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ANTARKTIESE . BULLETIN Geology by Helicopter: Tontrast In ANTARKTIESE .BULLETIN SEPTEMBER, 1965 - No. 11 - SEPTEMBER 1965 Published by the South African Antarctic Association Uitgegee deur die Suid-Afrikaanse Antarktiese Vereniging 16, Anderson Street, Brooklyn, PRETORIA. Andersoostraat 16, Brooklyn, PRETORIA Patroos/Beskermhere: Prof. S. P. Jackson, M.A., D.J.C., Ph.D. Dr. S. Meiring Naude, M.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc.h.c., L.L.D.h.c. Editor/Redakteur: J. J. Taljaard Geology by Helicopter: tontrast in Logistics by T. W. GEVERS, M.A., Dr.Phil., D.Sc. Fieldwork been perpetrated and a rustic guardian of the Jaw appeared to be It was the joys of an open-air life that enticed me away from unable to distinguish between an innocent geologist with harmless Chemistry to Geology. Reckless rock-climbing as a student on the hammer and a murderous loonie wielding a bludgeon of death. precipices of Table Mountain and the peaks of the Cape Ranges convinced me that a highly ambulatory profession was much to Donkey-Wagon be preferred to a more or less stationary one. When put into actual When I joined the Geological Survey of the Union of South practice, however, I soon discovered that fieldwork is not always Africa in 1926 I discovered that the Civil Service cannot reasonably sheer ecstasy. be expected always to be in the forefront of technology. Cabinet Ministers and Departmental Heads admittedly were then already FootsJogging in Rain and Mud motorised; but the Geological Survey came along donkey-drawn. Working in Upper Franconia, Bavaria, for my doctor's degree In the Stormberg region of Northern Cape Province my only the anticipated joys were often excessively diluted with rain. I was fellow travellers were other underprivileged classes of society, also arrested for murder. Fortunately this turned out to be a case exclusively brown and black of hue. The farmers were all Tin­ of mistaken identity. A frightful killing with a blunt instrument had Lizzie and Chevy-borne. Since the maximum speed of a quadruped Beacon Valley and Beacon Heights, Victoria Land, Antarctica. Type locality of Beacon Sandstone. (Photo: Gevers) Page 2 ANTARKTIESE BULLETIN September, 1965 ass is only one-and-a-half miles per hour, I soon made myself often had the feeling that if I did not manage to get out of the independent of my span of fourteen long-eared sluggards and desert alive, the Administration would not bother to search for footslogged over 3,000 miles in seven months. I also obtained a deep my bodily remains but would merely advertise for a new expendable insight into assinine mentality. This stood me in good stead in junior geologist. many later walks of life. Jungle Joys Car Without Roads In the Namib desert there were at least no wild creatures to menace life and limb. The African elephant is made of much On transfer to Southwest Africa in 1928, I graduated from donkey sterner stuff than his docile Indian cousin, so popular in zoo and to automobile. The Administration made me the proud owner of a circus. With my gift for provoking contretemps, and to the great Dodge Victory Six open tourer by deducting, for three years, thrill of my student companions with whom in 1939 I was studying £12.10.0 off my monthly cheque of £28.6.8. (My salary was a volcanic eruption in the Kivu region of the Congo, I managed so high in recognition of a Master's and Doctor's degree.) On hard to get myself favoured with a close-up view of the nether anatomy tyres I was chased into the Namib Desert, there to crash and lurch over rocks and plough through sand at sixpence per mile, while of the world's mightiest land mammal. It took six months in hospital and bed, four on crutches and many more on walking sticks to more important officials using built roads, of course, drew a shilling. recover from the effects of load and stress metamorphism on quite Tsoon became expert in patching up broken springs with gemsbok­ a variety of bones and to regain something akin to upright gait. riems and shovelling my resplendently green chariot out of yellow Just a frolicsome students' lark! Their subsequent solicitude was desert sand, often for hours each day. Oh, for the gears of a four­ quite touching. wheel drive! My sustenance was mealie pap and hope eternal for better days. Wings Ol·er Volcanoes High-piled cases of fuel fed my steed of steel, while my own parched From donkey via motor (and for a brief moment also elephant) gullet was moistened, off and on, by a variety of fluids provided conveyance, it was now time for me to be promoted to air transport by water holes dozens of miles apart. Always the liquid was brackish in field work. Through the munificence of a Belgian coffee-planter and mostly also of very old vintage, dating back to the last rainy in the same Kivu region, I was enabled in 1948 to study the eruption episode one or two dozen years ago. Since these water-holes were of Kituru volcano not only from the ground but-what a thrill!