Watching a u-tube of the 10 biggest waves ever recorded I realised I was homesick for the Southern Ocean!

On my study wall there is a picture of the inscription on the back of Antarctic Explorer Ernest Shackelton’s grave stone. It reads, “I hold that a man should strive to the utmost for his life’s set prize.”
 
Returning from Antarctica after visiting Scott and Shackelton’s huts we encountered a very bad storm and realised what the early explorers went through to achieve that goal.

From my diary: February 25th 1995

We are 23 passengers on a small Russian ship. In the past three weeks we have sailed through the southernmost latitudes of the roaring forties, the furious fifties, the screaming sixties and the shrieking seventies, otherwise known as ‘The second circle of Hell’.

There is an old seaman’s saying, “At Latitude 70 degrees South there is no God.”

My bunk has become my haven; . . . a place for reflection, contemplation and peace.   A place where I can turn myself off from the continual pitching and rolling of the ship beneath me and the incessant high pitched shriek of the wind.

There will be no opportunity to wash today. The rule is no longer one hand for yourself and one hand for the ship as when we are standing it is now ‘two hands for the ship` and all dressing and personal tasks must be managed in your bunk.

After breakfast we return to our bunks for the rest of the day. It’s just too dangerous to stay on our feet.                         

​A day of wild motion; the blue curtains around our bunks swishing wildly back and forth on their tracks like crazy pendulums. My jacket swings horizontally in an arc from its hook on the wall.

We lie and listen to the sounds of the afternoon; the creaks and groans of the ship as it labours in the heavy seas. The waves being driven by the west wind as we travel north are hitting us side on. At times a rogue wave that has welled up from a deeper ocean current and is out of sync with the others, hammers into the side of the ship, making a slamming, screeching noise like something jagged being dragged along the steel hull. …  Occasionally the sound of vomiting blends with the crash of the waves and the shriek of the wind!         
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Juhan Smuul wrote of the voyage through the Southern Ocean, while returning from Antarctica with a Russian expedition in 1957.  “Waiting; a barren void. Yesterday is left behind. Today, nothing more than the threshold of tomorrow and that tomorrow on which everything hinges is elusive and full of uncertainty.”   
 
I lie here on my bunk waiting for tomorrow, but perhaps tomorrow I will still be lying here feeling the ship cresting the waves and as Shokalskiy drops vertically beneath us experiencing a couple of seconds of being suspended above the mattress, before gravity takes over and it feels as if we are heading straight down to Davey Jones locker, until the whole sequence begins again.

I venture up to the bridge this evening. I have more respect for Shokalskiy now. She can right herself after a 52 degree roll, with the starboard side of the ship nearly going under the water. The crew say that 60 degrees is the point of no return! 

I stay on the bridge until late trying to comfort a very frightened Japanese cameraman. He says. “Very frightened, very frightened; there is great danger!” I tell him that I have been in worse seas than this. He looks at me incredulously and says. “Where on earth are you from?”  Then, “Ah Austraria! I rike it there. I have filmed at Cairns, very beautifurr!” He is happier now that we are talking about the tropics. I am thinking, `we are very different, you and I, right now I would rather be here.’

The crew link hands to form a chain, to get me off the bridge when I leave.

Four days later.

This evening in calmer waters we are all on the deck on top of the ship, searching for the loom of the land of New Zealand. We think we can smell land; the grasses and pollens and trees and all things that are precious and familiar to us. Ingrid is ringing her mother and she is crying tears of happiness. Collis is bowing, arms outstretched saying ‘thank you’ for our safe return. The Chinese film crew, who kept to themselves for most of the voyage, are now with us. We are all smiling and laughing.  Tomorrow morning we will wake up beside the wharf at the port of Bluff.


Bev Morton
​September 2022

An expired passport and the current world political climate evoked memories of years past and an attempted landing on an Arctic Island with a NATO Base, from a small Russian ship.

”Sailing from the port of Longyearbyen on the Island of Slavbard, latitude 78 degrees 13’ north, our attempted destination is Scoresby Sund in North East Greenland. The Greenland coast is land locked by fast ice for most of the year. There is only a short window of time when it may be possible to reach N/E Greenland. This is a very heavy ice year.  Our ship is ice strengthened but it’s not an icebreaker.

