Stay:The Last Dog in Antarctica (13 page)

Stay sent her wish out as hard as she could:
I WANT TO STAY.

Kaboom took a step closer to Chills. ‘Actually, I also came to say goodbye to you. I’ll miss you.’

A little smile spread over Chills’s face. ‘I’ll miss you too. Hope I can see you when you get back.’

‘That’d be cool,’ Kaboom said. She put her arms around him and gave him a big hug. They held on to each other for so long that people started cheering.

Suddenly Stay felt a hand on her back. Nuts was crouching behind the boxes with a big mailbag. While everyone was clapping and watching Kaboom and Chills, Nuts grabbed Stay and slid her into the bag so fast that nobody saw.

As he started carrying the bag away, Stay heard a growl. No human had seen Nuts take her, but Blackie, with his sharp eyes, had noticed the dognapping. If he
started barking now, she’d be found and she’d have to go back on the ship.

Blackie?
She sent a thought towards him.
If you get scared on the ship
—

I’m not scared!
he growled.

Of course not. What I meant was — if Chills gets scared, can you keep him company?

Blackie paused. Stay could tell that Nuts was making good progress carrying her. She only needed another minute or two and he’d be away from the dock and able to hide her somewhere.

Blackie, Chills is really sad about leaving. He needs a friend. He needs you.

It was true, and Stay felt a pain in her chest. It was so hard to leave Chills that she nearly couldn’t do it. But Chills and Blackie could be friends. They could look after each other.

Blackie gave a little whine.
All right. I’ll look after him.

Stay heard the sound of a door opening. She was being carried inside a building. Nuts seemed to be climbing and then she felt herself being shoved into a small space.

Nuts gave a giggle. ‘They’ll never find you here, Stay. Don’t worry, we’ll be back real soon. Just as soon as the ship casts off.’

Stay looked down through the window of the Twin Otter. She was strapped into the front seat and wearing headphones. Beside her, Nuts was piloting. Kaboom was in the back.

Below on the ocean, the
Aurora Australis
was steaming away from the station, smoke rising from its stack.

Chills had started searching for Stay when he realised she was missing, and it was the hardest thing Stay had ever done to stay quiet when she heard him calling her name.
You won’t be with Chills anyway,
she’d kept telling herself
, not once you get back to Hobart.

He hadn’t called her for long. The ship was ready to leave and it wouldn’t wait for anything. Chills and the huskies had gone across on the final barge trip and been loaded, along with the last of the cargo.

Nuts and Kaboom had rescued Stay from her hiding place in the roof cavity of the old aircraft hangar near
the loading area. They smuggled her to the Hägg before anyone from Mawson could find her, and set off for the summer airstrip. The Squirrels were both going back on the ship, so they were using the Twin Otter to return to Davis.

After the little plane had taken off, Nuts made a low sweep over the station so that the Mawson winterers could see Stay in the front seat. They all waved and cheered.

‘Well, the Mawsonites are pretty happy that you’re staying,’ Nuts said. He lifted the Twin Otter in the air and turned it in the direction of the ship. ‘Think Chills will ever forgive you?’ he asked Kaboom.

‘I don’t know,’ Kaboom said. ‘It was a mean trick.’

Stay could hear Kaboom’s unspoken thoughts above the hissing in the headphones.
It wasn’t just a trick. I really did want to say goodbye to him.

I know,
Stay thought back.

I know you do,
Kaboom thought.

Stay could hear her thoughts even more clearly than she could hear Chills’s. Kaboom was going to be a great friend.

‘OK, we’re heading down,’ Nuts said. Stay remembered how much she loved flying as Nuts put the plane into a close turn around the ship.

They were at eye level with the Bridge and Stay could see everyone was gathered there for their departure.
Someone pointed at the plane and everyone turned. Nuts gave a cheeky wave at the Boss.

The radio crackled and the Boss’s voice came into the headphones. ‘I see you have a fugitive on board, Nuts.’

‘That’s right, Captain,’ Nuts said. ‘Stay didn’t want to RTA.’

‘Lucky the money she’s raised
is
going to RTA,’ the Boss said. ‘Otherwise you’d be in big trouble.’

They were almost past the Bridge and Stay couldn’t see Chills among the faces looking out the window. What had happened to him?

‘There he is,’ Kaboom said, pointing.

Chills was standing on the helideck at the back of the ship, holding Blackie. As the plane circled, he looked up. Stay felt that pain in her chest again when she saw the expression on his face.

‘Oh, Chills, I’m sorry,’ Kaboom said, though there was no way Chills could hear her.

I’m sorry,
Stay thought.
I’ll miss you. We both will.

‘I feel so mean,’ Kaboom said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Nuts turned the plane and as they passed the ship for the final time, Stay saw Chills give a little smile and a wave.

