The Nature of Ice

by Robyn Mundy

  Keep her alive, he means. ‘What about the work on the summer accommodation module? Isn’t that why I’ve been asked to stay on?’

  Malcolm shakes his head again. ‘It won’t be every day, nothing like that. She can hook up with the seal team once a week, the skua mob will let her tag along if they can ever get their act together. Just now and then, when you see your way to setting up the boys and letting things roll for a day or two. The building work takes priority. I’ll tell Freya that she’ll need to slot in with your schedule.’ Malcolm waits for a moment. ‘What’s the problem, McGonigal?’ He gets an edge to his voice when things don’t go his way. ‘Your boys are all crack tradesmen, aren’t they?’

  ‘You know they are.’

  ‘Adam Singer would jump at the chance if I gave him the nod. He’s taken quite a shine to Freya and her project.’

  ‘I bet he has.’ The Predator, is the name those Adam trained with in Hobart call him on the quiet. Bullshit artist or Casanova, in two weeks at the station Adam has already mentioned enough conquests to make Chad feel inadequate.

  ‘Come on,’ Malcolm urges, ‘you and I are used to juggling balls for the Division. Any other time you’d be panting to get off the station.’

  Clearly taking Chad’s grunt as a yes, Malcolm runs a neat line of correction fluid over jottings in the margin of one page. Both of them know Chad has no recourse. Ultimately, the station leader calls the shots.

  ‘Let’s see. You’ll be able to bike it on quads as long as the sea ice is good. Freya’s project has been allocated five hours’ helicopter time. That should get you out to some choice spots. You never know, you might end up large as life on some art gallery wall, immortalised in print alongside Frank Hurley’s photos.’ He rolls up the pages and loops an elastic band around them, once, twice, three times to be sure.

  Chad can feel his hackles rise.

  ‘I know you’ll like this.’ Malcolm lowers his voice as he leans across the desk. ‘There’s a chance I can get the two of you out on Ginger or Gadget later in the summer. Up to the plateau, Amery Ice Shelf, Beaver Lake.’ He presents the scroll to Chad on a platter of upturned hands. ‘No promises, mind.’

  Chad can’t help himself: he takes the roll and smacks the edge of the desk with the same flick he’d use to nail a fly. ‘Always glad to help, Malcolm.’ Dislodged by the sudden movement, loose papers billow and waft across the trim and tidy desk.

  Ski training

  February 1912

  SKI TRAINING WAS A DISASTER waiting to happen.

  ‘It’s all well and good for you, X,’ Walter Hannam, the big wireless operator, grumbled. ‘We weren’t all born Swiss long-jump ski champions.’

  The trouble, Douglas realised, was that few Australians had encountered snow before, let alone trying to move about with eight-foot wooden planks lashed to their boots. Douglas could see the group losing heart while Xavier Mertz, the embodiment of optimism and goodwill, insisted they relocate to a higher rise where they could make use of the gradient down to the hut.

  ‘We make our own championship!’ X sang. Douglas gave a half-hearted nod of approval and away they went, the vaudeville ski patrol shuffling like penguins behind their instructor, Douglas bringing up the rear.

  Snow sparkled, the ice cliffs shone, snow petrels in their dozens swept across a sky gilded with evening sun. Over at the headland, Frank Hurley stood caped beneath his black cloth, his camera’s cyclopean eye framing the landscape.

  Commonwealth Bay was a glorious place when the wind stopped blowing. The men had asked him about the uncanny pattern of wind—how one could stand in relative calm while thirty yards away another would be blown off his feet in a gust. At times the harbour had been struck with ferocious squalls, when, at the same time, the foreshore registered nothing more than a whisper of breeze. No one but Douglas had reason to wonder at the uniquely fickle nature of Commonwealth Bay—his men, first-timers, assumed this weather was normal for Antarctica. Ninnis joked that they needn’t bother filling the gaps in the hut walls—already the verandahs were knee-deep in snowdrift; in another month, Ninnis said, the snow banked around the outside of the building would be up to pussy’s bow.