The second day at sea is spent slowly poking into a curtain of thick fog. Visibility forward is reduced to no further than the bows of the ship. The radio crackles, “This is Danish navy ship Theseus. Do not proceed any further, wait for us and prepare to be boarded.” For an hour our ship is stationary, wallowing, “dead in the water.”

The Captain is watching the radar; he says quietly, “They are here.” A ghostly grey shape of a navy ship looms up behind us and then disappears again into the fog.  A bright red zodiac with four red clad crew members is speeding across the rough sea and the ship is boarded with navy precision. An officer examines the ships papers while the other crewmen check for sea worthiness. We are advised that the area we are heading into has a 9/10ths covering of sea ice 50 nautical miles from land.  After some time we are cleared to continue on into the ice.

Early on the third morning we see a thin band of light on the horizon; it’s “the ice blink”, the reflection from dense pack ice.

Anticipation runs high as we approach the pack ice. On the bridge the crew is very intent and unsmiling. No one speaks.

Our expedition leader sits silently at the bridge window. He picks up the microphone, “As you can see we are approaching the ice edge. At the moment we are taking on sea water for ballast. The ship will lay deeper in the water so that the most strengthened part of the ship can be used for sailing through the ice. We will head north so we will have head winds which will make the ship less vulnerable. The ice here has been broken by the waves and the situation looks promising but when we have travelled some nautical miles it may be different, we’ll see.”

We enter a field of broken chunks of ice on a rolling sea. The ice is banking down the wave action. The further we sail the larger these floating ice missiles become.

At this point we are twenty nautical miles from the nearest land. The idea is that we will proceed into the ice with a heading north, while the stream is setting us to the south. The result will be that we sail in the direction of the mouth of the fjord.

The broken ice eventually becomes large pancake ice, heaving in an icy sea.  The captain has his binoculars trained on the ice searching for open leads. We charge straight into the ice. There is no open water, just huge lumps of ice, white, blue and the dirty brown of moraine. The further we go the worse the situation becomes. The ship slows to .03 knots. The pack ice becomes a solid field of ice. We can no longer make any headway and are being swept south in the East Greenland ice current. Our speed is one and a half knots backwards!

The sky is leaden and the wind keens across the ice field. There are no open leads. We are not going to Greenland, but the problem is will we get out of the ice? The Captain's face is inscrutable as he paces to each side of the bridge surveying the ice. The danger is getting ice damage to the propeller. After an hour of skilful manoeuvring we retreat south along the ice edge.

In open water we meet large waves head on and the spray is flung up over the bows and drifts back over the ship.  To keep our spirits up, we are told that we are in for a special treat. We will go to Jan Mayen Island.

Five hundred kilometres to the east the towering rocky cliffs of Jan Mayen loom up out of the mist. We have been refused permission to land as there is a NATO base here and we are on a Russian Ship. We unobtrusively cruise the rugged coastline, keeping close to the shore.

Loren C was established for long range radio navigation in 1961. A Norwegian territory, the Island is uninhabited save for a small military presence.

The Mountains are wreathed in low cloud and then a window opens in the cloud and reveals sunshine on snow clad Beeranberg, the most northerly volcano in the Arctic.

An Irish Monk, St Brendan the navigator is believed to have sailed in this area in the sixth century. He reported a terrible noise and a black Island that was on fire. He thought he had discovered the entrance of Hell.

We sail around a rocky headland and there in the cove is a sleek grey gunboat!

The radio crackles ominously. The Captain takes this call in the radio room. He has been caught red-handed!

We are ordered to leave at once and are now under the control of the gunboat. We retreat carefully; the Captain at the helm.  We are guilty of breaching their three mile exclusion zone!“


Bev Morton
​July 2022  ​

On December 26th 1991, the once powerful Russian dominated Soviet Union comprising 15 republics was disbanded; the Russian economy had collapsed. The President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev said in a broadcast to the world “We have been involved in a social experiment that has failed.”

The ‘Professor Molchanov’, a small Russian ice strengthened ship from the Meteorological Institute of Murmansk, had just been chartered out as a tourist ship. The crew were at the other end of the world in Antarctica when the news reached them.

