1990

My fiancé and I are sitting in Father Linton’s dim study, bent over clipboards as we each fill out a questionnaire. I’m dressed as if for a job interview, wearing the shoes I wore to my Year 12 formal. It’s impossible to cheat, even though I keep glancing over at the pages resting on Matthew’s perfectly pressed trousers. His sentences bunch up as he tries to squeeze them into the available space. My own answers perch awkwardly on the top line, the tails of gs and ys dangling like fishhooks over the gaping white space below.

When we pass our papers back, Father Linton picks up a red pen and calls for his wife to bring the tea. The whole situation feels like I am in the headmaster’s office. My awkwardness is intensified by the weird coincidence that his wife used to be my home economics teacher. Mrs Linton doesn’t need to read my answers to know that I lack the domestic skills of a ‘good wife’.

My succinct sentences are a blend of what I think Father Linton wants to hear and the answers I think Matthew has given. Unlike at school, where questions were marked either right or wrong, there are extra ways to fail this test. My answers can be wrong in the eyes of God or wrong in the eyes of ‘man’. In the end, I fail across the board. Apparently, our answers diverge on every subject: domestic labour, career ambitions, desire for children, and the faith in which they will be raised. Father Linton recommends that we delay our wedding plans. You are very young, he says. I am nineteen, and my fiancé is twenty-two.

2005

The psychological questionnaire for Antarctic fieldwork is multiple-choice. It reads like a personality test I remember taking at my first full-time workplace fifteen years ago. That test divided people into groups represented by birds – the adventurous and flamboyant people were eagles and peacocks. I turned out to be the freakish love child of a studious owl and a conflict-avoidant dove. My suspicion is that people chosen to work at Scott Base are eagles and peacocks. I circle answers that reframe my introversion as self-sufficiency and my social anxiety as the ability to take direction from superiors. I tell myself it’s not lying so much as answering as my aspirational self, as the kind of person I believe the Antarctica New Zealand Program will want. 

I’m applying to do a Graduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. It’s a course that includes a fieldwork component – a fortnight camping on the ice sheet near Scott Base. I’ve aced the application process in every other category – academic ability, physical fitness, capacity to pay tuition. My career as an environmental campaigner means that I easily fulfil the program’s criterion for potential to advocate for Antarctic conservation when I return home to South Australia. The psychological test is the final hurdle. Fortunately, the Antarctic fieldwork component is scheduled for the summer season. The psychological screening for making it through the interminable night of a winter season is far more arduous than the questionnaire I’m filling out while chewing the end of a biro.

Several months later, I’m sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture on Antarctic psychology. It turns out everything I’d assumed about the questionnaire was wrong. The test actively screens out the excessively self-sufficient and the overly adventurous – the eagles and the peacocks. Antarctica is such a treacherous and isolating environment that the ability to stay inside for long periods and to prioritise social harmony are highly valued characteristics. They want the owls and the doves.

*

1990

My dad turns to me in the backseat of the Jaguar and tells me that if I don’t want to do this it’s not too late. It’s the most thoughtful and sensitive thing he has ever said to me. But he’s wrong. It is far too late. All my friends and family are waiting in the church. There are people polishing cutlery and glassware for the reception at my dad’s golf club. An elderly woman has hand-beaded the lace bodice and train of my meringue-like dress. Deep in my gut, I know this is a mistake. But I also know that there is no turning back. Not going through with it would mean returning to my childhood home and continuing to live under its rules.

My parents were born in the nineteen-forties, and their own parenting style has not evolved very far from the one they experienced. Children are to be seen, not heard. And while my siblings and I were not beaten with belts, we were all familiar with the sting of the wooden spoon.

My mother had determined early on that I would be a doctor, and my school subjects were all chosen for me in pursuit of this dream. I was not allowed to date boys until I left school, and the idea of moving out of home was inconceivable unless it was as a wife. A virgin wife.

I’m already a huge disappointment with my choice of marriage and full-time employment rather than medical school. Further rebellion feels out of the question, especially with the fate of my older sister hovering unacknowledged yet ever-present. She’d pushed back, had boyfriends, stayed out all night while my parents waited straight-backed at the kitchen table, the powder-keg atmosphere taking days to disperse. Eventually, she pushed them too far. She took a married lover and was disowned, her name no longer spoken in the house. Rules calcified into commandments.

