my view has been of the sun setting behind Gardner Island in a blaze of blue sky, orange light and pink clouds for the longest time. it is a scene that has become so familiar, too familiar actually. i can pick out the icebergs that flank its sides, identify each crest, curve and peak; the subtle saddle that sits in the middle of the island, the black dykes that run along its eastern face; the clouds that move and glide above it, unlike any other clouds i have ever seen. this scene is now underscored by a thin blue line of water, signalling broken-off sea-ice on the horizon; a thin blue line that grows ever bigger and creeps ever closer towards our station with each passing day.

today, i finally packed up all my boxes that i will be sending home, stuck those RTA (return to australia) labels on them, and now, they are sitting neatly in cage pallets waiting to be loaded onto the Aurora Australis when it finally arrives. 12 months of my life condensed into 2 cardboard boxes and a plastic nally bin; which isn't too bad, i guess i would succeed in being a vagrant.

there is a touch of finality to all these proceedings though. this is it, we are really going home. Davis, my home for 24 out of the last 36 months, and in 2 weeks' time, i'm outta here. i know with a certainty that i will not be returning to this place for quite some time. that knowledge strikes me as part-relief, part-tragic. relief, because i feel like i am finally resuming my life, as though i was caught in a waking coma for the last 3 years, suspended in a world that wasn't real, and now i am reversing all that by unclicking the 'Pause' button, and thus, the show can go on. tragic, because this has become my life, my world, the people who have, in their own little ways, become my family and having to leave them, knowing that the likelihood of all of us ever being together at the same place at the same time is slim to none. the sea-ice, those icebergs, that penguin; in 2 weeks' time, they will all be catalogued in the recesses of my consciousness as a memory.

i had my winter debrief last tuesday with a psychologist/psychiatrist (?) and she went through the same generic questions with me: Did you enjoy the winter? Was it all you hoped it would be? Did you have any highs, any lows? Are you looking forward to going home? Do you think you will adjust back into society? it was all very amicable and she was a very nice lady. before i left the room, i said that this was the first time that i actually felt yup, i'm ready to go home, take me home now. in the previous years, leaving has always been tinged with a sense of regret and longing, because i always felt that i hadn't quite seen it all, or done it all, due to the short and intense summer periods. having now spent the winter, i've done all i wanted, seen all i wanted and i can leave this place with no regrets. however, i told her that i would be sad, and that it would be a sort-of melancholic sadness, for the place, for the people, and for everything that being in Antarctica meant. she understood and told me to take my time to adjust to the real world, i said thank you and walked out of the room.

what a ramble. i didn't mean for such a lengthy post. i guess life is just a series of contradictions. wanna stay, wanna go. don't wanna stay, don't wanna go. actually, scrap that, life is a series of contradictions and endless packing, unpacking and repacking of boxes.