Stay was dognapped from Hobart in 1991. Her arrival in Antarctica coincided with the end of Australia’s use of huskies, a tradition that began with Sir Douglas Mawson on his voyage in 1911 and was carried on when Mawson Station was established in 1954. The last two teams of huskies in Antarctica, including Blackie, Cocoa and the puppies Misty, Cobber and Frosty, returned to Hobart in 1992 as part of changes due to the Madrid Protocol for the environmental protection of Antarctica. The older dogs retired and lived out their days in Tasmania. The younger dogs and the puppies made an epic journey of their own, ending up in Ely, Minnesota, near the Canadian border, where they continued working. The story of their departure from Antarctica was made into a film, The Last Husky (Aurora Films). Misty’s ashes were taken back to Antarctica in 2011.
When Stay first met the huskies of Mawson, they showed their disgust at being replaced by weeing on her, an incident captured in at least one photograph.
After the end of her first season in Antarctica, Stay didn’t want to ‘RTA’. It seems she had a mind of her own, for instead of returning to the Royal Guide Dogs full of money, she stayed in Antarctica and began a life of grand adventure and subterfuge as the last dog on the continent.
Since then, Stay has been smuggled, hidden, freed and dognapped so many times that she’s lost count. She has travelled around Antarctica on helicopters, aeroplanes, skidoos, Häggs, quad bikes, tractors and utes. She’s hidden everywhere from mailbags to cargo holds to roof spaces. She has been a wintering expeditioner at every Australian base and Macquarie Island, and has visited the Antarctic bases and ships of many other countries.
Stay lost her leg in an accident at Mawson in 1993 and it was replaced by a carpenter known as ‘Smoothie’. Her lost leg was sent back to Davis Station with a note saying, This is all you’re getting.
After many other adventures, and long periods where no one knew her location, in 2002 Stay was kidnapped from Mawson and travelled to the other end of the globe, ending up in the Ny Ålesund international research station in Spitsbergen, the world’s most northerly settlement, where she was photographed in front of the Roald Amundsen memorial. She made it back to Davis Station in time for the next season.
Stay’s original passport fell apart and was lost, but she has a more recent one that’s also full of stamps. She makes regular appearances in the newsletters and reports of each station and her antics are closely followed. She even has her own Facebook page, though her updates are erratic and mysterious.
Over the years Royal Guide Dogs Tasmania asked for Stay’s return a few times, but eventually realised she was never coming back. There have been several collections and donations from Antarctic expeditioners to the association over the years.
If you see one of Stay’s relatives sitting patiently in a shopping centre or airport, please give her a coin to help with the training of a Guide Dog. Stay will be very grateful.
Antarctica and global warming
‘Global warming’ is the increase in temperatures scientists have been observing around the world over the past few decades. These increases are believed to be caused by the amount of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, that humans are releasing into the atmosphere.
While scientists have known for a while that the Antarctic Peninsula is warming rapidly, they thought temperatures in other parts of the continent were fairly stable. However, research announced in late 2012 showed that West Antarctica is warming nearly twice as fast as scientists previously believed. Between 1958 and 2010, temperatures in West Antarctica increased by 2.4 degrees Celsius. That makes it one of the fastest-warming places on the planet.
While global warming will be serious for all humans and other creatures, it may have very dramatic effects in Antarctica. The West Antarctic ice sheet is up to four kilometres thick, and if it melts or even partly melts because of global warming, it will make a big contribution to rising sea levels.
Living creatures in Antarctica — especially on the Antarctic Peninsula — are already feeling the effects of climate change. According to the British Antarctic Survey, the numbers of Adélie penguins, which need sea ice, are dropping, while other species such as chinstrap penguins, which like open water, are increasing and plants are starting to grow on parts of the peninsula.
The research projects and weather observations carried out by nations that have Antarctic bases — including Australia — are making an important contribution to our understanding of climate change.
Thank you
I met Stay during my six-week voyage to Antarctica in late 2011. As a ‘round tripper’, I only had a brief taste of life on an Antarctic station, and had to rely on the help of others to make sure this tale was as realistic as a story about a telepathic fibreglass dog could be. Any mistakes are mine, not theirs.
Thank you to my team of Antarctic readers and fact checkers from the 2011/12 Antarctic season, including Graham ‘Cookie’ Cook (‘outgoing’ Davis Station leader — a genial person, plus he was heading back to Hobart), Bob Heath (an Antarctic pilot who was tragically killed in a Twin Otter crash in Antarctica in 2013), Stephanie MacDonald (weather observer and brave twice-daily releaser of the hydrogen-filled balloon), Timo Viehl (clever German atmospheric scientist who worried about his English grammar, though it was better than most native speakers’) and Louise Carroll (weather forecaster who hurt her hand slipping over on ice on her second day in Antarctica and was nearly sent straight back home).
