Workshop Excavated And Moved At Scott Base

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28324, 9 July 1957, Page 14

Workshop Excavated And Moved At Scott Base

[From

SCOTT BASE, July 8. Rightly or wrongly, a full-moon complex exists among the members of the New Zealand Antarctic expedition at Scott Base. McMurdo Sound. It is probably a coincidence that the last two early full moon periods brought days of blizzard conditions, yet the present new moon has been a spur to all to ensure a full recovery from the effects of the last severe storm before the next strikes.

None have been more active than tho three men of the Royal New Zealand Air Force Antarctic flight—John Claydon, Bill Cranfield, and Wally Tarr, In the last two weeks they have restored the completely buried Auster to comparative safety, and Tarr’s workshop has been brought to the surface from 10 feet below. The extrication of the building. 30ft by 7ft, was a triumph for the ingenuity of the members of the air flight and for the tractors and their many accessories. For a whole week Tarr, the flight engineer, had worked with a terracing blade on a tractor making a hole 10ft deep and of identical width along a complete side of the buried workshop, with a ramp 20 yards long leading down at either end.

Three hundred cubic yards of spoil may not seem much to contractors at home, but at 30 degrees below zero and in total darkness Wally’s feat was remarkable. Once one side was clear, both ends were dug out, and a terylene rope t tached around one end of the workshop. Accessory number two, a winch capable of a straight pull of almost four tons, came into action, and after the solution of a thousand minor problems first one end and later the other was pulled sideways until the whole building lay in the excavated hole at the foot of the ramps.

Further winching towed the building up the southern ramp and across the new level of the airstrip to a position more exposed, where it is less likely to be covered a second time: in all, a story quickly told, but a tedious and exacting experience for the three men involved in this recovery. Tractor on Fire There is seldom a dull moment at Scott Base. Morning smoko on Saturday was interrupted when one of the tractors caught fire. The fire was spotted from the mess room, and in a split second flying bodies armed with extinguishers attacked . it. Bill Cranfield, who had noticed the fire a fraction of a second earlier from the garage, was already successfully applying an extinguisher, but the fire had no chance whatever against the five more extinguishers. Little damage was done to the

deputy leader of the New Zealand Antarctic

Expedition']

J. HOLMES MILLER,

tractor. The fire is thought to have been caused by a petrol drip igniting from the flame of a blow lamp which was being used to encourage starting at 48 degrees below zero.

Fire consciousness has been developed to a high pitch at Scott Base, and periodic talks on fire precaution and fire drill have been given by the. fire officer, Ron Balham.