Cornish Guardian (St. Austell & Fowey)
Midwife Bridie ready to head off to Antarctic
AN NHS midwife is swapping working at a birth centre for living with 1,000 penguins on an Antarctic island.
Bridie Martin-West, 33, was selected by the charity UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) to work at the “football pitch-sized” Goudier Island Base A at Port Lockroy.
Along with five other colleagues Ms Martin-West, who is originally from Cornwall, will be responsible for managing and maintaining the base for five months starting from early November, helping to ensure the stories of the first explorers and scientists who ventured to the South Pole are preserved.
Ms Martin-West has been appointed base leader at Port Lockroy and will be responsible for the wellbeing of the team, which comprises a postmaster and museum manager, a shop manager, a wildlife monitor and a general assistant.
Base A was established as the first British base in Antarctica during the Second World War, the result of a secret mission called Operation Tabarin carried out in 1944.
The aim was to deny safe anchorages to enemy raiding vessels and to gather meteorological data for Allied shipping in the South Atlantic, but Tabarin also reinforced Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands, then being threatened.
Almost 80 years later, Base A is now home to the world’s southernmost public post office, a museum and a colony of gentoo penguins.
Ms Martin-West said: “It’s a big difference, but so many of the skills of a midwife are relevant: keeping calm under pressure, not getting worried by changing environments and responding to people in highly stressful situations.
“I worked in a birth centre, looking after women throughout their pregnancies and the births of their babies; it’s high-stress and hugely changeable.”
Training for Antarctica had been “full-on”, she said: “We’ve been doing remote first aid because we’re not able to call 999, learning about how to pull sledges and how to monitor the penguin population.
“I feel more ready, but I don’t know if you can ever feel completely ready for such an incredible experience.”
In December the team will be joined by a group of conservation carpenters who will repair and maintain the historic buildings.
Graham Gillie, 56, a carpenter from Scotland, will spend three and a half months working at Base A and at Base W on Detaille Island, his third trip to the Antarctic since 2010.
Base W was a research station from 1956 to 1959 and is now a protected site, with many artefacts left behind during its hasty evacuation.
He said: “Communications, particularly at Detaille Island, are quite limited; they’re hoping to have slightly better communications at Port Lockroy this year but, even still, it’s difficult.
“You just have to have an understanding with people at home that they may get an email now and again.
“They fully support that, but I have to say that’s going to be one of the hardest things for me: missing the family when I’m away”.