My whole body is apparently rotting from want of proper nourishment—frost-bitten fingertipsfestering, mucous membranes of the nose gone, saliva glands of the mouth refusing duty, skin coming off whole body. The sun bath today will set much right however—I felt the good of the sun as Ihave never done before.
—Douglas Mawson
Seventy-nine years earlier on that same day, 11 January, a young Douglas Mawson was in a pretty bad way physically, yet some how he managed, against all odds, to keep on man-hauling his sledge for another three weeks before finally stumbling back alive to the hut at Cape Denison on 8 February. The appreciation of warmth and comfort of the sun was something we all shared with Mawson, along with the one preoccupying thought that day of heading back home to the base.
We started the day in good spirits in anticipation of going back to Scott Base without any hitches. Everything had been packed up except for one tent and we were eagerly waiting for the radio report that the Herc was on its way. It was a tense time as although the skies were clear around us, there could well be a howling blizzard back at McMurdo and we wouldn't know about it. Suddenly at 9:20 A.M.the radio crackled into life. It was Hercules XD-01 giving us only 20 minutes' warning for the pullout.
We quickly sprang into action and packed up the last tent, tied it onto the sledge and moved everything out near the runway. We heard the plane's low grumble overhead only minutes later. It landed easily on our nicely cleared ice runway. We had packed all our gear on the
sledges with the idea of just running them straight up into the back of the Herc as we did on put-in day. This part of the operation went smoothly. After about fifteen minutes all the sledges and skidoos were safely on board.
We climbed inside the Herc, sat down with our seatbelts on and waited eagerly for the take-off. I was stunned that everything had actually gone according to plan, as scheduled, without a single hitch. Margaret, Fraka, and Brian were also very surprised by this, as they had expected the customary delays due to unforeseen weather changes, or last minute mechanical repairs to be done to the planes. It seemed too good to be true.
The Herc then powered up to full speed and tried to take off, but without any success. We had calculated that we were carrying only about half the full payload of permitted weight for the Herc, so this shouldn't have been the problem. Once more, the plane turned around and tried to power off the ice runway. No go. After a few more unsuccessful runs, the pilot next tried to bounce the plane a little to settle down the soft snow which was causing the drag on the plane's skis. We suddenly felt the plane bottoming out as it bounced up and down on the snow, jarring our gear and us in the cargo area. It seemed like our “perfect runway” was fine for little skidoos, but it had a thick blanket of newly fallen snow underneath it which was causing great frictional drag on the plane's huge landing skis.
The crew then asked us if we would mind moving into the tailgate of the plane. They politely beckoned us to sit over the large rear-opening door of the Herc, and then strapped us down flat with a large cargo net. Now I know exactly what it's like to be a tea chest. The captain thought this would place our weight more rearward to give us that little bit of extra nose lift required. Once again we tried to lift off with engines roaring at full power, but no cigar.
The plane then filled with “smoke” (so I thought) and, as we were strapped down with a net over us, we watched with growing concern as the crewmen put on their oxygen masks. I imagined the plane was going to go up in flames or something, but apparently it was just that the intake vents of the engines had taken in some snow, causing a mixture of smoke and water vapor to fill the cabin!
After one-and-a-half hours of unsuccessful attempts to take off, the captain gave us the sad news that he would have to dump all of our equipment and specimens outside in order to take off because they were now getting critically short of fuel. This was disturbing news as we had recently heard the story over the radio of Paul Fitzgerald 's party (event K5076) in northern Victoria Land, who were forced to leave all their gear and samples behind after six grueling weeks of fieldwork. They never did get their samples back as it was deemed too dangerous to try and land a Herc in that region again.
At about 1:15 P.M. that day we arrived safely back at Scott Base, but instead of the elation of returning home triumphant with our specimens, we were all deeply concerned over the fact that all our precious geological specimens were still out there in the middle of the Lashly Glacier. It felt strange for us to be back at Scott Base; a bitter-sweet melancholy descended over us. It should have felt great to be back, but we were sad because unless our specimens were retrieved the whole three months we had just spent down in Antarctica would be wasted!
I first noticed how hot it was inside the base. Then I noticed that there were lots of people around. It felt very different from our simple life in the field. I wrote in my notebook that it seemed “hard to adjust” to being back in “civilization” again.
The first thing we did was to take a long shower, our first in over two months, and change into clean clothes. We refrained from drinking at the bar until news came from VXE-6 Squadron about our gear. Then the miracle we had hoped for happened. At 8:00 P.M.we received a phone call reporting that VXE-6 had made a special effort in view of the incident in northern Victoria Land and had gone back to the Lashly Glacier to successfully pick up all of our gear. It was now waiting for us over on the ice runway at Willy Field! We were immensely overjoyed. It meant so much to us that our specimens and equipment were finally back safe. Immediately we hitched a ride over to the airfield. It only took us about fifteen minutes to unload our skidoos and sledges from the Herc, then we drove our sledge trains elatedly back to Scott Base.
A lot of people were in the bar watching our sledge trains come around over the sea ice as we pulled up at the field store hangar. Some of the important items of equipment, such as the radios and first aid
kit, were unloaded and placed safely inside the shed, but the majority of the gear was left on the sledges. There would be plenty of time to sort it all out the next day. Eagerly we adjourned to the Scott Base bar around 9:00 P.M.for a few celebratory drinks. We were so happy, words could not do our feelings justice.
We stayed drinking and chatting till the bar shut, then kept on reveling with some of the others using our own grog supplies. We enthusiastically recounted all of our adventures, right down to the last details, to anyone who wanted to listen. Eventually, dog-tired and feeling somewhat mentally and emotionally frazzled, I crawled off to bed around five o'clock in the morning.