Politics and Power

New Zealand: 'an intellectual and logistics gateway to Antarctica'

Politics and Power: These two words are the Romeo and Juliet of diplomatic language, and the Antarctic is not immune to the lovers' tiffs that come with the pair. Yesterday we had Anne-Marie Brady come and give a lecture on 'New Zealand's Strategic Interests in Antarctica' and judging from my three pages of notes, I found it quite an engaging talk. It opened my eyes to other ways of seeing things and provided an excellent counterpoint to the science-based lectures on flora and fauna of the previous week. No carnivorous ducks here, but whenever power is involved you can guarantee that someone is thirsty for blood.

The first thing to remember is that there are differing ways of perceiving Antarctica. Coming from New Zealand it has always been relatively close and a place we have learnt about in school. Many explorers, both of the heroic age and of late, launched their missions from Christchurch and it is still the gateway city to Antarctica for NZ and the USA and many of us feel like the continent is 'part of our national heritage'. We look at a map of 'the pie' and point to the Ross Dependency as being 'ours'. According to the Antarctic Treaty we are allowed to assert this claim of sovereignty, but other countries are just as welcome to ignore it, leading to an interesting situation where places like NZ and Australia say 'ours' but places like the USA and South Korea say 'everybodys'.

New Zealand's territorial claim over the Ross Sea region is interesting too in that the Ross Dependency was only formally added to the Realm of New Zealand as recently as 1983. New Zealand had been in charge of administration of the region since the UK claimed it in 1923, but 1983 marks a definitive moment in our polar history: we asked if England wanted it back, they sat down over a cup of tea and said 'no thanks', so we adopted it officially as our own. It is particularly interesting that this happened many years after the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961, effectively putting all territorial claims 'on ice' and ensuring no new claims could be made. The addition of an area larger than all of New Zealand to our realm went largely unnoticed.

What was noticed was when the icebreaker that was to create a sea passage into McMurdo was recalled to the Northern Hemisphere and the suggested replacement was a nuclear powered ship. New Zealand has a well known nuclear free policy and do not allow nuclear powered vessels into our waters. Luckily for our politicians there was an easy out: this legislation does not apply to the Ross Dependency, only mainland New Zealand. In the end another non nuclear ship was used, but this was the sort of story that illustrates how complicated it can be to balance lawful behaviour, international diplomacy and resupply issues in the far South.

In many ways the money set aside in the NZ budget for Antarctic Research is done so more for political than scientific reasons because the more research we do down there and the stronger our presence, the better it looks on our 'Antarctic CV' and the more assertive we can be about our claim should the Antarctic Treaty collapse. Taking responsibility for Search and Rescue efforts in the Ross Sea is another notch on our way to getting a Duke of Ed medal, as was our offer of beds at Scott Base for Malaysian scientists. As in any other area of life, there is a lot going on out the back that is not necessarily said directly, but nevertheless strongly influences policies and approaches.

New Zealand actually has a relatively large influence internationally when it comes to Antarctic matters, largely because of the many research papers published by this country. Being so close to the continent, we have a vested interest in terms of security, but science, economics, politics and environmental concerns all play important roles for us too. New Zealand hopes to be 'an intellectual and logistics gateway to Antarctica', and if we play our cards right and get the right diplomats speaking to the right diplomats it is a very achievable goal.

At Cass

"The mountains tend to their mantles of snow, going incognito against the pensive sky"

When classes involve taking a 2 day trip up into a Rita Angus painting to look at rocks and climb mountains, you know life is good. It was supposed to be an exercise in sussing each other out, seeing who snores, deciding who we would like to tent with on the ice (yes, we are camping!), but it also provided a great opportunity to do some observation of a foreign landscape. OK, so it was quintessential New Zealand, but the High Country is somewhere I had never been, so there was a lot of noticing to do and the roof of the lodge provided the perfect transcription platform:

The greens are different up here. Not as toxicly bright, but older and wiser, like wrinkled skin that remembers more than its wearer would like it to. The stones are smaller, massed in packs so they flow like iron filings to a magnet, drawn toward the valley floor where they splay out like toes testing their footprint in damp sand. Grain by grain they are ' making land'.