From the backseat of the Jaguar, I watch the suburbs flash by. This marriage is not how I dreamed my adult life would begin. But the one thing I am sure of is that my fiancé loves me. And as I sit in this car with its bonnet strung with white ribbon, I honestly believe that finding love a second time might be pushing the odds too far. I need to grab this now – an unwise marriage at nineteen being a far more attractive option than an indefinite confinement in the family home. This marriage is my bid for freedom.

I gather the great bell of my dress and open the car door.

2005

The rumble of the aircraft is so loud that everyone wears earmuffs, and conversation is reduced to hand gestures. We are inside a C-130 Hercules, a huge plane so stripped down that we are only separated from its metal skin by a fascia of scarlet webbing and twisted veins of electrical wiring. Beyond the row of my University of Canterbury classmates, the huge belly of the Hercules is packed with pallets and equipment lashed to the floor with thick ratchet straps. There’s a single Portaloo for the nine-hour flight from Christchurch to the landing strip near Scott Base on the Ross Ice Shelf.

My stomach is a fist of excitement and anxiety. Due to the risk of in-flight emergencies and the cold weather we’d face if the worst should happen, all passengers and crew must be fully kitted out in our Extreme Cold Weather gear for the flight. I’m wearing a full set of thermal underwear, fleece salopettes (bib and brace overalls), and a waterproof, down-filled set of pants and jacket.

The flight is loud, airless and hot, but beyond the tiny windows the sky is shining – an intense and perfect blue.

*

1990

After the honeymoon, we move into a two-bedroom house in inner-city Adelaide. It’s more a fancy granny flat than a house, built on a piece of land sliced off the backyard of a Federation half-acre block. At first, it’s like play. Choosing where to put Matthew’s furniture. Making meals that we eat on wedding-present plates with wedding-present silverware. Arranging my books and ornaments. Everything is a bit mismatched and looks nothing like my magazine dreams. But I love it. It’s my house, and I can do what I want.

The gloss soon rubs off. I’m working full-time as a clerk for a finance company, dealing with legal documents – mortgages and liens – and it demands sustained focus, attention to detail and diplomacy. None of these skills come naturally. When I get home, I cook, clean, and do the shopping and laundry. Matthew owns a small business, a carpet franchise based inside a John Martins department store. He’s busy. He has an employee. It’s complicated and time-consuming. It becomes clear that helping me with the house is not his responsibility.

Something that had been as tiny as two differently checked boxes on a questionnaire now swells to room-filling proportions. But since both of us come from homes in which the wife does everything, apparently my stance on chore sharing is unreasonable and abnormal. I soon learn this home-making work also takes focus, attention to detail, and diplomacy. Mum made it look easy – grocery shopping on her way home from work, a fortnightly roster of quick-to-prepare dinners, whipping through the ironing while watching telly at night. For Matthew, this division of labour is natural, whereas I feel as though I went to bed a girl and woke up as a wife – a stupid one, who hadn’t realised being married came with a full-time job as a domestic labourer. Within months, I am running on empty, finding my list of infinitely repeating tasks to be not merely exhausting but soul-destroying. It does not take long to realise I have swapped one prison for another.

2005

Crouching neatly and uniformly green against the ice, Scott Base is a delight of design and efficiency. Compact and with all its components connected by enclosed walkways, New Zealand’s Antarctic station feels like a space habitat on an alien planet. On the other side of Ross Island is the mismatched sprawl of McMurdo – the American station that, by comparison, looks like a mining outpost from the Wild West. 

Once inside the warmth of Scott Base’s airlocked interior, you can explore every part of the station – from the huge workshop and garage space to the kitchen, lounge, library and bar, right through to sleeping quarters and laboratories – without setting foot outside. Everyone seems to know the system and their place in it, getting their work done without any disturbance to the congenial atmosphere.

