Antarctic Diary: 11th October 2001

What an incredible day! The words I use cannot do it justice, so I'll just tell it as it happened.

I woke up at about 4.15 this morning with a start. I thought the ship was in trouble because of the blizzard which had been forecasted. I jumped out of bed to look out of the porthole and saw the sun rising (no blizzard). The snow looked every shade of white through to purple. I gazed for a while and then went back to sleep, expecting to be woken by Tamara van Polanen Petel at 6am as we'd arranged, an hour before our helicopter was due to take off from the ship's helipad. Instead, at 5am, Stan a very nice but slightly odd bloke shook my shoulder to wake me up.

I got up, expecting to leave very soon but instead spent the next 3 hours on the ship's bridge looking out at the sea ice, which looked particularly beautiful.

My name was called to go and put on the immersion suit; the helicopter would be there in 20 minutes - and it was.

The flight was amazing. The ice, not only its colours, but also its shapes, were incredible. The icebergs, grease ice and pack ice - all made up of water but yet all so different.

We arrived at Casey about 40 minutes later (we flew over an emperor penguin colony, too, it was a long way below, but its size was still impressive, and the fact that there were penguins so far out and so exposed, is amazing), but Casey Station is a disappointingly ugly place. The buildings, I mean. Just blocks of colours, too bright and inconsiderate for this place. The living quarters, or "red shed" is comfy, though.

We were taken on a tour, the surrounding are out of this world. It's so surreal, I can't believe I'm sitting on my bed in Antarctica.