Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

we helped with the feeding process, and got to know them. We envied our
successors their luck in having these splendid animals as companions and
make winter travel easier. They were to make possible the geological and
topographical survey of Coronation Island until 1964.
A journalist, Douglas Liversidge, was on the ship and conducted several
interviews with me. I also demonstrated aspects of my field-work and
collecting methods, which later led to several articles and a book by Liversidge.
During this time too the John Biscoe visited Sandefjord Bay at the western end
of Coronation Island, where a base had been constructed in February 1945. The
original intention had been to establish a station on Signy Island in 1944, but
this was not achieved and the hut was erected instead at Sandefjord Bay, in
February 1945, although there were insufficient personnel to occupy it. Instead
a new hut at Cape Geddes, Laurie Island replaced it in 1946. Both the
Sandefjord Bay hut and the Cape Geddes Hut (especially) were vastly superior
in size and comfort to our primitive little home on Signy. We went ashore at
Sandefjord, on the way seeing at close quarters a leopard seal killing a penguin
in the brash ice. We found the base hut had been erected inside a large, dense
penguin rookery. Apart from the noise there was a pervasive smell and having
climbed the cliffs into the rookery we were spattered by penguin faeces as
birds avoiding us threw up shit with their flippers and spattered our clothes.
When we got back to the ship I was standing on the main deck when, from
above the jacket of a suit followed by a pair of trousers, fluttered into the sea.
Looking up I saw that it was Douglas, who had foolishly worn a business suit
to visit the base hut, and evidently now considered it was permanently ruined!
Then at the end of February just over two enjoyable and exciting years after
we had first landed on Signy we departed, as I then thought probably for ever,
heading directly for the Falkland Islands. We were disappointed to have no
opportunity of seeing neither the Antarctic Peninsula, nor South Georgia.
After a smooth straightforward voyage we had the pleasure, after the
limited Antarctic smells, of experiencing peat smoke and plant aromas as we
approached land again. We were accommodated in a boarding house run by
the local sausage-maker, while waiting for a ship to take us north and home.
We slept in a large dormitory under the roof. It was here that I met Ray Adie
for the first time. He was a South African geologist, one of the “lost eleven”
from Stonington where he had spent three winters. Ray and I were put to work
in the Treasury counting Falklands currency notes and checking their numbers
before they were destroyed. Daily we were locked in a room in the Treasury
building for lengthy periods and the currency was passed to us through a
hatch. We went through about £80,000 in a week, the largest amount that has,
literally, passed through my hands in such a short time.
Other days we walked in the surrounding country, or went trout fishing
on the [Murray] River. We visited various houses for “smokoe” (morning tea)
and sometimes for lunch or dinner, a change from the sausages! Don Clarke’s
home became a favourite place to visit. He was Manager of the Falklands
Islands Company (FIC) and also a keen footballer. His wife, Marjorie, was a
vivacious brunette and an entertaining companion and I grew very fond of her.
Occasionally I went riding with her along the coast towards Cape Pembroke
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