For a place that has no roads we’ve got a lot of vehicles down here. I’m guessing they must save a fortune on rego as nothing down here is registered. No cops, lights, stop signs, roundabouts, parking meters or cameras either. The Antarctic Division is pretty strict about us having the appropriate licences though and gives us training in all the vehicles we need to use. We all have a quad bike which is fun but by the time you get dressed up to ride in minus 45°wind chill it loses its appeal. Bring on Summer! The vehicle of choice this time of year is the Hagglunds or more affectionately known as a Hagg.
They go just about anywhere, can take 4 people in the front section and all the gear in the back. You wouldn’t want to be fat though. I know I can’t say that anymore but I’m feeling naughty today. They are pretty noisy inside and come with headphones like in a chopper. In fact when you’re squeezed into the driver’s seat and surrounded by all the instrumentation, radar, GPS monitor, Sat phone and radios you feel like you are a pilot. They haggs run on rubber tracks and are an inseparable two piece unit otherwise you wouldn’t be able to steer them. Let’s say they travel comfortably at somewhere between 20 and 40 kilometres an hour on nice surfaces such as clean blue ice, snow and frozen ocean. On rough sastrugi the going is much slower. New word. Sastrugi. It’s an annoying ecofriendly speed hump of snow. For some reason, in certain locations there are rows of it strategically placed at inconvenient intervals and varying heights. Caused by wind erosion I believe and really annoying in blizzard conditions when you’re driving blindly with instruments. Anyway enough about them as this is a vehicle post. Driving a Hagg is a pretty cool Antarctic experience.
We have 3 haggs and one of them doubles as our ambulance and rescue vehicle. Nope, we have 4 haggs. We have an older one which is a dedicated fire hagg. It’s the red one. The orange one has the best heater (if you come from Broome then that’s a handy tip). It’s a lovely sunny day and minus 28 down here today by the way.
We have a couple of standard Toyota Hilux 4X4’s. They are known as the chefs ute and the tradies ute. I had to do my induction before I could drive one. Sounded a bit silly but I did pick up a few good tips. Always park facing into the wind otherwise you could lose a door and we don’t have many spare ones left. Avoid parking in locations where you need to put the handbrake on, as after a short while it freezes on permanently. Actually the utes are pretty useless this time of year as there’s lots of snow/ice around and they slide around and get bogged. Also, unless the stuff you put in them is heavy then it just gets blown away. They have good radios and the windscreen wipers have been removed as it never rains down here.
We have lots of big boy toys which are fun. A dozer, loader, excavator, crane, skidder and a JCB being the main ones. This paragraph is really only for the people who can tell the difference but in reality the people that would know the difference won’t have read down this far and are just looking at the pictures. I’ll move on.
We have an older vehicle called the Pioneer. I don’t think it gets used very much anymore but fortunately our mechanic Brian drove it when he was last down here in 1986 and is keen to get it fired up once in a while. I was lucky enough to ride in it up onto the plateau and out to the Frammes mountains a few months ago. Probably the most comfortable vehicle to travel in on station. You could fit half the station on the super wide bench seat. Unfortunately the heater is crap but you keep warm manually defrosting the windscreen as the demister is pretty sad and it has no sat nav so you do need to look out the windows.
And to finish off. If we didn’t have such an array of vehicles then how would we dig through 1.2m of ice to go for our mid-winter swim? They help us keep our sanity!
Gotaway 