THE FIRST SKUA RETURNS

The excitement this week was when I fell over. I was twice as exciting because I was carrying the toilet bucket down to the sea when it happened. Margie was about 15 metres behind me. I couldn't see her face through the neoprene face mask but somehow I just knew she was smiling. You see, I don't fall down as often as Margie. But when I do fall, I like to make it a good one but would you believe it? I didn't spill anything!

MAJOR ARRIVAL THIS WEEK
The first skua arrived last Sunday night at 5 o'clock. He or she has settled into a rocky outcrop by Boat Harbour. Since skuas like to eat penguins we think the penguins can't be too far away. We've been counting the days until the penguins arrive. They aren't due according to what we have read for another three weeks. The day after the skua arrived we had another blizzard. It lasted for two days so the poor skua probably got blown back out to sea.

BATTERIES NAMED HUEY, LOUEY AND DEWEY
We told you about the battery troubles that we have been having. Well, we are still warming the batteries to improve their condition. We decided to treat them very nicely and moved them inside Gadget Hut. If we are going to live with them we figured they need names. Something easier than battery number 1, battery number 2, etc. So Huey, Louey and Dewey are permanently residing inside with us, right in front of our heater! When we were speaking with New Zealand schools this week we had to cut our conversation short because Huey, Louey and Dewey were acting up. They seem to be alright then they play up. They seem like mischievous games. We'll be keeping our eyes on them now since they are inside with us. They take up one third of our floor space so we have to walk around them all the time. We are happy to do this if it makes the batteries happy. We are keeping our fingers crossed. It was minus 12 inside this morning. Poor Huey, Louey and Dewey probably woke up thinking they were still outside!

NSW EDUCATION WEEK LAUNCHED FROM EXPEDITION ICE- BOUND EXHIBIT NSW
Minister for Education John Aquilina visited Tempe High School to officially launch Education Week in New South Wales on the 11th of September. He spoke from an exhibit about Expedition Ice-Bound! The great work was done by students from 5-6 W at Menai Public School. It was selected as the location for the podium and microphones for Mr. Aquilina's speech. Mrs. Cheryl Walter's class 5-6 W built a full size model of Gadget Hut and were demonstrating how they are using telecommunications and computers to learn about Antarctica when Mr. Aquilina arrived! He asked us to come and tell him all about the Expedition Ice-Bound adventure when we get back! The students from Menai put our call from Antarctica on their speaker phone at the launch and we had a discussion about their dry ice in a bucket experiment. I think they got to minus 25 degrees Celsius which was close to the temperature we were experiencing that day in Antarctica! Margie and I look forward to seeing the photographs of the work that Menai Pubic School did. We hear that it was great. Thank you very much students in 5-6 W and thank you Mrs. Walters.

AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE IN ANTARCTICA
One of our goals in coming down to live here for a year was to increase the general level of awareness of Antarctica by informing you about what Australians are doing down here. We are very pleased to have the assistance of ANSTO for this part of our education program. We had an interview with ANSTO scientist, Dr. Hendrik Heinjin Dr. Hendrik Heinjin spoke with us and high school students from Victoria and New South Wales on a conference call in Australia this week. The call was made possible by the funds given to Expedition Ice-Bound by The AAP Group. Students were interested in asking Dr. Heinjin, or "Dr. Henk" as they called him about details of his work. Henk is continuing his research into the affects of UVB on diatoms in Antarctica. This work is related to the growing hole in the ozone layer. Henk will spend several months at Davis Base studying diatoms.

MAWSON'S HUT REVISITED
We checked out Maswon's Hut for the first time after many blizzards and found it completely snowed in. The snow is right up to the roof and there's still some snow on the roof itself. It might have been covered up to about half a metre. We have noticed that some parts of Gadget Hut are starting to look like Mawson's Hut. It is interesting to really look at the timber. It is being eroded away. It is as if it were being sand blasted by the intense wind and driven snow. All the grains of the timber stick out. It looks exactly the same as some of the timber on Mawson's Hut.

ABOUT THE WONDERFUL SUN
The sun is up at 6:30 and sets around 6:30 in the evening. Technically that's lots of light. We have had blizzards and for the last two days it has been overcast. We did see an aurora just prior to the blizzard which was the first time in months. We seem to have had very rare nights with clear skies and no drift blowing around. What we can observe when the weather is fair, is the sun setting very much more to the west now. We can follow the sunshine! It moves across the eastern wall. This is exciting stuff for us. We had 28 hours of sunshine this week. The strongest winds were 88 knots. The coldest temperature was minus 27 Celsius.

ABOUT THE TEMPERATURE INSIDE
We have a strong temperature gradient in the hut today. At the floor level it is minus 5, on the table it is minus 2, at head height it is 10 and at the roof it is 14 degrees Celsius. There's been a lot of cooking this week. Margie cooked pikelets and baked a sultana cake. She made a batch of scones which were great. We haven't made bread for ages because we have plenty of Buttercup Oven Bake rolls and lots of cracker biscuits.

A WORD ABOUT THE OUTSIDE TEMPERATURE
The wind chill factor is about minus 60 degrees Celsius outside right now but there is a lot of sunshine. ICEBERG OBSERVATION There is an iceberg about 300 metres offshore. It is now about half as big as it was back in February when it broke off the cliff and ground on a rock. It has been quite interesting to watch it erode away and we wonder what will be left of it by the time we leave.

THE BEST MEAL OF THE WEEK:
Jelly fruit with raspberry jelly. We have about six packets of jelly that we hadn't thought of using. It was really nice and will be on the menu again soon.

THE BEST PART OF THE WEEK:
Eating dinner without the lights on at 6:30 p.m.

THE FUNNIEST PART OF THE WEEK:
Looking at my hair in the mirror. I look like a cross between Ronald McDonald and Angry Anderson.

Keep warm,
Don
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