Dave ‘Fluffy’ Hosken (scientist of complicated things related to lasers and champion beard-grower) helped with reading and fact checking, but I am mostly grateful to him for taking me on an unforgettable three-day field trip to Bandits Hut and Platcha Hut, and allowing me to use some of his photographs. He dognapped Stay from the Davis LQ so she could come with us in the Hägglunds, foiling the plans of Mawson expeditioners who’d planned to steal her and take her to Bechervaise Island, and unwittingly sparking the idea for this story.
Thanks to Margie Law, Jane Wasley and Mali Greenlaw for reading the manuscript and also putting me up in their house in Hobart, which I’m sure felt like the Antarctic halfway hotel by the end of the season. Thanks to Erica Adamson, expeditioner, who spent four summers and one winter in Antarctica in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for her comments.
Julie McInness came down on the same voyage as me to study penguins on Bechervaise Island over summer. Her emails home, consisting of fantastic penguin photos with clever captions, made me laugh out loud and she kindly answered my numerous questions about penguins and life on Bechervaise.
Hazel Edwards, another red-headed writer who has been to Antarctica on an arts fellowship, also wrote some children’s stories about Stay that she kindly shared with me.
Antarctic station leader Jeremy Smith wrote ‘A short biography of Stay’ in 2003, which was helpful in piecing together her travels, and journalist Jo Chandler’s article ‘Plastic pooch still guarding Antarctic subcult’, which appeared in The Age on 18 January 2010, gave a humorous take on why Stay has gathered a cult following, suggesting that she has become a talisman of the proud culture of independence and wackiness that lives on in Antarctica today.
The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has run an arts fellowship program since the early 1980s, sending artists of all kinds, including writers, filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians and dancers, to visit Antarctica. Thanks to the AAD for awarding me the 2011/12 Antarctic Arts Fellowship, so I could sail for six weeks on the Aurora Australis and visit Antarctica. AAD marketing and events manager Kristin Raw cheerfully encouraged me to apply for three years running and was most helpful before and after my voyage.
Voyage leader Sharon Labudda and deputy leader Leanne Millhouse made the trip a pleasure, along with Captain Murray Doyle, who has been the master of RSV Aurora Australis since 1995 (he is not ‘the Boss’ of this story) and the always-friendly ship’s crew, whose fundraising efforts for Camp Quality over the years have seen thousands of dollars raised
for that charity.
Thanks to my companions, the expeditioners heading down to Antarctica for the 2011/12 summer, and those hardy souls who had spent the previous winter there and returned on the ship with me.
Diana Patterson, Australia’s first female station leader in Antarctica, wrote a wonderful book about her experiences called The Ice Beneath My Feet. Diana was station leader at Mawson in 1989 and went on several sledging trips with Mawson’s famous huskies before they were returned to Australia. Thanks, Diana, for helping me understand station life in that era.
Thanks to my agent, Sophie Hamley, and all at publisher HarperCollins, particularly Cristina Cappelluto, Lisa Berryman and Kate O’Donnell.
My niece Aimee Blackadder read the first few chapters of this book when I started writing and made me promise to finish it. Her obsession with reading is a delight and inspiration.
And thanks to my partner, Andi Davey, who hates the cold but would really love to meet Stay one day.
About the author
Jesse Blackadder wanted to be a vet from the age of five, but ended up becoming a writer. She lives near an extinct volcano in northern New South Wales, and shares her very big garden with a water dragon called Kinky, a koala called Blinky, a python called Slinky and lots of other wild creatures. She was lucky enough to meet the real Stay when she went to Antarctica on an arts fellowship, and was involved in a dognapping incident at Davis Station.
Copyright
The ABC ‘Wave’ device is a trademark of the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used
under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.
First published in Australia in 2013
This edition published in 2013
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Jesse Blackadder 2013
The right of Jesse Blackadder to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Print data:
Blackadder, Jesse.
Stay : the last dog in Antarctica / Jesse Blackadder.
ISBN: 978 0 7333 3177 0 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978 1 7430 9819 6 (epub)
For ages 9–12.
Theft—Juvenile fiction.
Guide dogs—Statues—Tasmania—Hobart—Juvenile fiction.
Guide dogs—Statues—Antarctica—Juvenile fiction.
A823.4
Cover design by Christa Moffitt, Christabella Designs
Cover images supplied courtesy of Jesse Blackadder
Author photograph by Dave Hosken
Stay:The Last Dog in Antarctica Page 13