Pene today.

Pene takes in the Antarctic landscape Work continues to drive the main aspects of my life. I have been fortunate to be able to stay living in Tasmania, continuing work in various forms with the Australian Antactic Division. From 1992-95 I worked as an ARC postdoctoral fellow at the Antarctic Division in Kingston, jointly sponsored by the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies in the University of Tasmania.

During this time FrostBytes was finally published; I continued living in Taroona, and went bicycle touring instead of mushing.

Pene takes in the Antarctic landscape
I returned to work at the Antarctic Division in June 1996, to start training for the winter of 1997. The Atmospheric and Space Physics, ASP, program has been centered at Davis with the other stations maintaining basic geophysical observatory programs with one or two research experiments.

The ASP laboratory at Davis hosts twenty or so experiments, all monitoring different aspects of the Earth's upper atmosphere. In 1997 I had a change of scenery and wintered at Davis instead of Mawson.

We had a physicist and engineer running the laboratory and I was fortunate in that I worked well with engineer Mike Manion - an easy-going, cool, West Australian dude who previously wintered at Mawson in 1994. Mike's partner Meredy Zwar was our chef.

JADE ICE... BIG ICE CUBE'S

Wintering groups are getting smaller with larger maintenance crews in summer and larger summer science programs. At Davis in 1997 we had 19 people. In 1990 the wintering group of 24 was considered small. At that time large groups of tradespeople boosted wintering groups to 30 or 33. Now, with no construction teams, wintering groups are typically 18-20. The number of scientists has not increased - if anything, they are decreasing.

There were three women in our group - as well as myself and Meredy, Fiona Scott was running a biology program. We had a harmonious wintering group -very different to 1990. Coming to terms with the death of my father in March of 1997 made me really appreciate the support Paul had given me during my 1990 winter.

I returned to Australia in February, 1998. I currently have a contract to work in the ASP group until December, 1999. I've been busy in my garden since my return. I have bought some new chooks and made friends with my cat Mustafah again. I would love to have a pet dog but feel that my life is too unsettled for a dog. Dogs are very loyal to individuals whereas cats are more happy to transfer the attention to whatever hand feeds them. I have no long-term plans in life although I hope to put together some ideas over the next 18 months.

I recently enjoyed seeing Gina in September this year when I went to the Australian Institute of Physics congress in Perth. A great chance to catch up, stay with the family, and to start the website process. This site being the result.

Pene's Academic publications. Perhaps a little dry for the general browser.

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