The moment geologist Alison Dean saw an Antarctica job advertised, she was hooked.
“I was sitting under a tarp waiting for a drill core (in the Northern Territory). It was 51°C and I was exhausted with the heat. The moment I read the advert I knew it was for me,” she told SBS Dateline from Casey, one of four Australian research stations in Antarctica.
That moment was twenty years ago. Now the 64-year-old New Zealander leads the Australian Antarctic Division’s research and logistics team at Casey Station, 3,880km south of Perth.
“This place can be desolate and unforgiving, relentless and wild. But it has a stunning beauty,” says Alison, who stays on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet for a year or more at a time. “There are icebergs, ice cliffs and far off islands, disappearing into the blue and white distance. Behind you the ice plateau stretches to the horizon without a break. You get this feeling of being part of something awesome, but at the same time, insignificant.”
Instead of working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, her tenth winter on ice entailed getting as many people as possible out of the Antarctic without introducing the virus.
The last plane left on 4 March 2020, and her team of 27 have wintered on ice with a difference: “Usually it has been people looking in at us living in isolation; this winter it has been us watching the rest of the world.”
The tensions many of us experienced in lockdown are not dissimilar to the challenges Alison sees with her team every year. The biggest challenge? Maintaining perspective.
Alison Dean is used to isolation in Antarctica. Source: David Wright/AAD
“In isolation we tend to focus on the minutiae,” she explains. “I remember a meeting about dessert spoons and soup spoons being lumped together instead of separated – it was laughable except that it was deadly serious.”
This year, Alison was awarded the Antarctic Medal for her exceptional leadership. Occasional tensions don’t stop her team from keeping crucial scientific equipment operating in extreme conditions.
“This week we sent a team of expeditioners on Hagglunds (snow vehicles) at 12km/hr in temperatures of minus 40°C to Law Dome, an ice mound 100km to the south, for maintenance on the automatic weather station,” she reports.
Other work includes scanning the sea ice for returning Adélie penguins that breed in nearby islands. They also drill the sea ice to monitor growth and behaviour of the largest ice sheet on the planet, and keep the Bureau of Meteorology informed of temperature, winds and cloud layers.
All this, and blizzards.
“The unpredictability is called the A Factor down here – the Antarctic factor,” explains Alison. “You need to rely on your team. Together we have a communal brain that is greater than the sum of its parts, and it’s a wonder to behold.”
And this approach could be key to coming out of lockdown.
According to Professor Kimberley Norris from the University of Tasmania, to emerge from isolation we need to understand both the power of our collective experience and the importance of a communal approach to emerging from isolation.
A clinical psychologist who has been studying the lived experience of the Australian Antarctic Division’s expeditioners for fifteen years, Professor Norris says finding a sense of purpose and meaning is key to surviving extreme environments.
“As an Antarctic expeditioner, you are there for a given task or tasks. It’s very clear what your purpose is, and you have that identity; a unique, important and valued role,” she says.
Those of us coming out of lockdown in Victoria need to search for a personal, health or social higher purpose in the experience. “If you can feel that it allowed you, or the greater community, to benefit in some way, you’re much more likely to adapt positively,” says Professor Norris.
When we think about 2020, Professor Norris advises us not to create an unrealistic comparison of what this year should have been about.
“This was necessary. This was about surviving,” she says about lockdown.
Casey Station in Antarctica. Source: Nisha Harris/ AAD
If we understand the different stages of lockdown, we can understand its unique challenges, and how they affect us.
Moving from the ‘resentment’ stage to ‘reunion’
Professor Norris’ free booklet, , explains that Australia is now facing the last of four lockdown stages. We’ve survived ‘confused panic’ and the brief ‘honeymoon period’. Now we are moving from the ‘resentment’ stage towards ‘reunion’, as governments and employers seek to define COVID-normal.
This reunion stage may be the riskiest of all, says Norris. We could move too quickly towards what used to be familiar and be overwhelmed. We may not give ourselves the time to recover from the increased demands on mental capacity, or ‘cognitive load’, of lockdown.
Instead of leaping into the ‘reunion’ stage, people transitioning out of isolation need time to recover from it. We risk mood swings and a loss of identity if we don’t allocate time for rest and recovery over the next twelve months, says Professor Norris.
Professor Kimberley Norris says we are moving from the 'resentment' stage toward 'reunion' in lockdown. Source: Supplied by Danyal Syed
But the brain may struggle to remember exactly how things used to work, creating what Professor Norris calls ‘reverse culture shock.’ This is likely to happen in information-rich or stimulation-dense environments like the workplace, or in Alison’s case, a busy airport.
“I was on a flight from the Falkland Islands after a year in Antarctica once,” she remembers. “I got out of the gate and just stood there, almost shell shocked, until my family rushed up to me.” Alison now re-enters family life gradually, with a bit of gardening and a haircut as priorities.
The mess hall at Casey Station. Source: Nisha Harris / AAD
Norris also says we have to understand that we’re not going back to exactly how things were, pre-isolation. Not only have other people changed, but so have we.
Alison’s experiences echo this. She returns from the ice with new self-knowledge and meets her loved ones as new again. “You have to learn to fit in again, and to accept that others may have changed also. Life doesn’t sit still while you’re gone,” she advises.
“The reunion phase is challenging because people expect it to be exciting,” says Professor Norris. “That tends to wane because we’re actually not going back to the way things were. Nothing is the same, and people are mentally and emotionally exhausted.”
Professor Norris suggests we start booking in ‘wind down’ tech-free times each afternoon to promote rest and recovery. She also recommends protecting time for the interests we found comfort in during lockdown, rather than abandoning them.
For Alison Dean, these interests are key to mental health in Antarctica.
“Know what you need to feed your soul – look after yourself,” says the Casey Station Leader. “I bring down heaps of things to read and do; crocheting, painting, woodwork.”
Both Alison and Norris argue that surviving isolation can create resilience and self-knowledge. But it shouldn’t be solitary.
“The people that do best in Antarctica, away for a year or more from their families and friends, are the ones that have good routines for talking to them,” explains Alison.
She speaks to her ninety-year-old father in New Zealand every day by Skype, and is looking forward to when she can see her son, daughter-in-law, two grandkids and her “grand-dog” again. They live in London, and although she’s not sure when they’ll meet in person again, Alison remains positive.
“The positives that have come out of COVID-19 isolation are already obvious. We have learned new ways to connect. Thanks to the global mind, I am so much more in touch than ever before.”
