Local Legend – Rachael chills out

Andrew Mathieson
WHEN stuck on an ice-capped desert for most of a year, adventurer Rachael Robertson stepped forward to literally take the plunge into her cold environment.
That meant diving into -49C Antarctica waters to commemorate the winter solstice during the only public holiday at Australian base on the frozen continent.
“It’s been historical for, like, 100 years that, for explorers in Antarctica, that’s what you do on the 21st of June,” she says, nodding.
The icy dip is a rite of passage dating back to when famous names like Mawson and Shackleton led the first expeditions to Antarctica.
Australia’s latest batch of 21st century explorers take it in their stride when their organs go into shock as the water engulfs their bodies.
“I knew I was awake; I knew I was alive,” Rachael chuckles away.
“It literally takes your breath away but it was colder out of the water than in when I got out.”
Rachael says that after running to a hot tub it takes 30 minutes to warm up from a numbing freeze to a mild winter chill.
After the frozen swim, a prepared 17-course meal is waiting in a warm room, with each course representing one of the seventeen gutsy souls left on the Australian National Antarctic Research expedition.
The population of scientists, meteorologists, pilots and tradespeople peak at about 80 in summer months when temperatures peak at 7C.
Freezing temperatures are, of course, part of the daily grind on Antarctica.
Rather than leaving a freezer door open and the heating off during winter at home, Rachael acclimatises by travelling into a Hobart winter for three months.
But nothing really prepares for the height of an Antarctic blizzard, she observes.
“I hurt my hand because I took it out of the glove because it was cold,” Rachael says.
“I went to bunch it out into a fist and I got what’s called frost mist. It’s not frost bite, it’s a stage but I recovered from it.
“That was literally two or three seconds of being exposed at those temperatures.”
After responding to a newspaper advertisement for expedition leaders, in 2005 Rachael left her cosy home in Anglesea where she was a chief park ranger on the Surf Coast.
Not only did she become one of the youngest to lead an expedition party, the then-36-year-old was one of just two women in 58 Australian trips.
She only had to look over her backyard to the next street for advice from neighbour Dianne Patterson, who was Australia’s first woman on expedition in Antarctica.
Rachael remembers the challenge of her expedition, particularly a plane crash that left four members stranded on a glacier 400km away.
Like a true leader, she stayed in radio contact with them every three hours for the next five days.
Rachael’s role overseeing the successful rescue of the stranded group earned her respect from the team.
“I knew the rest of the community was watching me and they were taking their cues to see whether they should be anxious or worried by how I was behaving,” Rachael reflects.
“I was careful that I was very visible – I wasn’t going to burrow away in my office.
“I made sure I was seen to be talking about an incident, not accident; a retrieval, not a rescue, and just careful of the language.”
Other decisions in charge aren’t as cut-throat. When confronted from May to August with pitch darkness, dead silence and stuck endlessly inside camp, life becomes tough and people can turn on each other over the smallest issues.
“For us it was how to cook bacon,” Rachael laughs.
“There was a blue between the tradies whether it should be soft or crunchy.”