The engines were shut down and the ship stopped alongside a large ice floe for a small ceremony. It was a very solemn occasion as the red Soviet flag with the hammer and sickle was lowered from the mast head. The ship’s Doctor Ludmila KoValskaya had a sewing machine and had made a new flag of white, blue and red material. The tricolour flag that was used by the anti communist white movement during the Russian Civil war was slowly raised to the masthead. The hammer and sickle on the ship’s funnel was also painted over with the new Russian flag.

The crew members felt very insecure. They didn’t know what the future held; they hadn’t been paid for months and couldn’t support their families. Even the names of some of their home towns had been changed. They were a long way from home
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Eighteen months later we are on a night flight across Russia on an ancient prototype Ansvair 74 cargo plane. The government authorities in Moscow think it’s parked in its hanger, but it’s on a black market flight across 8 time zones to the isolated City of Cherskiy in far Eastern Siberia. The cargo, old tyres and vodka and of course our party of 12, the self loading cargo.  

We are an International group of mainly ornithologists who have been permitted to enter Russia on science visas.  

Two days later we are sitting around the walls of a large orange helicopter for a flight north to Four Pillars Island in the Bear Island group. The engines rev to an incredible level, but still it can’t get off the ground. We have too much weight onboard to lift off and need to taxi to become airborne.  Our packs and supplies are piled high in the middle of the helicopter. I remark that I can smell petrol and am told there are cans of aviation fuel under our packs as they need to carry it for the return journey. I ask if that’s dangerous if we crash and I’m told that it’s not a problem, if we come down no one will get out anyway!

We fly north across the small lakes and polygon pattern of the tundra to the dense pack ice of the East Siberian Sea.  A rocky Island appears beset in a sea of white ice. The helicopter lands on a hill behind the living quarters of a Russian Meteorological Station that has seen better days.  The heavy wooden door that weighs a ton is designed to keep out the wind, snow and polar bears. The red hammer and sickle flag still flies above the building.

After a late tea we are invited to spend time with the leader of the base. Valeriy is an aerologist who has been here on this lonely island for 10 years. There were formerly 23 people stationed here, now they are only 13. They used to test for pollution from Chernobyl but that’s been stopped. They haven’t been paid for months and they all look very thin and gaunt.

Beyond a flimsy curtain the midnight sun shines brightly on the frozen sea and a few large seals frolic nearby. There’s a television set in the corner of the room. From this distant outpost Valeriy has been watching his country fall to pieces and he’s anxious for outside news. What trade is Russia doing with other countries and how is Russia regarded in the west?  He doesn’t like Gorbachev, and says they were better off under Leonid Brezhnev. We are privileged to hear a lengthy discussion of real Russian politics and events, which are very different to the brief opinions reported on our news.

The vodka flows with the Russian custom of many toasts. After a few hours we switch to aero vodka!  Don’t go to Siberia unless you have a cast iron stomach.

The members of our group are of seven different nationalities. Valeriy exclaims, “Tonight, the whole world has come to my door!”  He is searching for an insight into each of our countries and our way of life, comparing them with Russia. He has to decide where his future lies.

In the early hours the midnight sun reaches its lowest point above the horizon and an eerie silence in what should be night, settles over the High Arctic.  At this far flung Russian outpost where the red hammer and sickle still flies, it seems fitting that at this moment in time the low rays of the sun reflect a deeper orange light and cast sombre grey shadows across the sea ice.

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Beverley Morton
​February 2022

There are some things that become indelibly burnt into your brain. Like the towering green bull bar of a greenfreight log truck coming at you on a sharp bend of a mountain road; or the huge legs and paws of a polar bear sweeping it along as it races across the snow at your sledge. Although they are memories that will live with me forever they were quickly dealt with, therefore not really a matter of courage.

It’s the insidiously little things that lurk in the back of your mind. One of my first memories is my sister saying that she was frightened of heights. I know that for me it’s not natural to be uncertain of my ability to handle heights. Its irrational learnt behaviour and I don’t know when it will strike.