  Another sixty weddell seals had come ashore during the day to join the hundred-odd lounging on the ice. Along the foreshore, two adélie penguins shot out of the water and sped off on their bellies before striding off to feed their fledgling chicks. Penguins were leaving Commonwealth Bay and would not return until next spring. Tomorrow, if the weather held, he would have the men start stockpiling—five hundred adélie carcasses to supplement their diet, ward off scurvy through the dark months of winter.

  Mertz demonstrated the stance again, crouching to a squat and shifting his body weight forward. He eased down the hill, made a clean sweep in the snow and came to a stop near the back wall of the hut. Douglas applauded with the others.

  ‘Who’ll give that a crack?’ Walter Hannam said.

  Mertz gave a nod of encouragement to Johnny Hunter. Though Hunter initially tucked himself down low, he shot up like a duck the moment gravity took hold. He hadn’t travelled nine yards before he keeled to one side. Douglas watched two more men topple like skittles and tumble down the slope with limbs and skis akimbo. Hannam collapsed in the snow, his raucous laugh echoing across the bay and setting off the dogs. ‘Championship! Championship!’ Hannam roared at each man who fell.

  Mertz loomed over Douglas, panting in his thick accent his latest English word, ‘Golly!’ He added, ‘I bet our chief will make the A-one sportsman.’

  Enough was enough. Douglas unbuckled his straps. ‘I didn’t bring men all this damned way to break arms and legs in the name of sport.’

  A wild squeal rang out and Douglas looked up to see Walter Hannam tobogganing towards the hut, his hefty body prone along the length of a single ski. Men dived clear; Hannam shot past, hooting and shouting and slapping his thigh—his glee cut short when he registered the hut’s back wall fast approaching.

  Douglas closed his eyes.

  ‘Championship! Championship!’ the onlookers roared, then cackled hysterically when Hannam careened into the hut.

  ‘Have the men pack away the gear,’ Douglas barked at Mertz. ‘They won’t be needing skis again.’

  He dumped his own skis near the hut and strode away, choosing to seek out Hurley’s company by the rocks over that of a crestfallen ski instructor and a now-subdued group of men.

  Beyond the hut the Greenland dogs sat stretched along the length of their chains, looking perfectly at home. Ginger lolled on the rocks licking her paws, Basilisk and Gadget sat blinking at the yolk of the sun. Douglas always marvelled at the warmth trapped inside those dense, matted coats. To be so naturally adapted. To be so well equipped. There was no clear explanation as to why so many had perished.

  They had begun with forty-nine dogs. Frank Wild had taken eight for his western base but that still left half the original count dead. Mertz and Ninnis had spoken of the voyage out from London on Aurora, some dogs collapsing with distemper while one beast turned rabid and roamed the decks after tearing free of its chains. It was kill or be killed, X explained.

  Between the group’s setting up the radio relay station at Macquarie Island and arriving at Commonwealth Bay, ten dogs had died. Fitting and foaming at the mouth, paroxysms of shivering, some of their faces disfigured with lockjaw— illnesses the likes of which no one had seen before. Doctors McLean and Whetter’s post-mortem diagnosed gastric inflammation, collapsed lungs, a gangrenous appendix. It was as if some hidden evil had poisoned their bodies from the inside out.

  Hurley stood at his tripod, sunlight catching the glass of his camera. ‘Hannam survive his field training?’ He grinned.

  ‘Which of us should be more grateful?’ Douglas spoke without caution. ‘Hannam for his surplus padding, or the rest of us for nailing extra braces to the framework of the hut?’

  ‘Poor old fat boy.’ Hurley chortled and Douglas chided himself for disregarding a rule of le
adership he’d admired in Ernest Shackleton: be fair, firm and friendly, never familiar.

  The men had all filtered indoors except for Mertz, who pushed away on skis, head down, moving out of sight beyond the rise.

  ‘Look at her sitting there, timbers gleaming,’ Hurley nodded to winter quarters, ‘an outpost of the Empire amid all this untamed glory. And beyond that rise, Doc, who knows what’s in store for us?’

  ‘We, and your camera, will be the first to explore it.’

  ‘It’s the kind of adventure every fellow dreams of.’ Hurley turned to him. ‘From what I hear, a number of us were up against some stiff competition—older, more experienced chaps.’

