It is a long-standing tradition at the Gough, Marion and SANAE Bases (and at those of other Antarctic nations) that team members make each other birthday gifts out of what materials they have to hand and using the talents they have. In this way many unusual and intriguing gifts have been made down the years, often depicting some aspect of the receiver’s team job or of her or his personality.
My island signature, “JCII”, cut out of plywood and mounted on an acrylic sheet was made by G53 Diesel Mechanic and Team Leader Sarel Steyn for my 61st birthday on 31 January 2008 while I was over-summering on Gough Island. It is definitely a one-off object that must have taken Sarel several hours to make in the station’s workshop.
I received another unique birthday gift on the day: a depiction of a Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena chick, painted on the island on hardboard and framed with stalks of the tall grass Spartina arundinacea by Mellany McPherson, G53 Senior Meteorologist.
ALSA would be pleased to archive photos of such gifts, along with a few details (age and name of recipient, birth date, who made it, etc.) as tangible records of one aspect of SANAP social life.
John Cooper, Principal Investigator, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, 21 December 2015
Thanks for the people to share pure knowledge and experience of Island life. Is something we own and have to share it with the rest of the world. “I was There or I was Here” own it.
“Josef Joe Klaasen” Gough 2015/16 G61 and Marion Island 2014/15 M71