Travel Book Review ~ Antarctica on a Plate by Alexa Thomson - She Came, She Saw, She Burnt the Toast

Antarctica on a Plate by Alexa Thomson - She Came She Saw She Burnt The Toast. ISBN 1740512073. First Published 2003 by Random House Australia. 385 pages. We usually have a copy of this book in stock, click here to see if one is available now

Antarctica on a Plate is another of those travel books that we have repeatedly sold to happy travellers over the years, a great travel book for anybody into Antarctica and/or cooking. Author Alexa Thomson is an Australian woman with no formal cooking training, who wonders what on earth she has got herself into when she finds herself the sole cook in a barebones, blokey camp in Antarctica, catering to researchers, wealthy tourists and anybody else who just happens to be in the neighbourhood. She's in at the deep end, and the deep end is frozen solid, only her experience as a school camp cook and stubborn determination will see her through.

I found the account of how an Antarctic Camp operates fascinating, and I admire Alexa Thompson's gumption and courage under fire as she has to deal with the logistical and organisational complexities of storing and cooking food in quantity on a frozen remote outpost. There's no sending the dishwasher out for more bacon halfway through service in Antarctica!  The author is a very likeable, down-to-earth and gutsy woman with that honest, self-depreciating style that I always enjoy in Australian travel writing.

As with all my reviews, I could blab on endlessly about the how good the book is, and you would have no reason to believe me because I would really like to sell a copy to you; so I select a favourite passage or two from the book and leave it up to you...

Like most most travel books, my favourite part in Antarctica on a Plate is arrival day 1. I expected an Antarctic base station to be some space age station designed to endure the cruellest of weather extremes, and with some touches of luxury to keep the occupants sane during long periods of isolation. Things are a little different to what I, and the author, expected...

I take a deep, shaky breath and really take a look at Antarctica. It's a stunning summer day here. There are no clouds in the sky and the blue is almost black in its intensity Everything around me has the clarity of a sumptuous movie. I feel as if someone has wiped the steam off a window and suddenly I can see every object in true Technicolor brilliance.

All the passengers are delicately picking their way across the blue ice and onto the snow where some eighty fuel drums are waiting to be sucked into the Ilyushin. I am beginning to understand that nothing we do out here will be easy. Mike's team have spent a backbreaking week flying fuel in from the Russian base Novolazarevskaya, some 160 kilometres to the north. They then had to move it all down to the fuel point on the runway using only a long wooden sledge hooked to a snow mobile known as a skidoo. (Cooking has to be a doddle in comparison.) In the meantime we had to bring in the correct parts to connect our fuel nozzles to the Ilyushin. If they don't fit, the fuel for the jet will have to be pumped by hand. Blowing up a hot air balloon by mouth would be easier. At this news I think it prudent to get busy with my food before I am roped in for the task.

Charlie helps me load up a sledge with the first of my food boxes and we ride 800 metres to the camp on the skidoo with the sledge attached. It's true, there are only tents on the ice. I had clung to a fantasy that when they said 'camp' they may have meant something like a luxury safari camp, only in a colder climate. This vain hope is duly crushed by the sight of the structures before me. Our personal tents are flimsy nylon shelters. They have had some polar modifications. Extra long nylon skirts have been sewn onto them and are weighed down with snow - to keep them from blowing away, Charlie informs me - but they are tents nonetheless. I can't stand up in my tent, there's no ensuite with bathtub and heated floor, nor is there complimentary champagne to mark my arrival. I try not to think too hard about a similar tent I had when I was nine and how it was washed away by a brief thunderstorm. Charlie opens the flap for me and proudly points to the one 'luxury' supplied to me: a mattress. I'm touched. He tells me it's only because I'm the cook and they have to keep on my good side.

The next task is to get the mountain of food stored Charlie turns to me and asks innocently what I'd like to do, I look at the pile of boxes on the sledge and think about the amount that is still waiting on the plane. I have no earthly idea what I should do with the food. I could tell Charlie that I should never have been allowed near the continent with my laughable qualifications but I bite my lip and decide to continue on in the spirit that got me here in the first place: I'll bluff. There'll be plenty of time for him to observe my attempts at coping with these living conditions. I straighten my spine and set about shifting the first of many loads of food and gear.

