Thursday 13 June 2013

Living and Working in Antarctica


On Monday morning the children were treated to a visit from a very special guest, Flo Barrow. 
Suffolk based Flow saw a job advert which read ‘Are you the person we are looking for? Have you got what it takes?’ She headed off competition from over 160 applicants to become ‘Postmistress’ for the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust to work on a base that was built in top secret during WWII –  she still thinks she landed a dream job.  Just back from working the Antarctic season at Port Lockroy 11,000 miles from home with only three other employees and 4,000 penguins for company, Flo shared some of her amazing experiences. In an illustrated talk, she explained what it is like to work in an environment that not only looks incredibly beautiful, but is such an important place politically, scientifically and historically.
Flo's visit (funded by the Antarctic Heritage Trust) really captured the imagination of the children who were amazed at how cold it was, interested in the penguins 'stealing' each others' rocks and not having a shower for a month! 

1 comment:

  1. So inspired were we, that the Nature Club had a go at building their own stone nests, that afternoon. The aim was to build a nest that could hold a penguin ( no Gentoos were available, so the schools falcon mascot stepped in), as well as be able to camouflage an egg-looking stone. On top of this, we tried to make the whole process as realistic as possible by introducing some organised stone stealing from eachother's nests; a frequent problem faced by the Gentoo.

    There were successes and failures and lessons learned, so many thanks to Flo for the wonderful talk.

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