May 21: Gentoo penguins

Gentoo Penguin. Photo: Jacque Comery

Gentoo Penguins. Photo: Jacque Comery



Gentoos with The Nuggets in the background. Photo: Jacque Comery

May 20: Cheekly fur seal strikes again...

This guy is clearly going to be a weekly highlight.
Station was offering endless appealing options for shelter during strong cold winds this week. Aside from an attempted break in to the brewery, this morning cheeky fur seal tried to bust into our front door!


Let me in! Photo: Jacque Comery





Photo: Jacque Comery



May 19: Cargo facility

Macquarie Island shipping container. Photo: Jacque Comery

Everything that sits here on Macquarie Island for a seasons bears the marks of the fierce salt laden winds. 

May 18: Elephant seal sparring practice

 

Photo: Jacque Comery

Photo: Jacque Comery

Photo: Jacque Comery

 

Photo: Jacque Comery



No hard feelings. Photo: Jacque Comery

May 17: World Whisky Day

The Macca Mash Tun crew. Photo: Rich Youd

 

Today we hosted the Macca Mash Tun 2015, for World Whisky Day 2015.  The Mash Tun was highlighted on the World Whiskey Day website as being the most isolated event for 2015.

“Our most isolated event on the sub-Antarctic Tasmanian territory Macquarie Island (1,000 miles southwest of Tasmania and 2,300 miles north of Antarctica), where the winter population of 13 were set to celebrate in style at their Macca Mash Tun event” – World Whiskey Day website.

Generous expeditioners put forward their finest drops, and a world class selection was assembled. Ten different malts were selected for tasting to represent a diverse range of geography and flavour.  Drams of uisce beatha (“water of life”), were prepared and sampled whist we shared the distillery history and tasting notes for each drop.

Whilst the furious Macca winds raged outside, we sat around our imaginary fireplace over 4 hours sharing the intrigue of picking out the notes and bouquets identified by the tasting notes.  Mangoes, vanilla, peat, fruits, cinnamon and other spices danced from the glasses to our discerning noses.  Tastings were followed promptly by judgement, with different preferences dividing the opinion of the discerning tasters.

Wonderful whisky tales were shared. Most bottles came compete with a story of how they came to be judged worthy of being selected to make the trip to Macca. Other bottles were presented with fond memories of visits to distilleries, or significant occasions. The most isolated whisky tasting event on the globe was rounded out, representing Tasmania, with a fine single malt from Nant Distillery, The Old Mill Reserve  – a cask strength offering created from selected barrels of American Oak ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks.

Our Tasting List:

Nant Distillery The Old Mill Reserve

The Balvenie Double Wood 12yo

Glenmorangie The Original 10yo

Talisker 10yo

Bushmills Irish Whiskey 10yo

Bowmore Legend  

Laphroaig PX Cask

Lagavulin 16yo

The Glenrothes Select Reserve

Drambuie Whisky Liqueur

May 16: Fire alarms

Wondering if there will be any more firm alarms today. Photo: Jacque Comery

Today we had our third fire alarm in two days. Winds have been gusting around the 50 knots and we have had sensors triggering alarms in different buildings. Our first alarm was in work hours, so we all scrambled from our workplaces, some people running from far away down the Isthmus.  The second had us jolted from sleep at 2230 hrs, diving into our pile of evacuation clothes that we all keep handy  in case we need to get our of our buildings quickly in the middle of the night.  Driving rain and howling winds had us all wide awake in no time.  Our latest alarm was right in the middle of me cooking smoko in the kitchen...and no I didn't set it off.
I usually hold the role of Incident Controller but today I was on BA 4. In a flash I whipped the eggs off the grill, shut down the stove and bain marie, and scampered to the Fire Hut, to gear up in turnout gear and await instructions from the Fire Chief.
Our fire team is comprised of 4 BA (breathing apparatus) units, a Chief, a BA controller, and a pump and hose team.  With only 13 of us here, that pretty much means that everyone on station turns out with a job.  After a week of firefighting training in Hobart, Tasmania before we left we are now trained to be self sufficient to respond to all alarms triggered down her.  There is no fire brigade to call on down here in the middle of the southern ocean, so we all take our fire team roles seriously.
The role of chief is rotated around three of the team, with the rest of the roles being allocated weekly. We hold training every fortnight to stay sharp, after all we are our own emergency response team.

Jac in turnout gear. Photo: Jacque Comery

My BA gear. Photo: Jacque Comery

May 14: Stretching out

All packaged up in the stretcher. Photo: Jacque Comery

The culprits (Dan, Rich, Ben) who packaged me. Photo: Jacque Comery

Just training... check out the cool little floats around our stretcher in case we evacuate someone by boat.  I was in the warmest, cosiest place on station!