The Rabble heading home to Adelaide (Photo: Roger Wilkins)
The Rabble – Roger Wilkins
We have probably all heard of transitioning to retirement. In fact, in Australia, there is a separate set of rules for those who want to Transition to Retirement using access to their Superannuation whilst still working Part Time. This need for a transition is, of course, a need largely imagined by those still working. Rather as a person offered water after being lost in a desert or someone offered food after a period of starvation, apparently the excesses of retirement are too intense to be gorged all at once. Strangely, for most of us the reality of the freedom and joy of no longer working is easy to handle. As we are likely to say, how did we ever fit work in?
Most huskies, on the other hand, had only a brief transition to retirement, which lasted for approximately the time it took to load and cock a Webley service revolver, before they transitioned further to the Great Span in the Sky. A few experienced full retirement – Rasmus at Fossil Bluff comes to mind – but the semi-retired state was rare, I think, except for The Rabble at Adelaide. I am not sure of the history of this team but I do know that they gave great enjoyment to those of us privileged to work with them in the early ‘70’s and I do believe they enjoyed the experience as much as we did.
By this time, extensive trips were, of course, only leaving from Stonington. Adelaide was for breeding and some training. The team I knew and worked with had some great old-timers, though. We had been sent Princess in late 1971/early 1972 from memory, (I think from The Ladies?) but she was by then not keen on working more and no longer wanted to lead (or we were not skilled enough to be regarded by her as worth the effort!). So, a year later, we welcomed Tuppence and some other newcomers. She was very intelligent and happy to go on trips, so long as she didn’t have to actually work. She managed this by trotting along at the front with her trace just sagging slightly. This meant she was doing no pulling but was still out of reach of the front pair who, if she lost concentration for a moment and came within range, would happily bite her bum, just to remind her that they knew exactly what she was doing. She was good company and would trot around with us if we went exploring at the end of a day’s work. She was also very good at spotting crevasses and fragile snow bridges and would not blindly follow instructions if they were silly. I grew to trust her judgement implicitly.
Other stalwarts included Pinky and Gawain as the back pair. I think Mistral and Yuri may have been the front pair? (Some memories become a little hazy after 50 years.) With those five as bookends, we could insert young and inexperienced dogs in between so they could learn on the job, as it were. Sadly, I am ashamed to add that I don’t remember what teams they came from but perhaps other contemporaries can fill in the details?
There were a number of trips out from base, including one to visit Doc Andrews and Ian Taylor, who had decided to try manhauling. I must admit it was fun, with a minimally loaded sled, to cover the same ground they had taken 3 days to cover in about 15 minutes, and catch up for a cuppa, before returning to base!
The last big trip was to Rothera Point, when Dr Chris Andrews and I checked the emergency depot there. London had asked for this to be done, with no explanation. We were simply glad to have an excuse for a nice long (by our standards) jolly. We assume now that this was the very first of the on-site checks preparatory to establishing the new base there. I’m sure lots of people knew of these plans by then but we on base did not, so it seemed a strange request. Still, off we went. We had lovely weather for the trip out, all the better to see the reason why the Shambles was presumably so named!
Going up the McCallum was hard work, with both Chris and I pushing like we were resisting an All Black scrum while we zig-zagged up the steepest bit. Both we and the dogs may have been a little out of condition but it made for epic memories! Once at the Point, we checked everything out and all was fine. One confession to make, though. Chris was a chocoholic and had already eaten all the reserves that had been built up at base since it had opened in the early ‘60’s – to such an extent that the cook, Roger Barker, had put him on a strict ration. When we checked the emergency supplies, we had seen that there was some chocolate there, of course. Now, Chris wasn’t so desperate that he would steal from these supplies, but he did fancy himself as a bit of a connoisseur and saw that the chocolate was marked as being supplied to His Majesty King George VI, not Queen Elizabeth II – which put a rough date on the establishment of this particular depot! So, being fair in terms of quantity, we swapped some of our current Cadbury’s for the older stuff. I’ve got to say, when people claim it was better in the good old days, they were certainly right about chocolate – it was as good as the finest Swiss chocolate and far superior to our 1970’s stuff, let alone the rubbish they produce today.
Having achieved our goal, the weather naturally closed in, and we had a few days of fairly extreme blizzards. While bunkered down, we managed to get the BBC World Service one day – and they were playing the last episode of a serialization of Frankenstein. You may remember that towards the end of the book Frankenstein is chasing the monster across the polar wastes with a dog team. The next day, when we had our sked with base, we asked Mike the radio op to send a teletext (telegram?) to the BBC saying where we were and that we had just seen a ghostly apparition drive by. Could it be Frankenstein still searching? To our delight, we got a mention on air a day or two later!
Once the weather cleared, the return was uneventful, except for one day when we were getting close to base. We awoke and prepared as usual and had got to the point where we were finalizing things. The sled was fully loaded, the dogs clipped in their traces, the front and rear pickets still in place. I can’t remember why we were still delaying (probably taking some more grips to add to the several thousand we already had, I suspect) when I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. Gawain had obviously decided that enough was enough. He wanted to get home and have a nice chunk of seal instead of the nutty he had on the trip. He stood up, the other dogs idly watching him. He took a step back, braced himself and threw his weight into his harness. The sled had not been loosened from the snow, the picket was still in place. Never mind, that picket popped out and the sled began to inch forward. The rest of the team were still gobsmacked and I got to him before he continued more than about a metre, but it was an impressive effort! I told him we were just coming and he seemed satisfied with that, and about 3 minutes later we were on our way home.
I hope others can add to Rabble stories. I fear that the team came to an end only a few months later, when the order came from London to put the Adelaide dogs down. Thankfully, I was already on the way home, having been allocated a berth on The Biscoe, but I still vividly remember the deep sense of loss and anger I felt on hearing the news.
Roger Wilkins, Met., Adelaide 1972 & 1973