Scrapyard too cruel a fate for the Aurora Australis

It took me to the land of mythical tragedies across the roughest ocean on Earth, then it carried home the body of the man I loved.

Icebreaker Aurora Australis.

This week, I’m talking a ship that covered my body in hundreds of tiny bruises like puffs of brown cloud as I floated into its door handles and walls. A ship that rolled me in the paws of giant waves and smashed through thick pack ice to take me to the land of mythical tragedies across the roughest ocean on Earth, on the last great sea journey, to the wild side of Antarctica. A ship that carried home the body of the man I loved.

The ship – our mighty icebreaker, Aurora Australis – seems destined for overseas sale after carrying out its final expedition this year. After 30 years of glorious service, the Aussie-made Orange Roughy (as it’s affectionately dubbed) is leaving us. Unless, unless...

Twenty-five years ago, on a day when the sky hung low over the huddled Hobart rooftops, I sailed on her into the dazzling world of the long white light. On board, the processed air hummed and the light felt tepid. The cabins were tiny slivers and the corridors thin; you’d press yourself against walls to let others pass and wedge yourself into narrow bunks with pillows. Mean, salt-scoured portholes didn’t let in much light.

I would sit in the Orange Roughy’s rumbling, clanking engine room and listen to an engineer speak of her like she was the most beautiful lay he’d ever had. Lovingly, he explained that she was double hulled, with two skins of steel; her ribcage was wide and firm and strong and was tarted up in its screaming orange colour so she could be easily spotted in the vast expanse of white.

“She’s great in the ice – but bobs like a cork in the open water,” he said. Her hull was shaped like a spoon so it could ride up on top of the huge slabs of ice and crack them with her weight. “Sometimes we get bogged,” the engineer grinned. “And the great thing about getting stuck is that the ship’s still. Finally.”

Once in her rec room I marvelled at 20 people in low chairs sliding in perfect unison two metres forward, then two back, then do it all over again as they tried to watch a video. Someone yelled to turn it off – watching themselves was much more fun. “Who needs Luna Park when we’ve got our ship?” was writ large on the mess’s whiteboard one morning.

After the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, we sailed beyond the 60th parallel south into mist, and the ship’s roll finally stilled. When the mist lifted the sky was white and the water black, like heaving marble, with long veins of white running through it. Next day, giant icecubes bobbed in a bathtub sea. Then ice pancakes, an ocean of severed ears. A cluster of birds followed us like children from Hamelin, feasting on the krill kicked up by the hull as it chopped through the ice.

We did get bogged. The captain rocked the Aurora by moving water in the ballast tanks from one side of the hull to the other – he called it “The Wriggle”. The ship eventually slipped backwards and free, like a puppy from a catflap too small for it. Then it reversed and accelerated forward, rearing up on top of the reluctant ice and splitting it. In five hours the ship gained several metres, with the captain focusing like a surgeon in an operating theatre.

Eventually, one dusk, we sailed up an avenue of 500 or so icebergs to Davis Station. A ragged Australian flag journeyed slowly up the ship’s mast and in moving response, two beams of light reached out to it from the coast. Several months later that flag was lowered to half-mast as the body of my beloved friend, Martin, was brought on board. He’d fallen while climbing near Davis, his body held in a science lab until the Aurora, our dear ship, could bring him home one last time.

It’s been involved in tragedy and wonder, a major fire, a grounding, as well as decades of scientific research. Death in a scrapyard feels too cruel a fate for the Aurora, with so many stories in its mighty bones. If it can’t be sold, there’s talk of converting it into a floating museum. I hope it’s saved. For all of us.