*

1990

It’s not just the amount of housework and interminable repetition; it’s that I’m so unskilled. My cooking is appalling. I have no sense of smell (congenital anosmia), which means I find it hard to tell when something is burning, and my impaired sense of taste makes seasoning like tossing darts in the dark. In the rare case of triumph, I cling to it. After successfully cooking Matthew and his friends’ scotch fillet, I find myself wrapping small rounds of steak in bacon at least once a week, despite the price and the fact that as a vegetarian, I don’t eat them.

Ironing is a huge source of contention. Matthew tells me that, as a businessman, appearance is paramount. He must look immaculate – trousers sharply creased, shirts bright and flawlessly pressed. No matter what I do, his shirts turn grey, their collars are stubbornly ringed with grime, and even when I manage sharp creases, the sleeves hang asymmetrically, tiny crinkles radiating from every button.

As the months pass, things begin to pile up. After work, I have little energy and zero motivation. The house has only two bedrooms, but one is a chaotic den – the door behind which I shove every item for which I can’t find a home. The kitchen bin has vinegar flies, and the compost has rats. Every table wears chains of mug rings. Washing hangs on the line so long that Matthew’s t-shirts are striped with sun-scorch. The bathroom is so filthy it could feature as part of the Fifth Circle of Hell.

At the beginning of each day, I cry before climbing the steps to work. At the end, I cry on the bus home.

2005

The class piles into two Hägglunds, and we drive out onto the Ross Ice Shelf. We are camping out on the ice to give us a taste of Antarctic fieldwork – environmental monitoring and data collection. We set up our campsite with the gently smoking cone of Mt Erebus on one side and the jawbone of the Royal Range on the other. We pitch our tents, their iconic pyramid shape based on the design used by Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated expedition. Our Primus stoves have a similar vintage style. It’s 2005, but much of our equipment has a traditional mid-twentieth-century feel.

Each tent pair must make their own home on the ice. I’m sharing with Katrina, a smiling young Kiwi who is also a vegetarian. We shovel out our cooking space from the ice, setting up our stoves and unpacking our kitchen boxes onto the shelves and benches we carve from the ice. Then we dig our toilet cubicle. Everyone has a clearly labelled bottle to keep inside their tent in case a blizzard makes toilet access impossible. The women are also allocated a pink plastic funnel and tubing for this purpose. I’m keen to try peeing into my bottle like a man even though the forecast is for perfect weather.

I love it here. The ocean of ice under my feet, the bright, clear sky above – the whole world flawlessly white and blue. Each day is packed with tiny domestic tasks, every single action taking significantly more attention and time than back home. It’s all safety protocols – routines based on hard-won experience. Before covering my eyes so I can sleep under the midnight sun, I make sure the ice for drinking tomorrow has been melted and stored, the kitchen and stove boxes are packed and tied down in case of a blizzard, the polar tent is immaculately tidy with everything in its place, and the food bag is sorted and lunch packed for the next day’s fieldwork. Every time I leave the tent, I need at least fifteen minutes to get ready. The windproof salopettes go over my merino long johns, then the thermal shirt and vest, followed by my extreme weather jacket and neck gaiter. I tuck my notebook into my pocket. And pen? Check. Then a coat of sunscreen before polar-tech gloves and ear-protecting headband. Insulated beanie. Then another minute for pulling on and lacing up my mukluks. Sunglasses. Windproof gloves over the polar-tech ones. Ready.

Completing all the tasks and having everything in order makes me feel efficient and capable. It makes me feel safe.

*

1991

Matthew has a car phone – a black brick with a curly cord that squats on the centre console. He calls me, checking that I’m home, that the washing is on, the dishes are done, that dinner will be ready when his car pulls in. We have a landline phone -  – these are the days before everyone has a mobile -  – so I try to avoid home, staying out, pretending to have errands, appointments, or catch-ups with friends. Sometimes when I’m out, I think I can hear the landline ringing. Matthew invites his mates over on Saturday nights. I see them taking in the state of the house and feel their judgement. I know I’m expected to stay and cook for them. Serve them drinks and be the hostess. But seeing their eyes travel over the dust bunnies, linger on the dishes, and widen as they return from the bathroom makes me ashamed and defensive. As the weeks pass, he no longer invites them to our house. Instead, we go to theirs. As our relationship sours, we make everyone uncomfortable. On the drive home, I accuse him of mocking my housekeeping. Matthew accuses me of mocking his intelligence.