You belong in Antarctica, Stay,
she heard him think.
Bye.

Blackie barked in their direction and then pressed closer to Chills as the plane started heading inland, back in the direction of Davis.

They’ll be all right,
Stay thought to Kaboom as the ship disappeared behind them. She thought that her friend might have had a little tear on her cheek. Stay would have had her own tears too, if she could cry.

‘Have you given Stay her passport yet?’ Nuts asked.

‘Oh, no, I forgot!’ Kaboom said, and wiped her eyes. ‘Here, Stay. Now that you’re an official Antarctican, you need a passport. With a stamp for everywhere that you visit. I’ve put the Mawson Station stamp in it already.’

She reached over the seat and fastened a small blue book on a chain to Stay’s leg.

‘Now everyone will know what adventures you’ve been on,’ she said. ‘You’ve only just begun exploring Antarctica. You’ll see incredible stars and the southern lights. You’ll get snotsicles when it’s really cold and your snot freezes. We’ll go out to the field huts and the Prince Charles Mountains. You might go on a traverse to Law Dome — that’s a long way away on the plateau. In spring we’ll visit the Chinese Station and drop by to see the Russians. You might even get to McMurdo one day. Everyone wants to meet the last dog in Antarctica.’

Stay felt herself smiling. Not a smile that anyone could see, but a great big smile right inside her, a smile
that didn’t go away as the Twin Otter flew over the snow and ice and she saw mountains and glaciers rising up in front of them.

She was a real Antarctican now. She was staying.

Stay was dognapped from Hobart in 1991. Her arrival in Antarctica coincided with the end of Australia’s use of huskies, a tradition that began with Sir Douglas Mawson on his voyage in 1911 and was carried on when Mawson Station was established in 1954. The last two teams of huskies in Antarctica, including Blackie, Cocoa and the puppies Misty, Cobber and Frosty, returned to Hobart in 1992 as part of changes due to the Madrid Protocol for the environmental protection of Antarctica. The older dogs retired and lived out their days in Tasmania. The younger dogs and the puppies made an epic journey of their own, ending up in Ely, Minnesota, near the Canadian border, where they continued working. The story of their departure from Antarctica was made into a film,
The Last Husky
(Aurora Films). Misty’s ashes were taken back to Antarctica in 2011.

When Stay first met the huskies of Mawson, they showed their disgust at being replaced by weeing on her, an incident captured in at least one photograph.

After the end of her first season in Antarctica, Stay didn’t want to ‘RTA’. It seems she had a mind of her own, for instead of returning to the Royal Guide Dogs full of money, she stayed in Antarctica and began a life of grand adventure and subterfuge as the last dog on the continent.

Since then, Stay has been smuggled, hidden, freed and dognapped so many times that she’s lost count. She has travelled around Antarctica on helicopters, aeroplanes, skidoos, Häggs, quad bikes, tractors and utes. She’s hidden everywhere from mailbags to cargo holds to roof spaces. She has been a wintering expeditioner at every Australian base and Macquarie Island, and has visited the Antarctic bases and ships of many other countries.

Stay lost her leg in an accident at Mawson in 1993 and it was replaced by a carpenter known as ‘Smoothie’. Her lost leg was sent back to Davis Station with a note saying,
This is all you’re getting.

After many other adventures, and long periods where no one knew her location, in 2002 Stay was kidnapped from Mawson and travelled to the other end of the globe, ending up in the Ny Ålesund international research station in Spitsbergen, the world’s most
northerly settlement, where she was photographed in front of the Roald Amundsen memorial. She made it back to Davis Station in time for the next season.

Stay’s original passport fell apart and was lost, but she has a more recent one that’s also full of stamps. She makes regular appearances in the newsletters and reports of each station and her antics are closely followed. She even has her own Facebook page, though her updates are erratic and mysterious.

Over the years Royal Guide Dogs Tasmania asked for Stay’s return a few times, but eventually realised she was never coming back. There have been several collections and donations from Antarctic expeditioners to the association over the years.

If you see one of Stay’s relatives sitting patiently in a shopping centre or airport, please give her a coin to help with the training of a Guide Dog. Stay will be very grateful.

Antarctica and global warming

‘Global warming’ is the increase in temperatures scientists have been observing around the world over the past few decades. These increases are believed to be caused by the amount of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, that humans are releasing into the atmosphere.

While scientists have known for a while that the Antarctic Peninsula is warming rapidly, they thought temperatures in other parts of the continent were fairly stable. However, research announced in late 2012 showed that West Antarctica is warming nearly twice as fast as scientists previously believed. Between 1958 and 2010, temperatures in West Antarctica increased by 2.4 degrees Celsius. That makes it one of the fastest-warming places on the planet.

