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Source: ONE News -
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I found it in the bowels of the base. I was alone, I was silent, dressed like a polar ninja.
I had big woollen socks pulled up over my polyprops. My toes curled around the edge of each stair. The hallway jarred left, but to the right stood a door, dim and plain. It just blended.
I paused. I listened. I waited.
I've almost been a week at Scott Base. I'm starting to know the place. I love it. It's homely, it's warm, and there's always fresh baking in the cupboard. Barry and Bobby make some amazing dinners. Barry's mum, Barbara, is a lovely woman - she taught him well.
There are many people here who make me laugh. People who make me think, people I admire. Today they took us skiing at the Scott Base skifield (the world's southern-most). The weather was perfect. The queue for the tow was non-existent. There were 10 of us, and we drove there in a hagglund. It was life-affirming.
I know the Scott Base routine, I know where the best quiet spots are. I know what time the bar opens and shuts, where to put all my recycling, and hang up my towel. But I didn't know this door.
Check, check, cross now.
I crept through, I breathed - it shut. I turned.
It was astonishing.
In the midst of the Antarctic, in a room owned by the New Zealand government was a "Pee Lab".
There were chemicals stacked on a shelf. A basin running water, special bottles scattered about. They weren't the sort of bottles I'd ever seen before. They were pee bottles.
But I was wrong to be so stealthy. It's a secret no one hides.
Scott Base depends on it. It's always running, always serviced. Fluid is always draining through the bottles. Nobody leaves base, even to go skiing without hiding one away.
Antarctica's strict international rules mean nobody can pollute the environment in any way with any waste, and that includes human waste. Anyone out in the field has to carry a pee bottle, to ensure they leave only footprints - and no yellow snow.
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