, and it was our job to make sure the tanks didn’t overflow and that there were no leaks. The wind had really started to howl so I put on almost every bit of polar clothing I could find. I was so fat I couldn’t do my life jacket up. When we got ashore we met Neil, from Mawson, who was on fuel duty too and he really knew what he was doing. We just had to be with him in case there was an accident. We had a little insulated hut to sit in but very half hour we climbed up to the top of the tanks and checked how full they were. It was very cold and very difficult to see the diesel mark on a black measuring stick at night. The wind was blowing harder all the time and after the zodiacs took some people back to the ship at 11.00pm the captain decided it was too dangerous for any more trips. Frances and I were stranded ashore! At midnight we finished our shift and headed up to the Red Shed to try and find somewhere to sleep. It was very cold and dark and so windy that I could hardly breathe. It felt very good to get into the building and be out of danger. I found a bed in the hospital and had a beautiful sleep, but when the doctor came in he said I should not have been there, so I felt pretty embarrassed, even though he was nice about it.

March 10th
Sorry everybody, for falling off the screen for a couple of days. By the time Frances ( my cabin mate ) and I had finished fuel duty at midnight on Monday the wind was blowing too hard for the zodiac ( rubber boat ) to take us back to the ship, so we had to sleep ashore ( I found a bed in the hospital ). It turned into a blizzard which lasted all day Tuesday and most of yesterday, and I finally got back to the ship last night. I have to sleep now but I promise I will write a HUGE email as soon as I wake up, telling you all about it, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, thank you for your patience, Alison