The main tent is what's known in the business as weather haven. It is a reinforced tent with marine ply boards for the floor. Not bad, I think, for a holiday in the tropics but as protection against the vagaries of Antarctica? The canvas is UV-protected and is draped over curving poles that rise from the floor. The tent is approximately two and a half metres wide and about fifteen metres long. In the middle is a minuscule fuel stove. Attached to the stove is a big square metal box. I am told this is where the snow gets melted for our precious water. The eastern end where I am standing is the makeshift kitchen that the boys threw together during their first week here. The western end has the communications table with an HF and VHP radio, a satellite phone sitting in a briefcase, and a laptop. Underneath the table is a jumble of wires and batteries to power the electronics. In the middle of the tent opposite the stove, there are two all-purpose tables where we will eat, play countless games of Scrabble and cards and write poignant emails back to the worlds we have left behind.

At the kitchen end, two tables with assorted foodstuffs and the dreaded MSRs, which look like metal spiders, face another two tables with more junk and mess. Each is connected to a small red fuel bottle by a tiny hose. Scattered around me are countless plastic Rubbermaid boxes in a variety of colours packed with spices, sauces, mixes, powdered drinks, coffee, tea ... all these items are over two years old and look rather worn. I don't quite know where to begin in such disorder and I start moving about like a demented hummingbird, flittering hither and yon, before realising that all this movement is achieving nothing. I take a deep breath and concentrate on storing all the food that is waiting outside the door and down at the plane. To make up for my complete unfamiliarity with food storage methods in the ice age, I give orders like a football coach at half-time.

Put the oranges there, leave the potatoes and the pumpkin under the table on the left, flour and sugar can be stored outside, don't leave the coffee and tea outdoors because we'l be using them all the time, place those apples outside near the door . . .

Needless to say I forget about the apples and discove: them bruised and unappetising a few days later. And I can' find my avocados. So much for my expertise. I thin! mournfully about fresh apple crumble and lashings of frest cream . . . that will have to wait for December. All afternoor I bend, rise, stretch, reach and attempt to store all the fooc that is arriving at the camp. I have to sort the old from the new and place stickers on the boxes that must be stored ir the ice cave. This is one of the first myths that is broker today. We will have to dig ourselves a freezer because it wit get warm enough for things to defrost.

As the food piles begin to mount both indoors and outdoors, my hitherto controlled hysteria begins to rise like hot air. What is my plan for all this stuff anyway? Can I leave most of it outdoors - but what if there is a blizzard and it blows away the food - do we have a seal colony nearby as contingency sustenance? I start to mutter to myself and it's a habit that will last for my season down here.

On one of the benches are zip lock bags of frozen eggs that the boys have fished out of one of the crates from previous seasons. I shudder to think how old they might be. They were taken out of their shells for easier storage. They have been defrosting for the last few days. They look like dozens of yellow eyes lying in runny, viscous liquid. I gag quietly at this unappetising spectacle and wonder if it can possibly be safe to eat something so disgusting. Maybe we will all be dead from botulism within a week.

My primary focus is the MSR stoves. They represent everything that I know nothing about: extreme travel, outlandish adventure, tents, deprivation, high-altitude, polar living. They seem to mock me with their compact shape and space-age design, but there's no escaping them. I'm going to have to use them or serve up frozen chicken with raw sauce.

Geoff steps into the tent and asks me how I'm getting on.

'I love it,' I say with all my fingers and toes crossed. The sun, the planes, the tents, the ice, and the frostbite.' Again I can feel a pocket of unchecked hysteria bubbling at the back of my throat. Geoff looks at me strangely

I had met Geoff briefly in Punta before he flew to Blue 1 as part of the advance party. He is a quiet, reserved man with an English reticence. His reputation in Antarctica is assured. A decade or so ago he and five other men had trekked across Antarctica using sledges and dogs. They had begun in the dead of winter and the trip had lasted for over 220 days.

I couldn't envision such a journey in all my nightmares and probably said so. My newfound extreme-living friends mocked my incredulity, but strangely, their attitude made me even more tenacious about my trip south. I may not have climbed Aconcagua with one hand tied behind my back and gripping a porta-ledge between my teeth but it didn't mean I would turn tail and head for the day spa at the slightest hint of hardship.

Antarctica on a Plate by Alexa Thomson - She Came She Saw She Burnt The Toast. ISBN 1740512073. First Published 2003 by Random House Australia. 385 pages. We usually have a copy of this book in stock, click here to see if one is available now