While global warming will be serious for all humans and other creatures, it may have very dramatic effects in Antarctica. The West Antarctic ice sheet is up to four kilometres thick, and if it melts or even partly melts because of global warming, it will make a big contribution to rising sea levels.

Living creatures in Antarctica — especially on the Antarctic Peninsula — are already feeling the effects of climate change. According to the British Antarctic Survey, the numbers of Adélie penguins, which need sea ice, are dropping, while other species such as chinstrap penguins, which like open water, are increasing and plants are starting to grow on parts of the peninsula.

The research projects and weather observations carried out by nations that have Antarctic bases — including Australia — are making an important contribution to our understanding of climate change.

I met Stay during my six-week voyage to Antarctica in late 2011. As a ‘round tripper’, I only had a brief taste of life on an Antarctic station, and had to rely on the help of others to make sure this tale was as realistic as a story about a telepathic fibreglass dog could be. Any mistakes are mine, not theirs.

Thank you to my team of Antarctic readers and fact checkers from the 2011/12 Antarctic season, including Graham ‘Cookie’ Cook (‘outgoing’ Davis Station leader — a genial person, plus he was heading back to Hobart), Bob Heath (an Antarctic pilot who was tragically killed in a Twin Otter crash in Antarctica in 2013), Stephanie MacDonald (weather observer and brave twice-daily releaser of the hydrogen-filled balloon), Timo Viehl (clever German atmospheric scientist who worried about his English grammar, though it was better than most native speakers’) and Louise Carroll (weather
forecaster who hurt her hand slipping over on ice on her second day in Antarctica and was nearly sent straight back home).

Dave ‘Fluffy’ Hosken (scientist of complicated things related to lasers and champion beard-grower) helped with reading and fact checking, but I am mostly grateful to him for taking me on an unforgettable three-day field trip to Bandits Hut and Platcha Hut, and allowing me to use some of his photographs. He dognapped Stay from the Davis LQ so she could come with us in the Hägglunds, foiling the plans of Mawson expeditioners who’d planned to steal her and take her to Bechervaise Island, and unwittingly sparking the idea for this story.

Thanks to Margie Law, Jane Wasley and Mali Greenlaw for reading the manuscript and also putting me up in their house in Hobart, which I’m sure felt like the Antarctic halfway hotel by the end of the season. Thanks to Erica Adamson, expeditioner, who spent four summers and one winter in Antarctica in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for her comments.

Julie McInness came down on the same voyage as me to study penguins on Bechervaise Island over summer. Her emails home, consisting of fantastic penguin photos with clever captions, made me laugh out loud and she kindly answered my numerous questions about penguins and life on Bechervaise.

Hazel Edwards, another red-headed writer who has been to Antarctica on an arts fellowship, also wrote some children’s stories about Stay that she kindly shared with me.

Antarctic station leader Jeremy Smith wrote ‘A short biography of Stay’ in 2003, which was helpful in piecing together her travels, and journalist Jo Chandler’s article ‘Plastic pooch still guarding Antarctic subcult’, which appeared in
The Age
on 18 January 2010, gave a humorous take on why Stay has gathered a cult following, suggesting that she has become a talisman of the proud culture of independence and wackiness that lives on in Antarctica today.

The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has run an arts fellowship program since the early 1980s, sending artists of all kinds, including writers, filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians and dancers, to visit Antarctica. Thanks to the AAD for awarding me the 2011/12 Antarctic Arts Fellowship, so I could sail for six weeks on the
Aurora Australis
and visit Antarctica. AAD marketing and events manager Kristin Raw cheerfully encouraged me to apply for three years running and was most helpful before and after my voyage.

Voyage leader Sharon Labudda and deputy leader Leanne Millhouse made the trip a pleasure, along with Captain Murray Doyle, who has been the master of
RSV
Aurora Australis
since 1995 (he is not ‘the Boss’ of this story) and the always-friendly ship’s crew, whose fundraising efforts for Camp Quality over the years have seen thousands of dollars raised for that charity.

Thanks to my companions, the expeditioners heading down to Antarctica for the 2011/12 summer, and those hardy souls who had spent the previous winter there and returned on the ship with me.

Diana Patterson, Australia’s first female station leader in Antarctica, wrote a wonderful book about her experiences called
The Ice Beneath My Feet.
Diana was station leader at Mawson in 1989 and went on several sledging trips with Mawson’s famous huskies before they were returned to Australia. Thanks, Diana, for helping me understand station life in that era.

Thanks to my agent, Sophie Hamley, and all at publisher HarperCollins, particularly Cristina Cappelluto, Lisa Berryman and Kate O’Donnell.

My niece Aimee Blackadder read the first few chapters of this book when I started writing and made me promise to finish it. Her obsession with reading is a delight and inspiration.

And thanks to my partner, Andi Davey, who hates the cold but would really love to meet Stay one day.