  ‘Youth and vigour, Hurley. I needed men with the recuperative powers to withstand harsh conditions and extreme discomfort.’ That was another thing he’d learned on Shackleton’s expedition, hauling across an endless tract of ice not just a laden sledge but also an ageing sledging companion—his old geology professor and mentor; cajoling the Prof to keep moving, at times admonishing him as though he was a badly behaved child, turning at the sound of his cry to witness the horror of him scrabbling on hands and knees while their companion kicked him like a dog.

  ‘And here was I thinking I’d impressed you with artistic talent.’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Hurley. The need for a first-rate photographic record is the sole reason you are here.’ Every camera enthusiast in Australia had applied for the role of expedition photographer. Though his colleagues thought Hurley a remarkably fine photographer, he had no cinematograph experience. ‘From personal know-how, some of the best scenes are to be got on sledging journeys. As fortune would have it, you came equipped with the necessary build and constitution.’ Indeed, Douglas would have sacrificed the photographic results rather than include a weak link in the team.

  He recalled the drive to raise fifty thousand pounds in less than a year from a British public who had already given generously to Scott’s South Pole expedition. The appeal in London’s Daily Mail to raise enough money for a ship to get started; months in their Lower Regent Street office first sending out requests to manufacturers, then letters thanking firms for tins of rabbit, plum pudding, sewing machines and tobacco, glaxo milk powder, candles—and soap, of which they’d received enough to lather the Southern Ocean. He could happily go on travelling for the rest of time, but to organise another expedition …

  Douglas saw Mertz reappear, a compact figure weaving down the slope on skis, seeking out undulations that sent him gliding through the air. He watched as X eased to a standstill near the dogs.

  ‘The first Swiss to ski in Antartica,’ Hurley said. ‘He makes it look dead easy,’

  Ginger would have bowled X over had her chain been longer. She nuzzled under his arm as he untethered his skis. He scratched her back and she leaned her weight against his leg, her tongue lapping at the air.

  Then the dogs pricked their ears in unison; penguins halted in their tracks. Douglas watched X smile with the sweetness of the melody rising from the hut.

  Ginger laid her ears flat when X hoisted her up by her front legs and placed her paws on his chest. He stepped from side to side, one hand on his dance partner’s back, the other resting on her paw. Mertz and Ginger swayed to ‘The Shepherd’s Cradle Song’; the lullaby playing on the gramophone spilled across the bay. On each turn Ginger hopped and shuffled; with each step she licked her master’s chin.

  Douglas nodded. ‘The first to dance.’

  Xavier Mertz at Land’s End

  FIELD

  TRAINING

  FREYA SAVOURS THE HOUR: too early for helicopters to begin their day. Her pack and camera case rest against her studio door, everything double-checked and ready to go. She fires off a quick email: About to leave for field training. Hoping for fine weather and photos to match. Back Sunday. Within a minute her laptop chimes with her husband’s reply: TAKE CARE OUT THERE!

  Long ago, when he was her tutor, Marcus introduced Freya to Hurley’s pictorial world, and led her to question the truth in her own photography. Mediation and manipulation have been part of photography from its early days. He had held up a Hurley image before the class. Take the process of composing, positioning the subject, cropping objects the photographer considers extraneous or an interruption. In this sense, doesn’t every photo lie?

  She studies Hurley’s photo now. Xavier Mertz at Land’s End. Carefully posed near the ice cliff, the figure of Mertz offers more than scale to the icescape. An enduring Hurley theme was human fragility pitted against the might of nature. Hurley captures Mertz’s awe as he gazes out across the sea ice, the low-angle light dragging his shadow back across the snow. Did Xavier Mertz have any premonition of what lay ahead?

  When your own shutter blinks—Marcus’s eyes had swept the tutorial room—think about the story you’re showing. Then look at what you’re masking.

  A.memory from earlier in the week dances before Freya’s eyes. Not a smart idea, the man driving the bulldozer had said, unable to hide his disdain at finding her out on the ice alone. Neither smart, nor her proudest moment. Marcus, if she told him, would struggle to imagine his wife defying the rules.

