A first visit to Antarctica - some impressions

SA Agulhas ... 31st \January 1983

Tom Wheeler

Meintjeskop Courier, March 1984

At the invitation of the Director-General of Transport, a group of government officials and SASCAR project leaders, including the President of the CSIR (Dr C.F. Garbers), the leader of the cosmic ray programme at Potchefstroom University (Prof P.H. Stoker), the leader of the cartography and eodesy programme at Surveys and Mapping Branch (Mr E. Fitschen) and representatives of various government departments with an involvement in the South African Antarctic Programme joined the SA Agulhas at Cape Town on 31 January 1983 for Voyage 28 to Sanae. As the purpose of the voyage was to bring the 1982 overwintering team off the ice, the scientists of the summer programme and the building artisans of the Department of Community Development in from the cold, it was to take only three weeks, a period which most of the participants, with their eyes tightly closed, could afford to be away from their desks.

Represented were the "providers" - the Treasury, the State Buyer, the Commission for Commission Administration and Community Development, the “monitors” – the Auditor-General’s Office, the  "teachers" - the home economist who each year instructs the over-wintering team in the art of feeding each other, and assorted others like myself - for seven years involved with Treaty matters without ever seeing the ice.

If the purpose was to show us the hardships endured by those involved in the programme, the sea and the weather literally rose to the occasion. For days on end the Roaring Forties did what they were famous for. The indicator on the bridge recorded several 43 degree rolls in each direction, but there seemed to be nothing up there to record the terrifying angles at which the bow went up and over the swells into the void beyond. Laurie Malherbe of the Weather Bureau mentioned in an awed but matter-of fact way that he had never before recorded such low barometric pressures.

Puma unloads cargo into the hold of SA Agulhas back in 1983

By the time we reached the vicinity of Sanae we were two days behind schedule and there was great excitement when a vast field of broken pack ice appeared up ahead on the evening of the ninth day.

Around midnight with the odd sight of the sun rising and setting simultaneously on the horizon ahead we reached the clear water of the bukta at the edge of the ice shelf. Only the thought that the next day was likely to be a busy one with a visit to Sanae, convinced many of the need to get some sleep.

As all the bay ice had disappeared, cargo handling and passenger movements to and from the ice had to be by helicopter. After all the preflight warnings about what not to touch one wondered whether it was safe to sit close to a  window or to move around. That was soon forgotten when we saw what photographs there were for the taking.

Perhaps the most awe-inspiring sight from the air as we crossed the edge of the shelf was the SA Agulhas out in the bukta, minute and overshadowed by the vastness of the ice and..:-the sea beyond. How insignificant we and all our life- support systems seemed.

The first impression of Sanae as a cluster of wooden huts, heavy vehicles, drums and wires was soon replaced by appreciation for what the engineers and artisans had done underneath to make overwintering possible and reasonably comfortable. The cheese and wine party laid on 8m under the ice at 70 degrees S seems incongruous only in retrospect.

Our only experience of surface travel was a bone-shaking 3 km over the sastrugi in a Nodwel to see the primitive conditions and the effects of ice pressure on the old emergency base. Again we took note of the trying living conditions of the team and the artisans.

For grandeur of location the new field station at Grunehogna, built in unbelievable weather conditions in the preceding six weeks, would be hard to imagine. At the foot of Mountain 1285 with its deep, clear, blue ice at the bottom of a 100m windscoop, it inspired several members to wonder whether the Treaty would allow for a ski lodge for tourists to be operated in the spirit of free enterprise! But then getting them there … !

The "Spirit of the Treaty” was clearly illustrated to us at Grunehogna. The station with its food supplies, equipment, diesel generators and fuel stands there unlocked, available for any traveller who might come across the ice and need shelter.

One could not but try to imagine the hardships experienced by Antarctic explorers as some of us flew across seemingly endless ice to a warm welcome at the West German base, Georg von Neumayer, 250 krn away. The engineers cast an interested professional eye over the place and wished the Treasury were there to see what could be done if the budget was generous enough!

The pressure from those who had been on the ice to get back to Cape Town was irresistible and from Georg von Neumayer we flew back to the ship already on its way out to the open sea. The flight took us over hundreds of kilometres of the ice edge with icebergs in the making enough for Saudi Arabia and patterns in the broken pack-ice enough to inspire a linoleum designer for the rest of his days!

As a final treat, the weather at Bouvet was unusually sunny and cear, although the summit was covered in mist. It was much bigger than most of us had imagined. More photographs to add to the reels already shot.

I regret though, that I saw no penguins and not one krill! But at last I have seen minke whales, animals that have engaged a great deal of my attention in Brighton and , retoria. Sanae, Bouvet, Georg von Neumayer now are real places, not merely dots on a map. One certainly has an appreciation of what it takes to run the Antarctic research programme. Back in Pretoria, you look at the map and cannot believe that the distances you covered across the ice are hardly measurable on it and that the part of the continent you did not see stretches on and on and on ...

An experience we will always remember and cherish, but one several of us would not care to repeat unless something can be done about the Roaring Forties!

Tom Wheeler was subsequently a member of the South African delegations to the Antarctic Treaty consultative meeting that adopted the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 1980. He also led the South African delegation to the 18th Antarctic Consultative Meeting in Kyoto, Japan in 1994.