Critical AAD resupply mission to deliver Christmas magic to Casey Station crew
3500km from Hobart, the crew at Casey Station will spend Christmas a little differently. But it won’t be without festive cheer, with the RSV Nuyina en route, loaded with letters and enough ice cream to feed an army. What else is on board?
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A crucial Antarctic mission is underway to deliver more than just supplies to Casey Research Station — it’s a voyage loaded with Christmas magic, bringing food, letters, and festive cheer to isolated crews at the South Pole.
On-board the Australian Antarctic Division’s RSV Nuyina, a crew of 75 is heading off on Wednesday for the last time this year for an important resupply and science mission.
The icebreaker will be taking up to 1.3 million litres of special blend diesel, over 80,600kg of fresh, frozen and dry foods including 600kg of bacon, 500kg of coffee beans, 550L of ice cream and 180L of vegan ice cream.
Just in time for Christmas, the crew will arrive and celebrate the festivities with a lunch, Secret Santa and an obligatory Hawaiian shirt dress code.
“We’re also taking the Christmas mail. The mail is really important to the folk down south. It’s a physical contact with home and that’s really important this time of year,” voyage leader Keith Ashby said.
“There’s also six science missions that were involved which include things such as wildlife monitoring, bird life in particular, whale monitoring. We’ll also be doing some bathymetry for the weather as well.”
The science projects also include retrieving a buoy currently sitting at the bottom of the Southern Ocean.
“It’s been recording noises so we’re going to sail close to it and release a noise that will trigger the buoy to float to the surface. We will capture all the data that’s contained in it and then deploy a replacement to go down,” Mr Ashby said.
“We’re also going to be deploying an Argo float and we’ll be going in close to the Vanderford Glacier and that’s going to be a device that will measure, among other things, water temperatures so we can have a better understanding of climate change.”
It’s the first time watercraft co-ordinator Carly Pitassi is heading down to Casey Station.
“I feel excited,” she said. “Out of the 12 that we’ve got in the watercraft team, it’s going to be the first time for four of them and in addition to that we’ve got some really experienced guys in double digits on how many times they’ve been down.”
Dr Jaimie Cleeland will be heading out on the Nuyina for the first time after participating in six other AAD voyages as a scientist and watercraft operator.
“It’s so much bigger and it has so much more science capability. I’m really excited to get into the labs and have a look at all the different scientific equipment and really see what she can do,” she said.
It will be the second time Dr Cleeland will spend Christmas in the Antarctic.
“It’s such an amazing community of people and we all come together because we’re all missing our families and have a nice big feed and share Christmas presents,” she said.
“I think the Casey crew will be excited to see new people and be excited to see the operation underway.
“I’ve been to Casey once before, but I’d be really excited to get back there because there’s a lot of snow petrels there and that’s one of my favourite bits.”
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