Contributed by J. C. Home, a graduate in chemistry from Victoria University, who applied for and got a job with the D.S.I.K. party working at Scott base.

Leaving Wellington on December 27 on H.M.N.Z.S. Endeavour wan a moment we had been preparing for for month. Besides the 40 crew members there were 18 passengers, seven to be dropped at Campbell Island to do a wild-life and botanical survey and the remainder going on to Scott Base for the summer months.

The first land after New Zealand was Campbell Island, where the Meteorological Station at the head of Perseverance Harbour looks warm and comfortable compared with the bleak, storm-lashed Island. In an eight-hour stop there we offloaded the survey team members and their three tons of cargo, using the ship's whaler as ferry, and enjoyed a welcome respite from the continuous rolling of the open sea.

Four days later, creeping along in an eerie fog, we passed the first iceberg, which appeared as a faint outline In the murk 200 yards away. From then on ice, ranging from tiny pieces to bergs hundreds of feet long, became more and more frequent until many miles north of Scott Base there was more ice than sea visible. Though the ship had an escort of birds all through the trip, It was not until the ice was reached that we saw wild-life in great quantity, because the season round the continent, like tropical seas, are teeming with life. In one day in the loose pack ice we saw many scores of Adelie and Emperor penguins, seals and killer whales, with skua gulls, the scavengers of the Antarctic, in all directions.

In the 14-mile channel cut in the 10-foot thick bay ice by U.S. icebreakers were two icebreakers, a tanker and a transport, all over 6,000 tons, which made our 1,000- ton wooden ship seem smaller than ever. The heavy accumulation of broken ice brought Endeavour to a standstill half-way down the channel, and so she berthed there and did one day's unloading. However, a brisk southerly wind the next morning swept the whole channel clear of ice and she was able to move up the channel reducing the journey to Scott Base from 10 to four miles. Unloading was carried out with the ship's winch and derricks, which put slings of cargo directly on to 16ft. by 4ft. sledges, of which the 200 h.p. Snocat can pull four when loaded with one ton each. The Snocat brought eight empty sledges out to near the ship's side each trip and waited till four were loaded before returning to the base. All shunting of empty and full sledges was done with an ordinary farmer's Ferguson tractor modified for Antarctic use by adding tracks, a special low temperature battery and lubricants, and using kerosene in the radiator instead of water.

My job as "cargo monitor" during unloading was to note each item as it went on to a sledge with the aim of seeing that everything that went aboard in Wellington arrived at Scott Base. To enable me to do this I was employed at Antarctic Division, D.S.I.R., for eight weeks prior to sailing, packing some cargo, learning the packing case codes and preparing a complete manifest of the 120 tons of cargo which Endeavour took down.

Work on the ice was pleasantly warm unless the sun was on the opposite side of the ship or there was a wind, so in the best conditions the necessary clothes were woollen shirt, trousers and socks, with ordinary leather boots. On a bad day, these items were required together with gloves, balaclava, jersey, windproof trousers and overalls and special cold weather mukluks in place of boots.