Perhaps we were mad—for have I not said thosehorrible peaks were mountains of madness? But I think I can detect something of the same spirit—albeit in a less extreme form—in the men whostalk deadly beasts through African jungles to photograph them or study their habits. Half paralyzed with terror though we were, there was nevertheless fanned within us a blazing flame of awe and curiosity which triumphed in the end.

—H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft writes in this passage about how the spirit of investigation, the flames of curiosity, eventually triumphed over the fear and adversity of their ill-fated expedition. I can empathize with his words, as the passion to research our new finds would eventually triumph over the lingering adverse effects of our expedition. However, straight after my journey through the mountains of madness, my first task was to settle back to normal life once again.

Despite the contrast of being thrust into the middle of a blazing Perth summer from the cold depths of Antarctica, it felt truly great to be home; to live with my wife and kids every day. Yet it was probably a few months or so before I fully readjusted and could once more feel comfortable with daffy routine. After all, for three months while on a deep field expedition you don't have to worry about money, paying bills, the house, the garden, your family, or even where your next meal is coming from. Your mind becomes attuned to just the basic needs of meeting each day's challenges in order to achieve your results.

Physiologically your body adjusts to the extreme cold after a few weeks out in the field, soon becoming used to a high fat, high kilojoule

diet. Despite eating huge amounts of food every day that I was in Antarctica, I still lost nearly a stone (about 14 lbs) in weight due to the sheer output of energy from the work and from my body constantly burning fuel to keep warm. Every breath of chilled air has to be warmed by your body, so just breathing in Antarctica consumes a lot more energy than in warmer climates. To physically and mentally adjust once more to one's normal climatic and social conditions is actually harder than you would imagine.

Back home I found myself always talking about Antarctica to my family and friends. Eventually I had to be made conscious of the fact so as not to bore everyone to death all the time with “this reminds me of when I was in Antarctica . . .” or “we did it like this in the Antarctic . . .”

There's no denying it is an amazing place. After having wild adventures and being on a high from collecting so many intriguing specimens, it is hard not to view regular life as anything but mundane. Many seasoned Antarctic expeditioners say that they won't be going back down there ever again, but next season they are the ones first in line for the plane. It is something hard to explain, but the old cliché “it gets in your blood” will suffice.

For about three months after returning to Australia I was on a bit of an emotional roller coaster, sometimes crying without reason at sad movies or emotional events, or laughing wildly at simple, stupid things. Maybe my mind was just letting off the accumulated steam of the trip. My emotions eventually seemed to have mellowed out into the realm of normality but, to be honest, have never really been exactly the same as before the trip.

One idea that started cementing into my mind at that time was the concept of our body's vulnerability. A few weeks after my return to Perth I attended the funeral of Dr. Nicholas Rock, who had committed suicide in early 1992. I had known Nick reasonably well when he was a lecturer in the Geology Department of the University of Western Australia, where I was a research fellow during 1986-87. Together we had publicly debated the creationists. Anyhow, I remember being in quite an emotional state at the funeral because I kept imagining all through it that it could well have been my funeral, and that a split second's hesitation out in the crevasse field had almost been my undoing. Fur-

thermore, had that scenario really happened, my body would probably not have been able to be retrieved.

These feelings also hit me hard again in late 1995 when I was working in Paris for three months and preparing for a quick trip to Dublin to visit one of my old friends, David Johnston. Dave and I were at Monash University together doing our doctorates in the early 1980s. We shared houses and became very close friends who stayed in close contact over the intervening years. After completing his PhD thesis Dave was appointed as a lecturer in structural geology at Trinity College. He had arranged for me to come over and give a lecture to the Geological Society of Ireland in mid-October. About ten days before I was due to go to Ireland I was busily working away in the collections of the Natural History Museum in London when there was a phone call for me. It was the news that Dave had disappeared off the west coast of Ireland while carrying out geological research work. They found his car, his dog, his notebook and a few other things, but no Dave. To this day no trace of him has ever been found. It was presumed that a freak wave must have swept him from the cliffs into the cold North Atlantic. This devastated me at the time, as Dave was about my age and had been one of the most dynamic, fun-loving, and intelligent people you could ever meet.

Although shattered, I did venture over to Ireland and gave the lecture in honor of his memory. A friend and I hired a car and drove over to the west coast, where I stood upon the jagged rocky cliffs of Annagh Head, and said my goodbyes to an old friend. Once again, life 's vulnerability came crashing down upon me and filled me with gloom. Today I have overcome these melancholy feelings largely through the passage of time, my involvement with my children and a renewed interest in the martial arts. The concluding words of Admiral Byrd's book, Alone, after his near disastrous solo stay over winter in a small hut in Antarctica in 1934, have a deep ring of truth to my mind: “So I say in conclusion: A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable.”

Antarctica still features prominently in my work today. The Western Australian Museum houses a large collection of fossil specimens resulting from our expedition, many of which await detailed study. Be-

cause the specimens were difficult to acquire I regard this is a job worth doing well, without the regular pressure of having to rush to get it all published. Over the last few years I have published a number of scientific papers on the new material, and more work is in progress. I am also working on a book documenting the complete history of life in Antarctica,^* and have been carrying out further research on how the fossil faunas from Australia and other Gondwana countries, like South Africa, and Iran, relate to those from Antarctica.

