The Lightkeeper's Wife

PART II



Evolution





11



Seminars at the the Antarctic Division are held in the theatrette. You walk in the front door of the main building and go downstairs into a large open area decked out with memorabilia: photos, and glass cabinets containing ancient rusted crampons, dog sleds and outdated protective clothing. It’s a good place to lose yourself if you’re waiting to meet someone.

This evening, some of the staff members have set up a table down there with drinks and nibbles, and everyone stands around and talks among themselves, waiting for the show to begin. Of course, it helps to know somebody. I rang Bazza yesterday and tried to persuade him to come, but he wouldn’t. He says the truth is that tradies like me—diesos, electricians and plumbers—don’t much like going to boffin functions because it makes them feel inadequate. And that’s pretty much how I’m feeling right now, even though I probably know more about penguins than most of them.

I wasn’t sure if I’d come tonight. I don’t go out much. But ever since Sunday’s family meeting I’ve been fielding a barrage of phone calls from Jan, and this seminar was an excuse to escape the phone. After visiting Mum today, I called Jan to let her know that Mum would be staying on Bruny, and Jan almost leaped down the line, saying it’d be my fault if Mum died down there. All she’d asked of me was to bring Mum back and apparently I’ve failed, yet again.

I wander around the foyer examining photos and trying to be inconspicuous. My favourite is a shot of the Aurora Australis at the ice edge near Davis Station at night, all lit up like a birthday cake. The sky’s black and overhead there’s the faintest green suggestion of her namesake—the southern lights, aurora australis.

I know a lot about that ship. Eighty-five metres sounds big, until the ship’s engineer tells you they cut her short to make her come in closer to budget. She ended up not particularly good at anything. Average passenger ship. Average cargo carrier. Average ice-breaker. That’s what happens when you try to make a cut-price ship.

Someone comes out of the theatrette. It’s John Fredricksen, a lean man with a head too large for his body. I’ve never had much to do with him, but I know he’s been into penguins for years. That’s the way it is here at the antdiv. Someone hooks onto a topic and they’re at it till they retire. It’s a closed circuit for scientists. Hard to get in, hard to get out.

He claps his hands to get the crowd’s attention. ‘This way, everyone. Time to find a seat.’

I move into the auditorium with the general stream of people, but I’m peripheral to their chitchat. They swoop on seats as if their names are marked on them. I sit at the back on the edge of a row so I can make a rapid escape if I need to. Down the front is a shortish, dark-haired girl wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She’s frowning over a computer linked up to a powerpoint projector. A few minutes pass as she fiddles with the connections and hunts around for a file, then she nods to Fredricksen to dim the lights and the talk begins.

Introducing herself, Emma Sutton explains that she’s spent three summers at Mawson Station observing Adelies. The penguins come back to breed early in the season and they’re all gone again by the end of summer. Working on an animal with a short breeding cycle is good for scientists, she says, because it means she can come home to work up her datasets and reorganise her gear ready for the next season.

Emma’s work has focused on the feeding patterns of Adelie penguins on an island off Mawson Station called Béchervaise. For many years, every bird that has visited the island has been tagged and implanted with a microchip. Over the past few summers, Emma and her team have rigged up a penguin-sized fence to funnel all the incoming and outgoing birds over an automated weighbridge to record each penguin’s weight.

Emma describes how her team glued satellite trackers onto the backs of some penguins so she could trace their foraging voyages after they left the island. When the penguins returned from a feeding trip, she retrieved the trackers. She grimaces as she explains the next stage, water offloading—whereby they pump water into the penguin’s stomach to make it regurgitate the fish it was carrying to feed its offspring. She admits that her intervention means the chicks of that penguin won’t survive and she’s unhappy about that, but the data she collects will provide information on Adelies and the impact of fisheries in Antarctica.

Water offloading sounds horrible, and I see several people in the crowd shifting uncomfortably. I don’t much like the concept either, but I understand the reason for doing it. Emma makes it sound well rationalised, and I’d like to ask her if her research has had any positive outcomes—whether any fisheries have been curbed. But I don’t ask, because I know it’s an awkward question, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask her to justify her work in front of an audience. The bottom line is that it’s unlikely anyone is going to modify their catch for a bunch of penguins.

Emma shows us a breakdown of the fish species she collected by water offloading. Then she shows maps of the foraging journeys of the penguins. It’s amazing how far those birds will go to collect food for their young. And it’s astounding how deep they can dive.

In the photos, Béchervaise Island looks rocky, wild and windswept. The field accommodation is a round red hut on stilts. Emma shows pictures of herself standing outside the hut cocooned in multiple layers of clothing. She shows shots of her assistant handling penguins. Then she steps us through the Adelie breeding cycle and clicks through a series of photos of the chicks, developing from little balls of fluff to full-sized penguins with white-spectacled eyes and flashy black and white plumage.

