A Mixed Bag

Thursday saw me in the kitchen for the day. It is just like school camp here, we are all rostered on to help out with common duties. Being in the kitchen is referred to as being on 'slushy' duty. It is the longest work day of all. Start time is at about 0800, and you keep going through till about 2000, cleaning, washing dishes, prepping food etc. You really don't stop all day. The best thing about being slushy is the fact that you get to pick what is played on the station radio all day. Needless to say, there was plenty of Pearl Jam (and a lot of The Waifs) played. Here I am stirring the goulash for dinner. Friday night is usually a chance to kick back and relax, but not last Friday. I was playing pool at about 2200 when my pager went off. There was a problem down in the R/O building. It turns out a pump had given up the ghost and had to be replaced. The picture above shows (L-R) Doug, Jason and Barry working away feverishly, whilst I slack off taking pics!

What you see in this photo are know as dykes. Geologists think they are very exciting. To the rest of us they are just black lines of rock. On Sunday I went out with a group of geos (Chris and Catherine) to help them take samples of one of the dykes near station. So off we set, beginning to walk the length of one of these dykes taking sledgehammers with us to break off samples.
This is about the only time that Jim actually picked up a sledgie to swing it in anger (with Glen and Chris looking on), so it had to make it on the blog! He spent more time taking photos than taking swings. We managed to break two of the three sledgehammers during the day. After taking samples we then had to lug the bloody rocks with us to a convenient point for helicopter collection. It was hard work, but was really good fun day with some really good fun people.Our stopping point for the day was marked by our arrival at the Ellis Narrows. You can see on the other side of the water where the dykes continue to cut their way across the continent (as Chris is showing Glen. Tomorrow the geos will continue along the same dyke on the other side of the narrows. And good luck to them too, I'll be busy back on station working on not carrying rocks around all day!