Heart of the Nation: Australian Antarctic Territory

LEADING Seaman Anthony Moxham was under instructions from his niece to bring back a penguin from Antarctica. His compromise was almost as good.

THERE was a bit of cabin fever aboard the Antarctic flagship Aurora Australis after nine days of sailing south from Hobart.

They'd been ploughing through fog for most of the voyage and now, at journey's end, an iceberg the size of Luxembourg was corralling thick sea ice inside Commonwealth Bay - preventing them from landing, as planned, to mark the centenary of Douglas Mawson's arrival.

With Aurora Australis unable to break through, helicopters began ferrying scientists to Mawson's Huts, 20km away, while the crew lowered the gangway onto the sea ice to stretch their legs. Leading Seaman Anthony Moxham of the Royal Australian Navy, who was carrying out ocean-floor surveys on the expedition, took this toy penguin down with him. He'd won it from a claw crane arcade machine at a Hobart cinema shortly before they'd set sail; the machine was filled with penguins because Happy Feet 2 was screening. ("I put in a dollar and nailed it first go," he says. "Usually you have to spend a fortune to win on those things.") The 32-year-old, who's based at HMAS Waterhen in Sydney, was under strict instructions from his young niece to bring her back a penguin from Antarctica, and he figured this was a reasonable compromise.

Moxham put the stuffed toy down on the sea ice to take a few snaps when a strange thing happened. "All these black dots started appearing on the horizon," he recalls. "They were hundreds of Adelie penguins, waddling over to check out this giant orange ship that had suddenly appeared in the middle of their world." A couple of young males noticed the soft toy and began circling it excitedly, flapping their wings and squawking, which made everyone laugh. Then this female, pictured, shooed the rowdy pair away and, to everyone's surprise, began to groom the toy with great tenderness. It was the birds' breeding season, which might explain the strange, touching display of affection. Says Moxham: "Maybe she thought, 'What's up with this little one? Why isn't it moving - is it cold?'?"