On Marion Island, one calm afternoon, 24 April 2016, after a long windy walk from Rooks, we arrived at Swartkop (see map). I kicked off my gumboots and started doing what I always do, reading the hut book. In each hut on the island there is one – this is mainly for the sake of safety, knowing who is checking in where and when and where they are heading, leading to very interesting stories. Everyone checking in at a hut after a long day’s walk informs you about their experience of the day, the beautiful nature scenes they saw and also the challenges of struggling through the typical sub-Antarctic weather. This book is also filled with advice concerning routes to walk to the next hut and also very handy recipes for lovely hut food.
After reading the hut book, catching up on all the movements of team members during their time on the island (I might add these hut books exist mostly from 1996), I moved over to the hut magazines.
Here I found, in the Getaway of August 2005, a post card. Of course Marion Island does not have a post office, but it was written on the island and posted when the ship arrived back to the mainland. The helicopter pilot, André Vandrie, of THE 2005 takeover voyage wrote this postcard to the Getaway magazine.
Anché Louw, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, 09 October 2016