There's a downside to being one of Australia's top scientists. It means field trips where there are no fields, and temperatures drop way below freezing. There is no shower or change of clothes for six weeks. There are blizzards.
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But there's an upside, too: the "intense beauty" of the Antarctic landscape in which Professor Nerilie Abram of the ANU spent three months, split in two to take the trip to a marginally less remote camp for the shower.
She's just become a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, "elected by their peers for ground-breaking research and contributions that have had clear impact".
Her work as Professor of Climate Science at the ANU takes her to the frozen south to drill into the ice of the Denman Glacier which, if it were to melt, would raise the level of the sea by one-and-a-half metres.
Of Australia's big cities, only Canberra would be untouched by a rise of water of that scale.
There's a moment of 'What am I doing here? Am I going to do this? But after that there's the intense beauty.
- Nerilie Abram
She and her team of three others were landed by a small plane on skis with their camping gear at the start of the Antarctic summer.
"There's always the moment when you get dropped on the ice, and the plane departs, and there's nothing there.
"There's a moment of 'What am I doing here? Am I going to do this?"
"But after that, there's the intense beauty - the shape of the snowflakes and the way they glitter in the sun."
For much of the summer, there was no night. The sun slopes slowly towards the horizon and just as it nears, it starts sloping back up. Only at the end of summer was there an actual sunset where darkness set in for a few hours before the orb reappeared.
Because it was summer, temperatures were a balmy ten degrees below though in blizzards they dropped to -20 or -30.
The team slept in tents. Professor Abram said she slept in two sleeping bags and a beanie.
But the work made the cold worthwhile.
From the literally ground-breaking venture, they came back with 5000 samples of the ice, some of them from 200 metres deep.
"What happens in Denman Glacier has consequences around the world," she said, "and there's so much that we don't understand because we haven't been out there to study, so if we want to understand future climate risks, we have to understand these remote areas."
Professor Abram was one of seven Canberra scientists elected to the Australian Academy of Science. The others were professors Andrew Blakers, Kylie Catchpole, Mark Krumholz, Shahar Mendelson, Hrvoje Tkali (all ANU) and Professor Arthur Georges (University of Canberra).
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
