Canine Commemorations

3pm November 14 1911: Amundsen reaches the South Pole...

7pm November 13 2011: Hanne looks just as pleased as he did!

14 November 2011 was a very special day for Norway in terms of Antarctic history. Why? 3pm on 14/11/11 marked the 100 year anniversary of Roald Amundsen and his team reaching the first pole and being the very first people to set foot on that patch of world. Since then white spaces on the map have been slowly eroded and filled in. Try as she might to resist being mapped, waxing and waning with the seasons and the sea ice, Antarctica has been sketched, recorded, gridded, photographed, satellited, gpsd and had just about every other existing technical verb applied to its vast surface.

My flatmate Christel was very proud yesterday, waltzing around the city waving her Norwegian flag and whipping out her framed portrait of Amundsen and his men at every opportunity. The centenary happened to coincide with a reception at Canterbury Museum where the director of our programme, Dr Bryan Storey, was presenting a crampon to the museum collection. I don't think I've ever seen so many people so excited over a piece of footwear! We spent the evening touching the artifact, nibbling on delicacies and mixing and mingling with the who's who of Antartcticans here in Christchurch.

At this reception I got talking to Baden Norris, curator of the Lyttleton museum, long time Antarctic veteran and master storyteller. It's the last of his credentials that intrigued me the most and I can see myself following up with him again at a later date to be the loom for a few more yarns. He assured me towards the end that 'some of it, at least, was true'. I actually learnt quite a bit about dogs as well. We were chatting in front of the display with two stuffed huskies and a mannequin in Antarctic clothing and the mannequin is supposedly modeled on Baden himself. This came as something of a surprise to him, but he had raised one of the dogs from a pup and had worked with both. I imagine it must be rather odd to see animals you worked with taxidermied and put behind glass, but he just told me he thought he deserved a royalty for them. Indeed, they have very nice pelts so he did a good job raising the pup! He also enlightened me on the differences between Huskies and Malamuts, with true Huskies only coming from Greenland. The dogs he dealt with were bred there and in Christchurch, but they were the last of the pure breeds in this area of the world.

The dogs were a hot topic for me on Wednesday largely because of the events of the following evening. As a premature celebration of Amundsen's centenary the Antarctic Society arranged for the K9 dog sled team to come and do a demonstration. The dog food brand's slogan is 'feed your dog's inner wolf', so the team of racing 'Huskies' and Malamuts was a novel way to back up that message. Mark Roberts explained how he fed and trained the dogs and how he gave directions to them while we all gave the dogs a cuddle and received enthusiastic attention. Then we got a live demonstration, not on snow of course, but with a wheeled chariot attached to the lines instead. First of all three little kids hopped into the basket and went for a zoom round the carpark and then they asked if anyone else wanted a go. The 'YES!' was out of my mouth before I even had time to think about the appropriate response. Like an overripe apple, it tumbled to the ground and landed right at Mark's feet and he said 'ok then, hop in'. I actually thought my face might rip in two, my grin was that big. It was the weirdest feeling, halfway between being in a high speed passenger train and on a racing sidecar. Probably more like the sidecar, actually, but incredibly smooth. Coming down to Christchurch I never would've dreamed of trying out dog power, but it just goes to show that you never know what is around the corner. I won't be forgetting the 100th anniversary of Amundsen's milestone anytime soon, that's for sure!