It came into my adult life unexpectedly.  After a freezing cold night camped in Victoria’s high Alps we were sitting in the sunshine on top of a range they call ‘The Crosscut Saw.’ It was just a narrow path with a drop on either side. I was happy, until I stood up and froze on the spot. My companions said “How did she get up here, if she can’t get down?” It was irrational.
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Irrational fear of heights presents itself suddenly when balance and confidence are required, like having to walk carefully across a narrow plank to board a ship that is anchored on the far side of another.

At Oban in Scotland, the tide had gone out and it wasn’t possible to use the gangway to board the ship. They called up to me from about three metres down in the bows, “You will have to Jump.”  There was no time to think, just do it and land like a baby elephant.

But be careful of what you say, it will come back to haunt you.  In North East Greenland I was known as an experienced dog sledge traveller, but the rot set in when I travelled with Jonas Pike. He was a lithe young hunter with a good team and he could place those dogs anywhere.

I made the mistake of telling him that his sledge was a magic carpet and for the next week he did his best to prove it. We would stop for our lunch break on the top of a small island frozen in the pack ice of the Greenland Sea or beside a steep drop onto the fjord below. The other sledges would be facing the path down again, but Jonas’s team and sledge would be facing a cliff.  “Why aren’t you eating all your lunch?” I would answer that I was not really hungry!

When we leave Jonas leaps onto the back of the sledge to balance it. The dogs need no urging, they have no fear of heights. With a sudden burst of speed they propel themselves joyfully out over the edge. Bodies tense and twisting in mid air, tails held out for balance, legs and feet reaching for the snow below.  The fast moving sledge is propelled horizontally until gravity takes over and we glide down behind them. Paws taking hold and the dogs are away, racing downhill.  
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One memorable occasion occurred when we were going to board a helicopter that was out on the sea ice. “Bev, go with Ziggy.” I get on the back of the skidoo and he heads for the cliff edge! He stops and says “I don’t think I can do that.” That was close!


Bev Morton
October 2021

In Australia, autumn progresses towards winter. The Desert ash trees are losing their leaves. My white cat has a thick winter coat. She reminds me of an Arctic fox.

In the early spring of 2006 I was in the wilds of North east Greenland, travelling with the hunters by dog sledge.

Memories of lying in a little green tent at Kap Hoegh in the soft twilight that follows the midnight sun, listening to the hoarse bark of an arctic fox high up on a hill, as it summons its mate to a meal of nesting little auks. Katherine who is sharing the tent with me says, “That’s a vixen, she has a different note.”

Everyone else is sleeping in a hut safely out of reach of marauding polar bears that are also looking for a meal. We have the dogs tethered nearby who should alert the hunters if one should come our way. But my experience of Greenland hunters is they sleep as soundly as tired sledge dogs!

I ask why there is a very large hunting knife placed beside the musk ox skin that I‘m lying on.

Katherine says, “Jonas left it for us in case we have to kill a polar bear in the night; isn’t he sweet.  I will get out quicker than you will so I‘m leaving the knife with you.”

This is serious! I decide to swap the knife for a rifle.

I go to find Scoresby who understands me as he learnt English when watching the Australian TV show ‘Neighbours’ during an enforced stay in hospital.

I tell him we have been left a knife to kill a bear and ask, “What is the best way to kill a bear, do we have to cut its throat?” He says, “Yes, but the bear will be coming for you on its hind legs, waving its paws at you. It will be taller than you so if you are going to kill it you will have to be very quick and get in between its front legs, then reach up and push its head back and cut its throat. As most bears are southpaws chances are it will lead with the left paw. If you want to live a few seconds longer just dodge to the other side.” No, he won’t part with his rifle.”You might shoot Katherine.”

So we doze on and off in our little tent with the hunting knife  between us and the night filled with the incessant cries of little auks returning to their nests in the rocks, punctuated by the snores of the Greenland huskies and the bark of the arctic fox.

Two nights later we are again lying in our flimsy little green tent while everyone else is sleeping in a hut. This time the dogs are tethered out on the ice, nowhere near us. Suddenly there’s a thumping scratching noise on the wall of the tent beside me! … Our hearts stopped.  . … But it was only the wind.

Katherine said “Your eyes were huge!”  So were hers, we thought we were about to be eaten! 

The next morning we found a very large polar bear nearby.


