The Nature of Ice Read Online Free PDF Page A

blind? Love and science, domesticity and exploration: separate carriages on a single train. He had teetered along such a track, away to London at the start of last year to launch the expedition just weeks after announcing their engagement. The final months in Australia had passed as a blur, every bone-wearying source of funding exhausted. He had plunged his own savings into the expedition, sold off his shares, spent beyond his means on Paquita’s diamond ring. Still, Douglas Mawson’s girl belonged to a family unaccustomed to thrift.
    Stoicism had become a necessity, had guided him through otherwise heartrending decisions leading up to the expedition: he felt no regret in dissuading Paquita from attending the official departure in Adelaide, or from coming to Hobart to farewell the ship as she’d so much wanted to do. His fiancée was a darling, a sweet and loving angel, but he had sacrificed everything to reach this point and he would not risk a public outburst of emotion, tearful embraces before the keen eyes of the press. She was a good girl, a dutiful girl; of course she bowed to his ruling. And don’t waste your time writing letters , he’d instructed. I won’t get them until the ship returns in a year and I’ll have no time for reading then .
    Yet here in the privacy of his cabin, he felt as brazen as a voyeur, free to touch the print on the wall, to trace the long raven hair of the painted maiden; he saw where sunlight caught her skin. He fancied, in her likeness to Paquita, the promise of the future, the allure of the explorer’s return.

STEEL
CROSSES
    EACH AUTUMN THE OCEAN SURROUNDING Antarctica begins to freeze. By winter the sea ice will have grown to a metre and a half thick, sturdy enough to carry the weight of Davis Station’s heaviest plant vehicle. But Chad McGonigal has been south enough times to know that by early November, the sea ice has begun to melt from the underside up. At some indeterminate time it will take on the structure of honeycomb, turning rotten, its bearing capacity halved, strength and structure reduced to a veneer.
    Squalls whistle by. Chad pushes on the auger and winds the hand drill, the steel bit slowly grinding down through the sea ice while Indie stands back, hands on hips. A chute of sea water burbles up through the hole, freezing as it washes over the ice. Indie thinks him a lost cause for insisting on testing the thickness of the sea ice firsthand. For not trusting a mate’s word.
    Indie drops the weighted tape measure into the hole. ‘I told you, you fuckwit.’ He brandishes the measure. ‘One point six metres. I’ve been driving the Hägglund across it all frigging week.’
    Chad refrains from telling him about the Hagg that broke through the sea ice at Mawson Station. Never mind its state-of-the-art Swedish design, Mercedes-powered turbo diesel engines, automatic bilge pumps: try as she might, the old girl did precious little amphibious travel that day. For those in the cab it was a scrambled exit through the roof hatches, the Hägglund hanging on for five desperate hours before giving up and gurgling out of sight.
    Chad clambers into the cab of the D8 bulldozer. The path left by Aurora Australis now runs as a frozen scar across the ice. He lowers the blade and begins the job of clearing sastrugi from the runway; the two Casa planes are due any day.
    Adélie penguins march across the sea ice, their return signalling the start of the breeding season. For a time the penguins form an orderly line until, for no apparent reason, one renegade diverges and a second stops dead in its tracks, bringing a confused halt to the rest of the troops.
    Spindrift flurries past the windscreen. Still visible are two steel crosses that mark the high point of Anchorage Island. The first time Chad saw them from a distance he pictured them crafted from Oregon pine, stately things, the grain scoured into ridges, the wood bleached blond