On return to Perth in 1992 I put together a small exhibition on Antarctica at the Western Australian Museum. This comprised a collection of my best fossil fishes, rocks, and mineral samples, various items of Antarctic ANARE-issue clothing and some of my best photographs enlarged and block mounted. We augmented the display with other specimens we already had in our collections, such as an Antarctic meteorite, some fossil sea urchins from Seymour Island, and a stuffed emperor penguin collected on Mawson's 1910-14 expedition. Curiously, the most popular item in the display was a set of my underwear, stretched out with pins on the wall and boldly labeled as “John Long's Long Johns.”

My memories of Antarctica still serve me well in daily life. Every time things seem to be getting difficult, like the mounting stress of work, too many commitments, large bills to be paid, and so on, I realize how it is all just a drop in the ocean compared with life 's big picture of working in a harsh environment where one's life is at risk almost on a daily basis. I still thank my lucky stars each day that I'm here to enjoy spending time with my children and am able to watch them grow up.

If anything, I've possibly become more ascetic through my experiences in Antarctica. For the last four years I have lived in a small apartment in inner city Perth that has a marvelous view over a scenic park adorned with many trees and a lake. My living space is small and my possessions are few. I have often pondered whether the resemblance between my living conditions in a polar tent in Antarctica and my present arrangements in modern society is mere coincidence.

In 1993, just twelve months after I came back from Antarctica, my marriage of eleven years began to fall apart and abruptly ended that year. It was an extremely difficult time in my life and it probably took some years before I could honestly say that my life was in good order again. These days I see my three kids often, both at weekends and during the week when they stay with me, and I know that now they are happy and well adjusted to the major changes that took place back then. They are all doing very well at school and I often bring them along into the field with me when I go searching for fossils.

I don't think my life would have fallen into place again so well without the experiences and inspiration that I gained from my time in Antarctica. After coming back fitter and healthier than I'd been for a long time, I decided to try and keep myself in good shape, so I took up karate, a sport I'd enjoyed many years earlier as a teenager. During the difficult years of my separation and divorce my sensei (teacher), George Chaplin, worked me much harder than usual, turning the physical training into my emotional therapy; changing the build-up of negative energy one has at such times into positive, muscular strength. I am now a black belt (3rd dan) and have become the chief instructor for our style, Uechi Ryu Karate, in Western Australia. I derive great satisfaction from training and teaching classes four times a week to people of all ages, including my own children. It is especially gratifying to see my students grow stronger and become more self-confident. In August 1999 I spent three weeks in Okinawa, the birthplace of karate, to train with the venerable masters of my style, and participated in an international karate tournament as a member of a small Australian team. It was a highlight in my life that epitomized my current philosophy of following my dreams when I can, rather than going along with the normal expectations of society, such as having to own a big house, a new car, or the latest computer.

Karate has taught me more than just being able to keep my body fit and flexible as I enter my fifth decade of life. It has taught me how to sharpen my mind. I had for many years believed the concept of “mind driving the body.” This hypothesis purports that if you have a sharp mind and can pursue your intellectual studies to fulfillment, your body will follow. Not so. I now believe the opposite hypothesis is more im-

portant to achieving my long-term goals. A strong, healthy body pushes the mind to higher degrees of functioning because the nervous system is in better condition, which can heighten one's powers of thinking and reasoning.

I had never realized this until achieving a high level of fitness through years of regular karate training. Now I have the energy and enthusiasm to pursue my paleontological research, my karate, and my writing while balancing these interests with time for my children, family, and social life. Doing something now, rather than later, is also foremost in my life, as is the pursuit of the physical and intellectual goals in life above the material things. I hold that it's not what you own or whom you know that is important, but rather what you do and how it positively affects other people's lives that counts for life's bigger picture.

My simple philosophy of life these days is that our personalities are made up of four corners. The four corners are the intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual components. The “physical corner ” is simply keeping physically fit and healthy. The “intellectual corner” is keeping your mind active through regularly pursuing problem-solving tasks. The “emotional corner” encompasses your relationships with your family and other people. The “spiritual corner” is simply one's ability to cope with the unfathomable things of life, either through religion or logic. To balance them in the correct ratio is the goal of every individual, and this ratio is naturally quite different for every person, as no two of us on this Earth are the same. One's harmony of life will be achieved when the four corners merge to form a perfect circle, all components being in the correct balance for your life's particular direction. I have no idea how one will know when this is achieved, except that I expect you will feel that you are happy with your lot.

This concept in itself is an enigma, but then again, so is all of life. Living is never straightforward or simple. We should not expect to completely understand or try and predict the directions our lives could go in. One can only ride with the bad times, be thankful for the good times, and keep on existing in physical terms as comfortably as possible.

I think everyone has their “Antarctica,” whether it is the real place they have visited, a challenging experience in their lives, or an uplifting feeling in their minds and hearts.