Among her photos are several of south polar skuas feeding on abandoned eggs and dead chicks. The skuas are the scavengers of the penguin colonies, bold brown birds that make their living on misfortune. Emma says she likes them and she’d like to study them. After all, she points out, skuas have to make a living down there too. And she’s right. Most people are captivated by images of fuzzy penguin chicks and they can’t see past the blood on the skua’s beak.

But it’s the look in the skua’s eye that arrests me. I recognise that gaze. It’s the same look you see in the eyes of expeditioners after a stint down south. They call it the thousand-yard stare. Emma has it too. That’s how I can tell she has recently returned, and also by the way she glances at the audience when the lights are turned up again. Unaccustomed to walls, she’s feeling hemmed in. She’s used to skies and wind and a cold that can snap freeze your fingers. That look in her eye twigs something in me. It makes me want to go back.

I wait behind in the auditorium while the others file out. Emma is preoccupied with disconnecting wires and leads, and she doesn’t notice me for several moments. I stay in my seat with my heart pounding and a crazy idea shaping itself in my head.

‘Excuse me,’ I say, approaching her down the aisle. My throat is dry and my voice is tight.

She looks up. Her eyes are hazel and her cheekbones angular.

‘I enjoyed your talk,’ I say. ‘I’m a great fan of penguins.’

‘Isn’t everyone?’ She smiles. ‘They’re cute critters. Not the easiest to work on. But I like their attitude. You have to have a bit of feistiness to survive in Antarctica.’

I hesitate and then clutch my hands into fists and press on. ‘Are you looking for an assistant? I mean, do you need someone to go south with you next season?’

Her smile becomes faint and distant. ‘I doubt it,’ she says. ‘We have people offering their services all the time. We’re pretty right for helpers, thanks.’

She goes back to packing up. It’s obvious she considers me dealt with, and I’m not usually a person to persist, but I hover and wait. I don’t know what’s making me so brave.

‘I have skills that might be useful,’ I suggest. ‘I’m a diesel mechanic . . .’

She replies impatiently, ‘But no experience with penguins.’

‘I know a bit about penguins,’ I say quietly. ‘I’ve been south before.’

She stops again and looks up. ‘How many times?’

‘Just once.’

‘And you haven’t been back?’

‘Family stuff.’

‘Yes,’ she says, a little wearily. ‘There’s always that.’ She slips her computer into a case. ‘So, why now? My seminar triggered something, did it?’ She smiles to herself. ‘Photos of Antarctica can do that.’

I shrug. Some things aren’t easy to explain. How do I tell her it’s the look in her eye that reminds me of being south? ‘It’s the wildlife,’ I say. ‘Especially the birds.’

She picks up her bags. ‘Well, thanks. I’ll let you know if we need someone.’

‘Should I give you my name and number?’

She sighs and sets her bags down again. ‘Yes. I suppose so. Just in case.’ She finds some paper in her backpack and hands it to me with a pen. I write down my name, address and phone number. ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ll give you a call if we’re interviewing.’


It’s cold in the car and Jess is curled up in a tight circle on the floor. She sits up and smiles at me as I climb in. It’s part of our routine greeting. Next, I’m expected to pat her and ask her how she’s going.

‘What would you think if I went south again?’ I say, as I reverse out of the carpark and turn for the highway.

She pants, then drops her chin onto the passenger seat and gazes up at me. Her eyes glint yellow in the glow of the streetlights. She doesn’t know what I’m suggesting and perhaps that’s just as well. Then she’d know my loyalty is not as deep as hers.

‘It’d help if you could talk,’ I say. ‘Then at least we could discuss this thing.’

A car toots behind me and Jess lifts her head abruptly. In the rear-view mirror I see a small white car, and Emma is behind the wheel. She probably thinks I’m a daydreamer sitting here at the highway intersection in the dark, going nowhere. Embarrassed, I bang on my indicator and swing left. Emma turns right towards the city.

As we head south through the roundabout, Jess whines and fidgets. She may not know what I’m thinking, but she knows I’m preoccupied. I forget to dip my headlights when another car approaches on an unlit stretch of highway and the driver hammers his high beams on just before he passes me. It’s like a flash straight into my soul. I see my mind skittering like a kite let loose in the wind. On the floor, Jess starts panting with agitation. She leaps on the seat and I yell at her and she dives to the floor, cowering as if I might hit her. I shrivel with guilt.

‘Jess, I’m sorry.’ I reach to pat her head, almost veering off the road. ‘I’ll make it up to you. You can have extra food tonight. Just this once.’

Extra food! I’m breaking all my rules. How could a few slides of penguins do this to me?