The greens are tired, but it is all a matter of comparison. Just as the most spritely pensioner at bingo is 'the young one', set against the lino cut mountains these hues are life, undisputedly. The green is the child in the valley, the quiet one who has 'been on this planet before', you can tell by the eyes. Here the mountains guard, protective, like parents with children on the cusp of adolescence. They hover, pretending to be otherwise occupied, tending to their mantles of snow that allow them to go incognito against the pensive sky.

We come here to this valley and palette and bring our own stories, want to know where, why, how? Does the grass know what it feels like to be greener? Do the pebbles ever yearn for their perch way up close to the sky? Made of incredibly squashed and incredibly dead algae carcasses, the castle rock sandstones are in fact a massive sea floor graveyard. Do they remember the sound of the waves?

Why is it that the very first urge I had was to personify the landscape? No shaking of hands, no presenting a particular side of oneself to another. This was a one sided introduction. Much as the words signify elements in the surroundings, they are mirrors and an introduction to the writer, the personifier. The one who wonders about wrinkled skin will develop crowsfeet, will paddle in many oceans, may even play bingo one day if she makes it that far. She will meet 'old souls', wear a cloak of her own.

And the grass? It will keep growing, oblivious to its pigment and the deficiencies perceived through other-eyes.

Stunning in white

“Antarctica looks stunning in white and she knows it”

Antarctica has been depicted as a seductress many times, playing on the trope of the pole as a sleeping beauty. Amundsen knew the continent as a ‘she’, writing ‘Beauty is still sleeping, but the kiss is coming, the kiss that will wake her’ (The South Pole, 1912). Bill Manhire expanded on it, talking of a ‘seductress’ and making sweet love. This idea seems to reinforce the notion that Antarctica is a masculine space, a space for men to act out their fantasies of conquering, of winning, of having the power to awaken with a kiss and, implicitly, from then on control. What is conquered is tamed, is obedient, is no longer a threat.

We have asked questions such as ‘what does it mean to be a tourist going to the ice? What does it mean to be a scientist? What does it mean to be a student, an ambassador? What about ‘what does it mean to be a woman’? For a female to head to the most barren, inhospitable continent on earth is contrary to the image of the apple, the age old tale of fertility and original sin. You can’t freeze apples, they oxidize. They don’t thaw out the same.

And how will we thaw out? Sore thumbs in a microbial landscape, digging holes in the snow under Dali’s sky. Magnifying, reflecting, analyzing.

What will we find?

Striations mark the progress of her sister lands and if we were less careful we might say she mourns the loss. Instead this land stays dry, a frozen, sliding mask that betrays little of the stony faces far below.

Antarctica holds many secrets within her belly that are yet to be discovered. Lake Vostock, a womb, laid out on the operating table awaiting the caesarean that will tear open the moist dark warmth, expose the microbes not yet ready to see the light. The kiss has been administered and she stirs, her sighs a surge of katabatic winds. She stretches, cracks her fingers to release tabular bergs into the sea. Her glacial fingers snatch at her abdomen, silent in their screams. And still they drill.

They conquer.

Polar Police

'We don't have Polar Police because it is all consent based... rights and responsibilities go together'

- Dr Julia Jabour's 'Introduction to International Law'

It's the end of week one already and things have gone by in an absolute blur. Naming every new and exciting thing I have learnt or has happened would be like counting snowflakes in a blizzard, but here are a few of the crystals I have managed to keep.

Thanks to the Antarctic Treaty, Antarctica is a continent devoted to Science and Peace. Science is the one that tends to get the most press because it is 'the currency of diplomacy', right at the heart of the cooperation between treaty signatories. It's quite remarkable that although the treaty was adopted in 1959 and came into force in 1961, both Russia and the USA were original signatories and continued to turn up to meetings throughout the cold war. This links to the peace aspect of the agreement. Although the USA used to have a nuclear power plant at McMurdo, the testing of nuclear weapons, nuclear explosions and the disposal of nuclear waste are all forbidden. We don't have 'polar police' because the treaty system is all consent based and 'rights and responsibilities go together'. Still, I can't get the image if a penguin in a blue cap flashing a badge and demanding entry into a base out of my head...

