7 February - Inexpressible Island - -4 degrees Celcius - 74 degrees 54 minutes South

Dad. Shuffling in ski pants. Opening curtains. This is 3 am for me. I can dig it now.

The weather really closed in today and we had snow falling. We had arrived early this morning at Inexpressible Island in the western Ross Sea. It is home to another Adelie rookery as well as a snow cave where Scott's Northern Party wintered over in 1911 when they were stranded after the Terra Nova left early due to pack ice.

Dad and I walked up a hill to see the bay. It was very cloudy today and the landscape was covered with snow-coated rocks.

We walked down to the rookery. When I changed lens on my camera, I flicked the setting dial without realising, which set the exposure to some stupid level. The upshot is that a whole lot of photos come out underexposed. Picasa was rescued them, but a lot of detail is gone. Unfortunately, this included an Adelie being chased into within a metre of me and then feeding a chick.

However, I did get some nice shots of another adult who was tired of being chased by another chick and decided to retaliate.

We went to visit Mario Zuchelli Station in Terra Nova Bay, an Italian research station. However it looks like it has already closed up as it is only a summer station. It is located next to a big glacier.

We entered the trivia competition again this afternoon and won for the third time in a row, so now we have two bottles on ice behind the bar. In the evening, Dad and I were both done in, so we turned in early and watched a DVD. It has been a busy few days but now we are headig directly for Macquarie Island, so we can relax for a while.