At home, I pour dog kibble into Jess’s bowl and toast a few slices of bread for myself. It’s not much of a meal, but this evening it’ll do. From the hall cupboard I pull out my old slide projector and set it up on a chair in the lounge room. I switch it on and place a couple of books under the legs so the light is at the right height on the wall. Then I insert a pre-loaded carousel and turn off the lights. Jess finishes her dinner by lapping up some water and drops onto her mat to watch the show. It’s been years since we’ve done this together.

I have tons of slides from my fifteen months down south. Back then, everyone was taking pictures with slide film; we used to develop the film ourselves in the darkroom using special kits.

It was fun dipping the film in the different solutions and seeing pictures appear like magic. I suppose if I went south again I’d have to update to something digital. Everybody seems to be into it these days. Although I think it’d feel strange to move away from my old manual SLR.

If someone looked through my slide collection without knowing about Antarctica, they’d think every day was fine during my stay. But when you’re down there for months, you can choose when to take your photos. And nobody takes photos during a blizzard. I took great shots of many things: the brightly coloured station buildings, the folds of the undulating Vestfold Hills, Weddell seals like black slugs on the ice, Adelie penguins tobogganing in lines, icebergs lit pink by the sun, snow petrels fluttering against a steel grey sky. But among all my slides there are five that stop me. These are the ones I linger on now.

The first is a picture of a newborn crabeater seal pup lying on an ice floe beside his mother. He’s all dark eyes, loose skin and soft brown fur. Within three weeks, sucking rich milk from his mother, he’ll grow into that loose skin. And as he grows larger and stronger, his mother will become smaller and weaker. Nearby a male seal will be watching and waiting. When the mother is too weak to hold off his advances, he’ll separate the mother and pup so he can mate with the mother. From then on the pup is alone. The bond between mother and pup was strong, but short. The pack ice is forever changing. Nothing is guaranteed. Relationships are intense but brief. The impermanence of things in Antarctica.

The second photo is of an Adelie penguin colony on Magnetic Island, just off Davis Station. It’s taken from the top of the island, overlooking the colony. Beyond, the sea ice stretches into the distance, glinting with silver light and grounded bergs. The scene is luminescent. Somehow the photo reflects the intensity and transience of light in Antarctica. The light is a gift that comes magically; it illuminates your soul and then it is gone.

The third photo is of a Weddell seal hunched against the side of a breathing hole. She’s using her bulk to create a platform so her pup can climb out of the water. Just before I took the photo, I was drawn across the ice by frantic splashing and braying. The pup was scrabbling at the sides of the hole while his mother tried to thrust him up out of the water. Every time she tried to nudge him up onto the ice, the pup would flail wildly and slip back in, gurgling underwater. Then he’d pop up, braying again, eyes wide. For several minutes, I watched the mother working to get her pup out, until she finally came up with the strategy of using herself as a bridge. Every time I look at this slide, I’m reminded how hard it is to survive in Antarctica, even if you’ve evolved to live there. You can die from misadventure even if you belong. Humans do not belong in Antarctica. It’s important to remember this.

The fourth picture is of a dead Weddell seal pup lying in an ice hollow. The warmth of its dying body melted out its grave. The body was fresh—mostly intact—but the eyes were already gone, probably gouged out by the skuas and giant petrels that flapped reluctantly into the sky as I approached to take the photo. Death is always close in Antarctica, and once you die you become food for the scavengers. This slide reminds me that there is purpose in death as well as in life.

The fifth slide was taken among several immense icebergs just off Davis Station. I was exploring the area on skis and had paused to gaze up at the elegant curves of the bergs against the perfect sky. Within the cold blue shadows there was no wind, no movement. Intense quiet settled over the ice. Immersed within that stillness, I heard the sound of silence—a glorious deafening ache that reached to the bottom of my soul. This, for me, was Antarctica.

I turn off the slide projector and the room falls suddenly quiet. I feel very alone, despite Jess sleeping beside me on the rug. As always, I’m unsure whether Antarctic reminiscence is good or bad for me. It resurrects those tingling sensations of excitement and freedom. It makes my heart beat with the desire to go back there. Then those flooding feelings of guilt return. The pain of not being here when my father died. The fear of being absent should something similar happen to Mum. These are the burdens that have held me in Hobart for so long.

Looking back over these slides reminds me of the lessons Antarctica taught me. And yet I realise I still don’t know how to use the intrinsic wisdom of that place. Perhaps I learned nothing there about the living of life. And what do I know about death, with the shadow of my mother’s departure hanging over me? Since Antarctica, I’ve marked time. I haven’t had the courage to try again for fear of injuries. It’s difficult to trust when the deepest trust has been broken.