COOK AT SCOTT BASE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29130, 16 February 1960, Page 20

COOK AT SCOTT BASE

Mr W. Mee Returns To N.Z.

Cooking in the Antarctic for as many as 50 men was just one more experience for Mr W. Mee, a slight and sandy-haired Glaswegian who returned yesterday by the Alatna after cooking at Scott Base.

Mr Mee cooked on oil-fired stoves and had the assistance of a “house-mouse,” one of the party detailed each day for the duty. Sometimes he was given two assistants. “Some of them were of not much use,” he commented. “They had no experience and could scarcely clean a pot without being shown.” All frozen food had to be cooked as it was: it could not be thawed, as it would turn “soupy.” Water was scarce, and it was the task of .some of the men each day to dig snow and feed it to the snow-melter, a slow process.

Running out of deep-frozen vegetables, Mr Mee used dehydrated ones until the arrival of the Endeavour with supplies. He gave the men something different each day. Steak was the most popular meat. A recent addition to the menus was ice-cream. “It’s a good life, I enjoyed it,” he said. There was plenty of fun and amusement. Mr Mee began as a cook 30 years ago, in the Merchant Navy —£3 5s a month for seven days a week, 14 hours a day. “And tf you looked at a man sideways, like as not you would get a ‘skelp’ across the face.” He reeled off a list of more than a dozen shipping lines in which he had served, most of them Scottish. “One ship, one trip, that’s the way to get around,” he said. He has also cooked in hotels, but did not like that so much. Mr Mee has no relatives in New Zealand, and makes his home with friends in Blenheim.