Davis, Sunday, 13th January 2002
I slept profoundly, alone in the artificial darkness of my donga "Red 1", essentially a rehabilitated freezer container, with a massive fridge door, but with heat applied from the inside ! "Life in the freezer" could be taken literally here. There was a momentary second of primal panic, awakening in darkness for the first time in a new place. Being Sunday morning, there wasn't much life around the station and the air was still, brilliantly sunny and warm, I guessed 6-8 degrees (confirmed later) and there was no discomfort walking around in shorts and t-shirt in the crisp dry air. Most the snow that was piled up in December had melted away, and the fast ice off the Davis "beach" looked very rotten, with melt pools on the surface and wide cracks everywhere. We reunited with all our Voyage 4 friends around lunch, after which some time was dedicated to sorting out gear ready for return to Canberra and Kingston. Sunday roast was a magnificent affair, succulent cuts of beef and chicken wings with gravy. I transferred all of the raw GPS data files for Beaver Lake and Dalton Corner to Canberra so that some timeseries could at last be determined. After a few ales with Adrian and some of the other stationers, I went for a stroll around 1.30 in the morning, walking around the station shore in deliciously warm and still conditions. The icebergs in the distance were all cast with a deliciously rosy hue from the very low sun and the sea was creeping up very slowly with the tide. Absolutely no breeze or swell at all. The only noises were the flights of Wilsons Storm Petrels and the distant hum of the generator. Davis is referred to as "The riviera of the south" when these conditions are normal. It was a very fitting way to complete a tour of duty in the Antarctic. I ended up crawling back to the dong at 4 am or so. The word was that we would be flying out to the Aurora Australis tomorrow in the morning to make the voyage 5 back to Hobart.

Davis Station, S 68°34'38" E 77°58'21"

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