Today I realised I haven’t been enjoying my own company much lately. Which is awkward when you’re the only one you’re hanging out with.
Read MoreNeko Morning
Neko Harbour. It is early morning and the penguins are quiet. That soft sleepiness. Awakening. We sense their slumber. The sun arrives on their rocky beach. They go about their business and we ours.
Read MoreDeep South Wonder
This is our second last trip of the season and it's been one of the best I've ever had. Everything from the very first landing to the last has been impeccable. The weather: almost no wind, no chop, no hard rain. Only mysterious grey and purple skies, unusual stripes of cool blue tracing the edge of the snowy plateaus, huge bunches of dry snowflakes and the quick bracing cold of the coming winter. I don't even know where to start with all the amazing things that have happened.
Read MoreDrake Lake
Yesterday we sailed on the finest seas you'll ever see. Glorious, irrepressible sun through the day; so still the seabirds that soar on the peaks and troughs of wind-lashed seas have sought loftier places. Ocean of the softest velvet, plum skies in the evening and a dashing Milky Way tonight. Days like this it's hard to believe this is work.
Autumn and Stormy Seas
We have arrived at the end of this voyage and are now getting towards the end of our first full sea day on our way back to Ushuaia. We started sailing at about 10am yesterday, and now it is almost 8pm. We have had a very rough Drake so far, with waves up to 12m and winds up to 55knots. Feels stormy.
Read MoreTelefon Bay, Deception Island
This morning we visited Deception Island, an active volcano in the South Shetlands. It is an active caldera of black sands, sweeping hills and deep craters: a wild and dramatic landscape. Today a dusting of snow accentuated the subtle relief of the hills, highlighting each undulation. It feels like another planet.
Read MoreSouth Orkneys to Antarctica
I'm going well. I've had a couple of rough days with seasickness, but today we sail from the South Orkneys to Antarctica and the seas are quite gentle. Looking forward to getting back to Antarctica. Although the South Orkneys were absolutely beautiful. That gorgeous Antarctic-style light, flat and yet somehow luminous, everything alight from within, low cloud and iridescent glaciers draped over the landscape.
Read MoreDrygalski Fjord, South Georgia
Yesterday in Drygalski Fjord we had the most incredibly calm conditions. Imagine a narrow inlet facing south, opening onto the Southern Ocean, in the path of some of the most ferocious low pressure systems on earth. And this inlet has many glaciers pouring down from the mountains above, glaciers which give birth to fierce katabatic winds that drive from high ground to low, gathering speed as they fall, sweeping along the inlet towards the sea. Winds roar through this fjord from every quarter.
Read MoreDrygalski Fjord and West Point
About five minutes ago we were sailing along the Drygalski Fjord, stones of Gondwana on one side, hundreds of millions of years old, stones of . . . well, another slightly more recent time on the other, and the distinctive aquamarine water infused with glacial sediment from several tidewater glaciers that flow into the fjord. Some of the glaciers are jumbled, tumbling disorderly down steep banks, others flow uniformly down gentle inclines.
The Drygalski Fjord, like pretty much every single landing since we left Ushuaia ten days ago, was an exercise in the unlikely, the impossible, the uncontainable.
Read MoreGodthul and South Georgia Pipits
A morning of driving around Godthul, South Georgia. We sailed through a narrow gap in the mountains into this wineglass-round cove, steep scree-covered walls with occasional grassy ledges and craggy cliffs rising out of the water, hundreds of metres high. Our landing site was a gravel beach alive with fur seals and king penguins. I was one of the first on the water and for a time, I was all alone.
Read MoreApproaching Shore
As we approach the beach - pretty much any beach in South Georgia - on the first Zodiac of the day, we float around for a while just a few metres from the shore, surrounded by fur seal pups frolicking, bounding, leaping, twisting, gliding, occasionally turning towards us to take in the strange black pontoons of our Zodiac reflected in their moony eyes.
Then the king penguins emerge, heads appearing for all the world like tiny periscopes, the telltale golden stroke of their necks followed by feathered tails swishing back and forth in the water, their backs glistening . . . eventually we find a place to poke our nose onto the beach, gently displacing as few seals and penguins as possible.
The Falklands and South Georgia
Highlights so far?
Read MoreAustralia Promises Dark Future
As Australia takes its first steps into a darker future it's worth asking: what is all the fuss about? Why do dark skies matter?
Read MoreGerlache Strait
We've spent some time on this voyage discussing the relative virtues of experiencing a landscape through a camera lens and leaving the camera behind. Being in Antarctica, where every scene offers the opportunity to capture something of the sublime for later - possibly at the expense of being here now - this seems to be a pertinent question . . .
Read MoreFirst impressions
As the boat starts to pitch and roll, the ground is never quite where you expect it to be and body pinball is a given. Bouncing from one surface to another - in complete control at all times of course :) - makes for a good workout.
Read MoreMicroplastics: A Macro Issue?
On the morning of Monday June 8th I didn’t know it was World Oceans Day. I did know it was a public holiday, so I woke up with the languid ease that comes from feeling like you’ve gained a day.
Read MoreThe Zen of Work and Consequence
Somewhere along the line when I was growing up I learned that there are two kinds of work: the kind of consequence, and the kind of none. Most of my life I have done work of no consequence.
Read MoreDinner at Bernie's
Tired from a long weekend of canoeing and camping, I pulled up under a pool of light spilling out from Bernie's Cafe in Moss Vale. It was 7pm on a Sunday night and the small town was quiet. Bernie's red neon sign was a solitary beacon . . .
Read MoreThe Pleasure and Pain of Being a Beginner
As I get older I have noticed this draw, an irrevocable desire to feel like an expert. To feel like I have mastered something. It's partly how I want to feel about myself . . .
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