Who

knows? Yeah.

Look, and that is the real guts of the story.

So we found out – so about two-thirds of the way through our trip, 23rd of June, so just after midwinter's day where we celebrate the winter solstice, we got told that, hey – Due to a whole range of very complicated logistical and operational reasons, we can't get you out as planned and we don't actually have a plan for when we can get you out.

Now, they were fairly confident and it turned out to be true.

They could get us out at the kind of 18-month mark.

So we'd spend an additional... summer down there we'd be home by early to mid 2021 and that ended up being the case but we didn't know that for sure and your analogy is perfectly right and i use marathon as a good example like if you're 30k's into your marathon and someone just walks up to you and says hey you've um You've taken a wrong turn or how you're now just running an ultra marathon.

What are primarily its functions?

And can you share a few details about that? And what are your leadership takeaways from that?

Yeah, so just on the eve of Christmas 2020, so we'd been there just over 12 months and we still had a while to go, we had...

And it's one of those quite common in a crisis.

If when you've got one crisis and there's one problem, it's often there's going to be more.

It's rarely that simple of like, oh, I've got this one problem.

Sure enough, you're going to have more.

So at one point, the doctor walked into my office and just said, hey, how would we evacuate someone at the moment if we had an issue? And I'm like, almost impossible, mate.

Tell us what was the sort of most interesting thing about pulling that all together for you?

How much is psychological training and preparation a part of the deployment?

Yeah, it's quite a big part.

So everyone does a lot of screening beforehand.

So we want to make sure we're sending the right people down there.

And it's a fairly mature crowd out of the 24 in the wintering group.

The average age was in the low 30s, oldest in their sort of early 50s, youngest sort of high 20s.

So they've got a little bit of life experience and they've been through some screening processes for physical conditions.

What does this mean? So as a leader, how did you sort of work through that and help people cope with that?

David, in your words, take us to that actual moment.

Yeah, well, I mean, as you described there in the intro, so me and the team at 24, we set out in October 2019 on what was supposed to be a 12-month expedition to run Australia's Antarctic Research Station at Davis down in East Antarctica.

It should have been a fairly routine year.

Australia's had a long presence in Antarctica.

It was sort of the 73rd year of Australia's continuous presence down there.

And it had gotten to a point where those annual expeditions went fairly, pretty much like clockwork.

The ship would drop us down there.

So what did that combination actually prepare you for? Like what did the Antarctic experience test in you that probably neither of those careers had tested before?

So tell us, tell us David, some of the coping mechanisms, coping strategies that you and the 24 person group used in that time.

Yeah, I mean, the main ones I talk about now as well and what helped us throughout the year was really focusing on what you can actually control.

And rather than focus on, oh, geez, when are we going home or what's going to happen next? Okay, what can we actually control about today and this week and this month and your own? This is where routine comes into it.

I'm not a huge fan of saying routine is absolutely what you need.

You can then become too stuck in your routine and it reduces your flexibility, which you always need.

Yep.

but it's about what you can control.

Can you explain, David, literally the difference between a winter and a summer in Antarctica?

Can you explain, David, literally the difference between a winter and a summer in Antarctica?

probably about 50 degrees of temperature would be the difference.

So in summer, you've got about 20, you got 24 hours of daylight in the summertime down there and you'll, you will get temperatures above zero.

Um, and you'll still get temperatures as sort of minus 10, minus 15, uh, in the summertime down there.

But, You speak to a Canadian or a Norwegian or someone and they'll laugh at that.

That's just a nice summer's day.

But in the wintertime, yeah, you're looking at 24 hours of pitch darkness for about six to eight weeks at most of the Aussie stations and down to minus 30, minus 40 degrees ambient.

Like, how did they survive, those blokes? What?

Can you explain, David, literally the difference between a winter and a summer in Antarctica?

Probably about 50 degrees of temperature would be the difference.

So in summer, you've got 24 hours of daylight in the summertime down there and you will get temperatures above zero.

and you'll still get temperatures of sort of minus 10, minus 15 in the summertime down there.

But you speak to a Canadian or a Norwegian or someone and they'll laugh at that.

That's just a nice summer's day.

But in the wintertime, yeah, you're looking at 24 hours of pitch darkness for about six to eight weeks at most of the Aussie stations and down to minus 30, minus 40 degrees ambient.

Like, how did they survive, those blokes? What?

Can you explain, David, literally the difference between a winter and a summer in Antarctica?

Probably about 50 degrees of temperature would be the difference.

So in summer, you've got about 24 hours of daylight in the summertime down there and you will get temperatures above zero.

And you'll still get temperatures of sort of minus 10, minus 15 in the summertime down there.

But you speak to a Canadian or a Norwegian or someone and they'll laugh at that.

That's just a nice summer's day.

Um, but in the winter time, yeah, you're looking at 24 hours of pitch darkness for about six to eight weeks at most of the Aussie stations, um, and down to minus 30, minus 40 degrees ambient.

Like, how did they survive, those blokes? What?

What was the motivation to come over to DFAT?

Yeah, it sort of came from a career trajectory point of view.

I remember, you know, kind of playing, staying in full-time army service and doing that.

And you just have no control over your postings or your locations.

And to me, you know, I was 22, 23 or so at the time, didn't really appeal to me.

I'm like, oh, look, as cool as that sounds.

And then the other thing was chatting to a number of senior officers.

But tell us about managing someone that's kind of challenging.