The Last Supper

Last Saturday night was billed as the Last Supper here at Davis. With the Aurora Australis due to be here early this week (but now most likely won't be here till Friday morning, meaning everyone will be here for one more Saturday night) a special night was planned. Every Saturday night is more of a formal occasion down here, but this time we went one step further. To say goodbye and thank you to the summerers about to leave, we decided to run dinner like a restaurant, with table service and an a la carte menu, with all the work being done by the winterers. Tables had to be booked in advance, and you got to choose your waiter for the evening. I wasn't a waiter though, having decided I'm too far above serving people directly, and opted to work in the kitchen. We all had a ball, and the summerers loved it.

One of the jobs I set for myself during the day was to collect ice for the drinks that evening. I was out with the Geoscience Australia boys anyway on a jolly while they were doing their final lake level measurements (more photos to come) so it wasn't too hard to organise. I took a bucket and ice axe with me, and after the final lake we asked the chopper pilot Ric to take us to the Sorsdal Glacier to collect some thousands of years old ice to put in the bourbon. Life's tough down here!

Intrepid Antarctic explorer gathers ice for spirits

Later in the evening (after the final of the darts comp which the bloody seppo Dennis won) the band fired up for one last time which was quite a sad time, as the musical talent of the wintering crew has nothing on the guys here now. And once again I couldn't help myself, and up I got and had another sing.

Me singing with Jim (check out his blog, link on the right)

As the night went on, a few of us decided that we would stay up for the lunar eclipse that was due to start at 0400 on Sunday morning. What a great idea! To fill in time, we decided to ring someone a long way from here. So we dialled international information and asked for A. Jones of Main St, Anchorage, Alaska. And there was one! Andrew is his name, and he runs his own 'auto repair shop'. He thought it was hilarious, and so did we, after a few too many glacial bourbons! We've got his number now, so we told him we would call him during the year, just to see how business is going. He gave us another number to ring, but they didn't answer so we kept changing the last number till someone else answered. In a bizarre coincidence, we got the Iditarod Association (for those who don't know, the Iditarod is a 10 day husky race across Alaska). They really were thrilled to hear from us, given our past association with the huskies. And the other weird thing was that the race was underway, and the last two teams had only left an hour before our call. (As a side note, our bar down here is named after the last Davis husky, Nina. The reason she was the last is that when it was time for the last group to go home, Nina somehow managed to 'disappear' from station till after the boat sailed). We also called Chris's mum, and allegedly Mum got a call too, but I have no recollection of this...

So after all that, it was finally time for the eclipse. It was quite stunning too, with the moon taking on quite a reddish glow. And it was -11 degrees at that time of the morning, which added to the whole experience. I finally got to bed sometime after 0615, woke up at about 1215 feeling fantastic, adding weight to my theory that hangovers don't exist down here, although some people would disagree!

Lunar Eclipse, Sunday 4th March