I hate Saturday nights, but I love Saturdays. The finance company is closed, but the department store where Matthew works is open, so I have the day to myself. I try to catch up on the cleaning. But as the months pass, my vacuuming and scrubbing dwindle. Instead, I take the phone off the hook, close all the curtains in the living room, and push aside the coffee table. Then I pop tapes in the VCR and play hours of recordings of Rage and MTV, flinging myself around the room, dancing with ecstatic abandon to Madonna, Roxette, INXS, Sinead O’Connor – free from the feel of anyone’s eyes. Anyone’s expectations.

2005

Out on the ice, the wide expanse is marked by small flags that flutter on the end of long bamboo poles. Green flags mark the trails that are safe for pedestrians, while red flags indicate a safe track for vehicles. Black flags mean danger – crevasses or cracks in the ice. For our class, venturing anywhere solo is against the rules. I’m desperate to walk beyond the sound of the camp, to take my notebook and record how it feels to be alone on the ice. I beg our team leader, promising to follow only the green and red flags, to take a radio, and not to be gone more than thirty minutes. She agrees, but I must stay within sight of the camp. This becomes one of my most precious memories – my ears full of wind and the crunch of my own footsteps on the ice, my back to the camp and nothing between me and Mt Erebus but the cold, clear air.

*

1991

Tensions are rising. I tell my husband I want to go to university. He laughs. I’m not managing now. How can I possibly take on study too?  I am failing to meet Matthew’s, his friends’ and his family’s expectations of a wife. He tries everything to mould me into his vision of a partner – cajoling, bribery, coercion. Yelling. My response is avoidance and sullen silence. I am desperately unhappy and can’t see a way out. This is a prison of my own creation. My sole haven in the week is Saturday. I’ve even given up playing netball so I can spend more time in my curtained sanctuary.

One Saturday, I am in full flight, George Michael’s ‘Freedom! ’90’ blaring, when Matthew’s car pulls into the driveway. I hit eject, grab the tape, and run to the far end of the house. Heart racing, I tuck myself into the bedroom cupboard. This is not rational or logical. It’s pure instinct. Crouched among the shoes and winter coats, I can hear him calling me, opening doors, searching, footsteps drawing closer until they stop on the other side of the cupboard door. When the waft of air hits me, I am clutching the videotape to my chest, eyes squeezed shut.

2006

Beyond the windows of Scott Base, you can see where the moveable sea ice presses up against the stationary ice shelf. The incredible pressure of these two kinds of ice, crushed against each other, creates dramatic formations. At the point of contact, the ice is pushed up into pressure ridges that resemble chaotic ice sculptures – beautiful but anarchic responses to opposing forces crashing into each other, neither willing to give way.

*

1991

It isn’t long until the end.

We are getting ready for bed. It’s winter. He turns on the fan. He always sleeps with the fan. I always pull the quilts and blankets to my ears. Something has to give. I tell him I’m sorry, but I don’t love him anymore. Things from this point are blurred. I remember him yelling. And crying. His hands are on my shoulders. He shakes me. The mirror rattles against the wall as I fly backward against the tallboy. The mirror doesn’t break. My wedding and engagement rings tinkle in the crystal dish.

In the taxi, I wind down the window. I’ve been married for nine months. The wind thrusts cold fingers through my hair, bites my throat and cheeks. 

2006

Stepping down onto the tarmac in Christchurch, I cannot peel off the layers fast enough. The temperature is in the low twenties, but for days I drip with sweat. Wandering through the city, all my senses are amplified, as if I’m on acid. Gone is the simplicity of white and blue. The world bludgeons me with colour. So many shades of green. And now that I’m back in a place that has darkness, the moon and stars glare like neon. The icy dryness sucking all moisture from my skin has been replaced with air that’s passionately sticky, almost post-coital. Life is packed with people, with noise, everything bright and fast, hurtling through the days like a getaway car. And I’m behind the wheel, no seatbelt, window down with my elbow on the sill, singing.