Other than that, Nationals of each country are subject to the jurisdiction of their homeland, meaning that different laws apply to different people.The rest of the base can happily stand to take a leak at any time of day, but the poor Swiss need to keep an eye on their watches and ensure their buttocks and the toilet seat make contact as soon as it strikes 2200 hours. Or else. It's never really ok to go around murdering people left right and centre a la horror classics, but it does raise an interesting question: what if you have more than one passport? Which set of laws apply?

Prince Albert of Monaco didn't seem too worried about falling foul of the law when he visited Scott Base. He was too busy enjoying the prawns that were served. If the menu were designed to stimulate conversation, it would have provided a nice segway to krill, the most successful and abundant creatures ever to inhabit the bottom rung of the Antarctic food chain. Their high fluorine content makes them somewhat unsuitable for human consumption, as the Russians found out after some culinary experimentation, but they do have super powers. Really. Krill are super neat because they can SHRINK. If there is not enough food they can feed off their own protein and get smaller, only to grow again when they have enough to eat. The 'cup of tea' principle espoused in Alice in Wonderland is alive and well under the ice shelves of the Southern Ocean after all.

There are some other pretty neat critters down South as well, not least the carnivorous duck. That's right, the yellow billed pintail duck of South Georgia has something of a taste for flesh and it doesn't just stop at shrimps either. These bloodthirsty birds have been known to feast on seal carcasses, a fact their benign appearance seems to bely. At least they will not have any problems with vitamin C, raw seal meat is known to be an excellent way to ward off scurvy, so perhaps they are onto something after all...

To finish off the week, a beer is probably in order. After hearing all about the fly infestation at Scott Base, I was keen to steer well clear of Guinness though... No one could figure out where the flies were coming from until a gruesome discovery was made in the storeroom. No, not a rouge member of the penguin police gone on a rampage! Instead, a few cans of Guinness had burst and soaked through their cardboard wrapper. The maggots were having a field day, as apparently the sweet and mushy habitat of rotting alcoholic cardboard is the best kind of Kindergarten. Who would have thought it?

'I am just going outside and may be some time'

-Captain "Titus" Oates, March 1912

'I may be some time' is possibly one of the most cliched lines to have come out of the frozen continent. Luckily for me, I know exactly how long I will be. This summer I am a student at Canterbury University's 14 week 'Postgraduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies' programme. This blog will be my scrapbook, cataloguing frozen snippets from each week and building up to our very own trip to the ice.

So far away and so different to any place I have ever experienced, the ‘Wide White Page’ of Antarctica has long captured my imagination. My initial interest in the continent was sparked after listening to several NZ artists and authors who had been to Antarctica on Creative NZ Scholarships. Writers such as Bill Manhire and Bernadette Hall spoke of the inspiring discoveries they had made whilst down there and their subsequent works (Manhire’s ‘The Wide White Page’ and Hall’s ‘The Ponies’) convinced me that one day I wanted to do the same.

My specific interest is in Antarctica as a literary landscape and I hope to look at the ways the continent was depicted in fictional works around the Heroic Age of Exploration (1895 - 1917). I intend to focus on the importance of imagined space, examining the views expressed not by travelers to the continent but by those far away in Europe who had never set eyes on the ice. By examining these imagined landscapes in various texts I hope to see what values and cultural ideas the authors associated with Antarctica, be they positive ideas about adventure and conquering challenges or more pessimistic portrayals where the landscape is a metaphor for inner emptiness in the face of the industrial revolution and modernization.

You are welcome to follow me on this journey as I learn about the history of the continent, the present political situation, current scientific projects on the ice and embark on my own research project. I look forward to the weeks ahead and beginning to share my own words on the ‘Wide White Page’.