Cirrus@Austlit

'IN 2012, THE universe gave me one of the greatest gifts of my life. I won the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship and the prize was something no amount of money could buy – a bunk on the Australian Antarctic resupply vessel, Aurora Australis, and a voyage to Casey Station in Antarctica.' (Introduction)

'WHEN EXPLAINING MY Antarctic research to new acquaintances, at a dinner party or a barbeque, I can usually predict the direction of the conversation. First comes surprise and – depending on the crowd – perhaps delight that someone working in the humanities conducts research on the Antarctic region. Then almost always the question follows of whether I have ever visited the remote place that occupies so much of my intellectual life. I understand the impulse behind this question: part polite curiosity, but also genuine intrigue about a part of the world that, even now, comparatively few people have had the chance to experience. It’s a question I would ask, were our positions reversed. But it also raises a whole series of uncomfortable issues.' (Introduction)

'IT DAWNED ON me at high altitude above the polar icecap. My ears popped in the ageing plane, tubes of frosty oxygen up my nose, as I hung suspended in a bowl of blue over an endless expanse of Antarctic white. The logistical challenges ahead were enormous: we were embarking on one of the most ambitious inspection programs of Antarctica undertaken by Australia in the past sixty years.'(Introduction)

'IT WAS EARLY 1984. It started with a phone call: can you do an environmental impact assessment of the effect of mining in Antarctica for us? asked a newly acquired friend from the local Friends of the Earth group. I had just completed some environmental impact assessment work for a company in Newcastle, New South Wales, and had met this friend at our ‘between jobs’ casual work. His wife was working for the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, an international coalition of organisations working to protect the Antarctic region from excessive human impact.' (Introduction)

'I’M STANDING ON the coastline looking seaward, feet planted deeply in the gold-­coated crystal sands that were once part of ancient mountains far to the south. The rock carries its story of a long tidal journey north, testament to the power of deep time. Earth is carried from freshwater to saltwater and to freshwater again. This is a story known well to Australia’s eastern beaches.' (Introduction)

'Jesse Blackadder (1964–2020) was twice awarded  the prestigious Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) Arts Fellowship, travelling south to Davis Station in 2011 to work on her novel Chasing the Light and again to Mawson Station in 2018. Conversations with her in late 2019 fed many of the first thoughts about the possibility of an Antarctic edition of Griffith Review: her introduction connected Griffith Review with the team at AAD, which ultimately enabled this publishing partnership.

'This memoir combines private diary entries from her second voyage south, in late 2018, with published blogs from the same period. This voyage – longer than her first – saw her travel with and collaborate across various projects with Jane Allen, another AAD Arts Fellow, including a series of YA novels and a television script.

'Through this short memoir’s combination of exploration and meditation, it’s possible to glimpse – through an intimate and generous window – some of the realities of the experience of living and working at the end of the Earth; of distance, silence, loneliness and creativity, and an extraordinary demonstration of the process of transforming that life, that experience, into words that can be shared with readers in what might be thought of as the ‘real world’ beyond.

'Thanks to Jesse’s partner, Andi Davey, for permission to collate and share some of Jesse’s words in this way.' (Introduction)