It was not quite a Neil Armstrong moment, but it was certainly a giant leap into the unknown. My first tentative step from the safety of a helicopter on to an iceberg quickly established that the surface was as slick as it looked. The situation was not helped by the buffeting turbulence kicked up by the chopper. Shuffling was the order of the day, and I set out for the relative security of an ice boulder while the helicopter lifted away. As its roar faded, it was replaced by a profound silence. I was standing on a little piece of the Antarctic, riding an iceblock in the vast blue bowl of the Pacific Ocean. Frozen water, as slippery as an illusion, solid but ephemeral. It was the strangest feeling.
I had called helicopter pilot Graeme Gale much earlier in the day, with the news that an iceberg warning had been issued for shipping off the Otago coast and suggested we take a look.
Graeme was initially sceptical but curious. It was not the first time I had woken him with a bizarre idea. Nor he me.
Late the previous night, a reporter from the Otago Daily Times had phoned me at home with the news of the maritime alert. It had not come as a complete surprise. Several days earlier, a Royal New Zealand Air Force Orion aircraft on fishing patrol 300km south of Invercargill had reported about 100 icebergs heading our way. However, expert opinion was that prevailing currents would carry the icebergs away from the coast, where they would melt to nothing, well out of sight of land. Perhaps they had not factored in that in 1931 icebergs were visible from the beach at Dunedin.
When I arrived at Graeme’s Helicopters Otago operation at morning tea time, it was already a hive of activity. Bright red deep-sea survival suits were being prepared and a Kawasaki BK helicopter fuelled. I was pleased to see Graeme had chosen a helicopter with two engines, as the co-ordinates I had tracked down for the previous day’s iceberg sighting were 100km off the coast: quite a swim dressed as a red Sumo wrestler.
Twenty minutes into the flight, I was having doubts: there was no sign of icebergs, and now no sign of land either as we droned on east. Yet in the distance the latest white-capped wave to crest the horizon defied the sea’s efforts to claim it back. It soon took on some shape: perhaps it was a ship’s superstructure, someone suggested. But as the distance closed, it became clear to everyone in the helicopter what it was. It was an iceberg and it was magnificent.
Glistening jewel-like as it melted in the warm sun and relatively temperate ocean, the iceberg sat in an iridescent aqua blue pool of its own making, water cascading from its vertical faces, a trail of small blocks of broken ice — growlers — marking its path.
We circled the 100m-high berg a couple of times before lowering to a hover over the ice. It was time to step ashore, if that was the right word.
Aboard the iceberg, the gentle slop of the ocean against its flanks and the moan of the wind were punctuated by cracks as sharp and loud as rifle shots as the iceberg creaked and strained and continued to break up. How long until it rolled over? I didn’t wait to find out. Back in the chopper, pockets filled with enough ice to chill a whisky or two, we marvelled over a couple more circuits before heading back to share the news.
• The icebergs, it turned out, had been at sea for some time. They were traced back to a huge calving from the Ronne Ice Shelf in 2000. As soon as the first ones disappeared from the Otago coast, others drifted in to take their place and the tourism flights continued.
Everyone was impressed.
A Dunedin couple explored the potential for romance, proposing to hold their wedding on ice. However, cold water was poured on the plan, when they were advised it was too dangerous and Internal Affairs questioned the legality of such an offshore union. The wedding did not go ahead but another bizarre event did. A very woolly hermit sheep captured on Bendigo Station in Central Otago had previously stopped a nation for the shearing of his huge fleece live on television. "Shrek", an unlikely ambassador for the Cure Kids charity, had two and a-half years’ of new fleece on his back, and his owner John Perriam suggested a shearing at sea.
"Not a chance," was my reply, "too dangerous."
Unless a safer berg came along. And a few days later, it did. An iceberg the size and shape of an aircraft carrier floated within range. It was all go. Shrek had crampons fitted and champion blade shearer Jim Barnett was plucked from the farm. Four of us, and Shrek, were landed on the ice where Shrek proved a model of decorum as Jim clipped the fleece free.
Now, unbeknownst to me, John had dined the previous evening with some iceberg experts who had warned him about the delicate nature of icebergs and how even a small scratch on their surface might cause a catastrophic fracture. Imagine his horror then, while he was gathering Shrek’s fleece into a woolpack, to look up and find I was busy hammering in a waratah to fly the company flag.
The first aircraft the next morning made an interesting observation; exactly where the flag had been drilled into the ice, the berg had broken. There was no flag, no waratah and no sign of a sizeable chunk of iceberg!
Three weeks after they drifted into our waters, the last of the icebergs drifted out of range again and melted away. Hundreds of aircraft passengers had the thrill of a lifetime. Many others saw the icebergs from the hills around Dunedin. Some went out by boat, one group even dived under one.
Unless global warming makes this a more common occurrence, I’m sure generations of Dunedin children will listen, wide-eyed, to stories about how in 2006 off the coast of Dunedin, the Antarctic came to visit.