Beverley Morton 
​May 2021

​​In 1993, I spent three weeks in Siberia with a small group of International ornithologists. We were invited to enter Russia on scientific permits.
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"The midnight sun cast a deep golden glow across the Arctic tundra. It's 1.25 a.m. and the Earth is hushed as I walk alone across its soft green carpet. This is a vast remote area with shades of green and brown treeless tundra as far as the eye can see. The deep golden light of the low angle of the sun spreads gently across this wonderful landscape.

The predominant feature here is a deep silence. Every brief sound seems subdued at this magical time. The silence is broken briefly by the cry of a distant loon, or the unexpected  splash of a paddle being dipped into the water as two youths clad in reindeer skin clothes row silently across the lake to the conical reindeer skin tents of the Chukchi reindeer herder’s camp.  A faint peel of spontaneous laughter comes from happy children who are still out playing. We have been told that the Chukchi are night people and sleep very little in the summer.

​Heading off into the distant landscape I am often wading through ankle deep water. Wild geese are calling in the distance. On a dry patch of land small mouse like creatures scurry down into holes in the ground. I have disturbed a colony of lemmings!

​We visit the herders and are welcomed into a large reindeer skin tent. There is a fire in the middle of the tent and a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape. One side of the tent is pegged up for ventilation. They are an extended family from grandfather down to a baby clad in a reindeer hide suit suitably padded with moss for a napkin. We sit on reindeer hides on the floor and drink mugs of tea. Our expedition leader is our interpreter.

​It’s a treasured memory on a hot summer’s night. Now it’s only in spirit that I traverse the marshy tundra on top of the world, beneath the golden light of the midnight sun."


Bev Morton
February 2021

I met Sven out in the wilds of North East Greenland when I travelled with him for four days on his dog sledge.

Sledge journeys are mostly silent as Inuit hunters are not used to company and I find that Sven doesn’t have much English anyway.

The dogs are fresh and excited by the other teams as they are used to travelling alone. The pace is fast over rough terrain. One by one my five companions seem to be falling off their sledges. I am determined that this won’t happen to me but when our dogs bolted up over a snow mound and tipped the sledge up on a rock, I became airborne. Sven was horrified and the dogs were punished accordingly.

From then on, we often travelled alone with no one else within sight, so I was privileged to experience the remarkable peace and solitude of such a beautiful, pristine wilderness.

Travelling by dog sledge is an experience never to be forgotten, with just the swish of the sledge runners on the ice, the patter of the dog’s feet as they move in unison and the quiet commands to the team. Apart from that there is a deep enduring silence.

On the third evening we approached a high snow bank silhouetted against the grey sky. The dogs turned away and tried to jump down the side of an ice cliff. Sven is off the sledge shouting at them and whipping them away from the cliff. Suddenly they plunged over the top of the bank. Sven threw himself onto the sledge and we hurtled down a long steep glacier front onto the frozen fjord below!

Night has set in and the chill damp air is starting to bite. Still we travel on at a good pace until we come to a hut where the rest of the crew are preparing to spend the night. Sven says “Go in, I will bring your things.”

The hut is warm and a meal of polar bear meat has been prepared. Kathleen, our leader goes to serve me but Sven signals her to stop. Solemnly handing me his pocket knife he holds out his plate and I cut my meat from his. This is very ritualistic.  I’m not too sure of its meaning, but I realise this is the only meat I should eat and Sven smiles at me for the rest of the evening.

The next day things have changed! This is our last day and we are silent no longer. Communication is difficult in a mixture of Danish, Greenlandic and English but we are getting to know each other. Sven asks when I am going back over.  (Yes, from the top of the world Australia is down under.)

He likes the summer best, he has a small boat and, “maybe you come?“

Late afternoon a blizzard overtakes us. Sven zips my jacket up tighter and pulls the hood well over my head as we head into the driving snow towards the end of our journey to the village of Ittoqqortoomiit. There’s a snowmobile waiting for me, no time for proper goodbyes. The snow pounds the windows of our house all night.

Next afternoon I am standing on a hill behind the village with a view out across the fjord. I see a familiar dog team heading out across the ice and there is someone on the sledge waving to me.
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I shall always remember the magic of that first sledge journey and the privilege of travelling with such a reliable character from another culture who looked after me so well.     
 
Beverley Morton