A Tale of Rasmus – Roger Wilkins
Those of us who remember Marguerite Bay some 50 years ago may be classified by the younger FIDS as a bunch of Old Farts, reminiscing about a mythical, bygone, Golden Age, when men and dogs faced the Rugged South with some 2000km between us and the Edge of Civilization (aka Stanley). There is at least a little truth to this – remember Steve Vallance’s recounting of the evacuation of Rocky Hudson – but what you are about to read is not a tale of the normal kind, for this is a tale of a husky Old Fart, a Tale of Rasmus.
Those who remember him may also remember that, in a moment of compassion, to spare Rasmus from the lead tablet that would have dispatched him to the Great Span in the Sky, given his age and inability to continue as a useful work dog, Bert Conchie smuggled him onto his plane and flew him down to Fossil Bluff, for a peaceful retirement amongst the glaciologists.
The problem was that Rasmus never seemed to fully appreciate his lucky escape and was not always the harmless boon companion of those sojourning at The Bluff. Mentioning farts reminds me, for example, that Rasmus was always generous with what Dr Steve would likely refer to as his flatus. He always seemed grumpy and I suspect spent his days, generously filled with naps, reliving his glory days as king dog in his team (whether he was in reality or not). In other words, he would have fitted right in at any of our Reunions.
My knowledge of Rasmus began when I was sent down to The Bluff from Adelaide as the summer Met Observer. When not unloading the ships or shooting seal for the winter dog food, I seemed to spend a great part of my 3 summers down south at Fossil Bluff. This may, of course, have been because of my exceptional meteorological skills, hitherto unrevealed, but I suspect it had more to do with the fact that Dave Rowley shared my bunkroom at Adelaide during the months he was down flying each summer, and the attraction of a bunkroom to himself may have been a great attraction.
Anyway, my interactions with Rasmus were, as they say, legion, but the tale I will focus on occurred I think leading up to the Christmas of 1972. We had had sent down on the latest plane, for our Christmas feasting, a chicken and a leg of lamb. In the inevitable haste of turning the Twotter around, the precious fresh meat (likely the only fresh meat we would see again until the next summer) was taken to the hut and put on the table. The frantic turn-around and refueling of the plane eventually completed, we returned to the comfort of our one-room shack – to be met with a table utterly devoid of the slightest sign of meat of any kind. The day being beautifully sunny and warm, the door had been left open. Barring some alien visitation, there could be only one culprit – the recidivistic and recalcitrant Rasmus. He lay, apparently sated, near the entrance of the hut. He duly received his fair share of abuse and scorn, but was strangely unmoved and apparently entirely free from guilt. One might almost believe there could be discerned a certain sense of hurt that we could believe him capable of such a dastardly deed. He duly wandered off down onto the ice and proceeded to ignore us.
A few days later, however, one of us, stood in the doorway and enjoying the view over King George VI Sound, saw Rasmus apparently eating something some 100m or so away. Following the cry of discovery, we ran down to the ever more desperately chewing and gnawing Rasmus, in time to discover the still recognizable but sadly small remains of a chicken. The bastard hadn’t scoffed the lot straight away but had buried his ill-gotten gains for a more leisurely enjoyment of his crime. The question was, did these chicken remains constitute the second of his guilty feasts or only the first? We assumed he had buried his hoard in the snow, perhaps in two separate locations. Only constant observation would tell the tale. We proceeded to allocate watch times. Rasmus would not find his second feast so easy to accomplish. True enough, a day or two later, he was spotted digging. He had just managed to expose the leg of lamb when we arrived. He was no match for our determination, though his look spoke volumes of the perfidy of man. Our prize was taken in triumph back to the hut.
The question now, however, was whether the lamb was edible. It was maybe now a week since it had been unloaded from the plane and, buried though it might have been in the largest freezer in the world, the sun may still have played on it – and it had certainly spent some time in Rasmus’s drooling jaws. Only one thing for it – get on the radio and ask Mike to put the cook on the mic. I’m not sure whether it was Roger Barker or Al Wearden, I think they may have both been there between the ships arriving and finally departing, but the question was put – can we eat it? How chewed was it, we were asked? Very little, was the reply. Is it showing signs of being rotten or putrid? Maybe a little green in a few places, we said. Some judicious cutting revealed this discolouration did not proceed very far below the surface and those areas were duly trimmed off. Should be OK, then. Just resist the temptation to go for a rare roast. Cook it thoroughly.
Which we did and had half our Christmas feast at least! In case you are wondering, we did not give the bone to Rasmus.
Roger Wilkins – Met., Adelaide 1972 & 1973