The most striking memory Joel Pedro from the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has of the frozen continent happens to be his first.
He’d studied it for years, read about it, and talked to the people who traverse it.
But nothing, he says, prepares you for the moment you first arrive.
“It’s like experiencing some force of nature that you didn’t know existed before,” he says.
“Just the scale of the place and the height of the cliffs at the front of the ice shelves – there’s nothing you can do that readies you for that scale.”