  In a small, primitive darkroom at Commonwealth Bay, Frank Hurley brought this image of Mertz into being, meticulously retouching the negative, using camelhair brushes and developer to tease out highlights and shadows. Hurley worked like an impressionist painter, drawing on brushstroke and colour to create light and shade, to reveal a deeper truth.

  Sensate truth, Marcus termed Hurley’s art, and framed Freya’s face with his gaze.

  At the end of her final semester at the photography college, Marcus had encouraged her to stay in Melbourne and urged her to take her portfolio to a dozen contacts on a list he’d prepared, convinced she had the talent to strike out on her own. Of course she accepted his invitation to celebrate her first paid assignment. To new beginnings, he had toasted.

  ‘WE BEGAN HERE.’ THE FIELD training officer traces on the map the route Freya had taken. ‘And we were looking sweet all the way up here. Waypoint 228,’ Simon taps the map, ‘is where we started going walkabout.’ The GPS, the size of a mobile phone and every bit as intrusive, is passed around the field training circle for all to acknowledge Freya’s unplanned 5.2-kilometre detour. Latitude, longitude, minutes, seconds; dozens of satellites map the globe with frightening acuity, ten of their stealthy eyes fixed upon the ice edge where the training group confers.

  ‘If you have access to a GPS,’ asks Travis, beside her, ‘why would you bother with a compass?’

  Freya silently agrees.

  ‘Chances are, you won’t use anything but a GPS over summer. They’re all well and good until your batteries run flat, or your LCD gives out with the cold.’ Simon rests the map on the seat of his quad bike. He takes Freya’s compass and demonstrates again how to adjust for magnetic deviation. ‘Remember, folks,’ he draws a pocket-sized book from his jacket and waves it like a spruiker touting programs at a fair, ‘Simon says. Whatever you need to know, the information is all here in your field manuals.’

  The four trainees, Freya now at the rear, follow Simon Says in a single line back through iceberg alley, weaving between the same towering bergs, meandering past the same field of waist-high snow, avoiding the same crests of ice that Freya led them safely by when outward bound. She can’t help dwelling on her ineptitude. What if other people’s safety depended on her navigation? A girl in need of rescue, Marcus began calling her years ago, on the night she took a wrong turn while showing him her city, and hurtled down an alleyway to a dead end. He was as certain of his feelings then as he was of his sense of direction. After she moved from Melbourne back to Perth he had appeared unannounced on the doorstep of her unit, the fragrance of the bedraggled posy in his hand engulfing, as was her image of him smuggling hand-picked sprigs of daphne across the continent.

  No unlit street signs to blame out here: just her own shoddy compass work, though no one is insensitive enough to say so. S
imon and the training group are kind, encouraging, which only adds to Freya’s sting of failure. All day her focus has been pulled and pushed by all this wonder, her mind raking through ideas on how to photograph the ice—dismissing the notion of black and white amid all this colour and texture, the quality of light, the incomprehensible magnitude of the place. Did she take a compass bearing as often as she ought? Did she add or subtract for magnetic deviation? Travis joked that she’d lured them astray on purpose. Everyone agreed that the path she blazed out to the ocean added a brilliant photo opportunity to an already outstanding day of navigational training—the water sparkling, the ice edge alive with the hubbub of penguins.

  Freya has her work cut out keeping pace with the bikes ahead, her oversized helmet requiring constant attention to stop it sliding forward. This irrational dislike she has for enclosure—what kind of person knowingly chooses a helmet several sizes too large? She releases her grip on the handlebar and pushes at the headgear. She has less than a second to feel her body rise as her bike becomes airborne, launched by an unseen wave of sastrugi. Time moves in frames. She feels as weightless as a bird. Freya looks out upon a surface of crystal blue shimmering in silver light. She sees a blur of peacock green and red, the clothing and bike of the rider ahead wheeling through the ice. In the time it takes a shutter to blink, Freya captures the spark of a photographic idea: a summer aurora, its celestial lights streaked vivid through the ice. Her quad lands with a jarring thud, skittles over ice and returns with a flick of its tail to the furrow of tracks. The helmet droops over her eyes again like a forelock from an unkempt mane.