During my travels in Antarctica I amassed an amount of memorabilia, here is
some that I stumbled across while tidying my house in May 2005 ( my memory is
obviously fading since I struggle to remember where some of it come from.
Stickers etc were mostly acquired by bartering with visitors to the base - a
bit like collecting football cards at school. They were highly prized by some,
the most valuable often being the one that no-one else had.
| Sew On Patches |
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This was produced before I arrived, in 1993 I think. I put
one of these on the back of my favourite hat. |
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This was produced before I arrived, in 1993 I think. |
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This was made by my lot in 1994. We designed it on a
computer & then sent the picture back to the UK on the weekly data transfer.
The permanent base commander in the UK then got a load made up & brought
them down with him in the 94/95 summer season. Quite a convoluted system,
but it worked surprisingly well. Note that the location on this patch is
different to that on the patch above - the base moves on the ice shelf - 2
metres a day. |
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So far north the omit the location from the badge! Only
joking, but I think the Halley patch above is much nicer, or course. |
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This was produced by BAS, rather than a base. It's much
bigger than the rest & I had one on my windy top. |
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Can't remember where this came from |
| Stickers |
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BAS issue sticker, not sure why it's triangular. |
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Quite a nice sticker, this. My mum had one on the rear
window of her car for years. |
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Swedish Antarctic Research Programme (I think). They came
through Halley the year before I got there and, I think, during one of the
summers that I was there. I can't really remember acquiring this one. |
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Neumeyer Station was our nearest neighbour - about 500 km
away - and this is the base sticker. It probably came into my possession via
the Dash-7 aircraft which were flown by the German Alfred-Wegener Institut. |
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I got this from a chap on the Bransfield who was carrying
out some oceanographic research. We picked him up in the Falklands in 1996 &
then took him to some submerged instruments. He pressed a button on the ship
& his instruments released themselves from the sea bed and floated to the
surface for collection. Quite clever really. |
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Another blank memory here, I'm afraid. |
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I picked this up on the Polar Stern - a German research ship
that visited us a couple of times. At a guess I'd say they were examining
the seabed for something or other either side of Halley. |
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European
Expedition to the Shackleton Range (1994/5). The Shackleton range were far
South of Halley. If I remember correctly, they were whizzing about in
helicopters, which meant that they could only fly in good weather, which
meant they couldn't fly as often as they'd like.
Despite the name, Shackleton
never saw them - he was on his way to the region when his ship, Endurance,
got trapped in the ice & crushed. He wrote a book about it called "South"
which is an excellent read. |
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Generic sticker from the German Antarctic researchers |
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Generic stickers from the German Antarctic researchers |
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This sticker comes form the Airbourne side of the German
research team |
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They were down at Halley in the summer of 94/5 to measure
ice shelf thickness using fancy radar. |
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They came back again the following year to do some "Aerophotogrammetrie"
whatever that is. |
| Pins |
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His little flag says "Aerodata" so this comes from the
German research teams, can't remember quite how I got it. Cute, though. |
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This tie pin came from the pilot of a helicopter that picked
us up from base & flew us out to the Polar Stern for a free party as guests
of the Dornier crews. This was to thank us for our hospitality towards them.
Very kind of them - we made them welcome & gave them stale beer ( we only
had stale beer) and they flew us to a ship to drink all their nice fresh
draft lager. |
| Ties |
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A Halley tie constructed before I got there |
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The tie we had made during the 94 winter. We wanted an
aurora, but the manufacturers couldn't do it! |
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This tie came form the pilot of the helicopter that took us
to Polar Stern - it came with the tie pin above. |
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Stamps |
I bought lots of stamps to go on lots of letters home but,
for some reason, I don't have any myself. In hind sight, I should have
written myself a few letters. |
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I do, however, have this first day cover. Halley contribute
the picture of aerials in the top left & the man launching a balloon in the
bottom right, which also shows the ACB. |
