Antarctic Writer on Ice

This is a diary with a difference. When well-known Author Hazel Edwards was offered the chance to travel to Casey Base, on the Australian Antarctic Division resupply ship Polar Bird in the summer of 2001, she thought that physical endurance would be her greatest challenge. When what should have been a three week roundtrip between Hobart and Casey base, became an endurance exercise, with the Polar Bird trapped in the ice for weeks, she realised that her creativity was also going to be tested to the limit.
This e-diary was compiled by Hazel using only the limited email resources available following the collapse of her laptop computer. Via satellite from a beset ship, she kept up correspondence with family and friends, fulfilled publishing commitments to newspapers and magazines as well as conducting polar radio interviews. Surrounded by ‘wildlife experts’ she researched fact, faction and fiction. To relieve the inactivity and close confinement of an ice beset ship, she created ‘The Lachieberg’ a personalised iceberg story which expeditioners could email to their children, started belly dancing classes and even conducted a virtual book launch.