Listen Again: Vodka in a Vegemite Jar
One is pleased to report that Trevor Hamley’s tale had all the right ingredients: adventure, camaraderie and a heroic disregard for personal comfort. Im this fascinating talk, we were taken back to 1983, when Trevor joined Soviet trek leader Vladimir Papitashvili on a 1,500km trudge across the Antarctic ice to Dome C, a distance roughly equal to Sydney to Perth, only colder, and with considerably worse prospects for coffee.
Memories were made, certainly, but as any decent adventurer knows, it’s never the destination that lingers, it’s the calamities en route. And Trevor had no shortage including:
- Machinery that gave up, sulking like a bad-tempered mule.
- A tractor caught fire and had to be unceremoniously abandoned.
- The scientific equipment followed suit, unsurprisingly, given the mechanics were otherwise engaged.
- An appendectomy was performed 1,000 kilometres from the nearest station
Far from a mere list of mishaps, this was a rich account of Soviet culture, cross-cultural friendship, glaciology and the small matter of climate change.