­ the only "oases"' for all other crazy creatures of the desert, their also from the air. Flying very low in the excessively turbulent air nourishing contents \\•ere sometimes rank with organic pollution close above the whole length of a red-hot lava flow, however, and rife with micro-organisms. The stuff then looked like German caused me on landing to carry out my breakfast in a paper bag. Bokbier, but lacked the latter's exhilarating properties. As a result of the posthumous activities of a submerged dead jackal, invisible Chopper oYer Icc and Snow in the murk, I was once laid up for almost a fortnight with acute The trouble, for a geologist, about airplanes, even small ones, ptomaine poisoning. is that they go too fast. A helicopter would have been much better! But the geology and scenery were superb! What gracefully But to experience that thrill I had to transfer from incandescent curvaceous sand dunes! What soaring mountains shimmering in lava flows and hot volcanic gases to the "icy wastes" of the Antarc­ the heat haze! What deeply cleft canyons! tic. Again it was foreign generosity that made my long-cherished dream come true. The United States Antarctic Research Program The magnificent rock exposures of these awesome gashes in a of the National Science Foundation in Washington invited me as sunburnt earth were my undoing. Three years of unabating thrills an exchange scientist for the austral summer of 1964-65. were ended when, through walking too far, it took me two days and a night without food and water to return to my car hidden in a Two Johannesburg specialists had declared me to be absolutely maze of sun-scorched canyons. Utter exhaustion, plus a sizeable fit for this venture. But my wanderlust has not decreased with age; dose of pathogenic organisms imbibed just previously with dead so I travelled to the South Pole via Persia, Afghanistan and India, jackal juice, brought on rheumatic fever, four months in bed, a there-due to my usual poverty-stricken mode of travel-to collect squelchingly leaking heart valve, and one year's sick leave, during dysentry, sinusitis, bronchitis and congestion of the lungs, and to which the plumbing of my blood-pump was slowly being repaired. arrive in Christchurch, New Zealand, woefully emaciated and no fit sight for the medical profession. But the Americans took me A few months later a police camel patrol found two mummified along nevertheless. In their care-and that of the cold, dry and bodies in these selfsame sun-smitten and canyon-riven badlands, dustfree Antarctic air-I soon recovered to experience one of the apparently sailors who had deserted ship at Walvis Bay and had greatest thrills of my life. God bless America! tried to cross the desert without compass. In those tough days I Lower Beacon Sandstones with layers of siltstone and intrusive dolerite sills. Mount Feather, Victoria Land. Hanging glacier, LOl\er Taylor Dry Valle~·, Victoria Land. (Photo: Gevers) (Photo: Gevers) September 1965 ANTARKTIESE BULLETIN Bladsy 3 Volcanic Studies by Helicopter the Howchin and Walcott valley glaciers, proved to be a volcanic The first helicopter I set eyes on at McMurdo Base was res­ cone of absorbing interest. In between outward-dipping layers of plendent in its normal bright orange-red hue, but otherwise looked olivine basalt slag and cinders we found a zone simply crowded somewhat ill-used. It was minus its tail and also the rotors were with well rounded inclusions, many of them of deepseated ultra­ missing; not exactly a confidence-inducing sight. But so superb mafic type. was the skill of those chopper pilots that subsequently I never The origin of such inclusions is being extensively debated. Are gave it another thought. Up we "staggered"-in another machine, they cognate, i.e. derived from the same magma chamber as the whole and sound- swerved, and then soared over the multi­ olivine-basalt lavas, there formed by gravitational differentiation coloured hutments and fuel tanks of McMurdo, over the gale­ (crystal settling)? Or have they been brought up from still greater embattled old wooden huts of Captain Scott at Hut Point and depths, the upper mantle itself, below the earth's crust? Cape Evans towards Cape Royds, to have a look at the Kenyite Four boxes full of these inclusions have arrived in my Department lavas of Mt. Erebus. Professor Treves, of Nebraska University, and Dr. J. Mciver and I are busy studying them. Not only did was my guide.
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