You've got the Southern Lights.
In the summertime, climbing the mountains
with an incredible view over the ocean,
and the icebergs, and station,
and the emperor penguins during the middle of winter.
It's hard to name just one thing.
The whole experience has been unreal.
My name's Todd Heery.
I'm a plumber at Mawson Research Station in Antarctica.
We left Hobart on the 21st of January last year
and scheduled to get home at the end of March.
So it's about a 14-month stint down here in total.
It's a view that definitely never gets old.
And you get quite comfortable on station too,
walking around between buildings,
and it's not until you kind of go off station,
and especially if you go up one of the mountains,
and you can see a tiny little dot in the distance,
and all you can see beyond that is just,
you know, forever whiteness.
It's really a good perspective of how small we really are.
We work Monday to Friday, normal 40-hour week.
So it does kind of make it feel like home.
You know, Friday afternoon,
you'll start getting a bit excited,
and you'll knock off and go to the bar
and have a couple of beers maybe,
or possibly going out on a little trip on the weekend,
so I think that routine we have
of keeping it like normal weekdays and weekends
is pretty important.
There's a crew of 19 of us here,
and it's been us and only us since we arrived here.
But we still, you know, we still find stuff to talk about.
We still get along just as well as we did
from when we first came down.
We do make a lot of effort down here to do events together.
Like we still have formal dinners together.
We celebrate all the holidays together.
It's super important to have a close bond
with each other.
And luckily we do.
You definitely do get lonely,
but I think we're super lucky these days with technology.
We've got the internet down here,
you know, you're still able to FaceTime
your family and friends.
Yeah, we went rock climbing last weekend.
That was pretty fun.
We feel like he's still here.
We can keep up to date with all his exploits
and some of the stuff I probably don't really want to see
at the time;
what he's doing in the blizzards and mountain climbing
and other things like that.
You know, Antarctica is known for its super strong winds,
and we definitely saw some of that here.
We had a few blizzards that lasted kind of nearly six days.
Before big blizzards, we put up blizz lines, they're called,
which is ropes that go between the buildings.
So in the event, if you have to go outside
in between buildings during a blizzard,
you can just follow the rope and hold on.
It's just a really good reminder
of how dangerous this place can be.
Seeing the penguins was definitely one of the most
incredible things I've ever done.
You roll up there,
and there's a big huddle of emperor penguins
sitting in between kind of three huge icebergs.
When we first went out at the start of winter too,
the chicks were really small and still on their mums' feet
and huddling through the winter cold.
And as we went out later on in the season,
the chicks were a bit bigger and running around a bit more.
But the best thing about going out there
is how curious the penguins are of us as well.
So when we roll up there, you almost have a line of them
following you around,
and they'll come right up to you
and just watch you for as long as you're there.
So it's amazing to be there and just see each other,
and just as interested as in each other.
When we left,
you know, COVID
was only something that was happening in China.
It was not in Australia, there was no restrictions.
There was no social distancing,
there was nothing like that.
So it's something down here
that we've all completely missed.
So hearing stuff like the state borders,
which I grew up on the New South Wales and Victoria border,
and the thought of that being shut down
and permits to get through,
it actually sounds crazy.
It's gonna be a real culture shock.
Yeah, yeah.
'Cause he's lived normally for a year,
and suddenly, he's gonna come back into an environment
that everybody else has got used to.
I think he's gonna notice some changes
when he comes back.
Mm, definitely.
It's been much more incredible than I thought it would be.
Look, we're just so proud of him.
It's an amazing adventure, what he's done.
And just really, really now starting
to look forward to him coming home.
And what an experience, you know.
It's something he'll always, always have.
If you like traveling, adventure,
you wanna challenge yourself,
it's the perfect opportunity to do all that.
I wasn't really sure what to expect,
and it wasn't until I got down to Hobart
for the pre-departure training and down here,
until I actually realised all the amazing stuff
we get to do.
And the fact that you're working down here as well,
learning more in your trade and saving money.
It's a huge bonus.
And it's, yeah, it's been an incredible experience.
I'd recommend it to anyone.