The Adelaide strip, and access to it, was becoming more and more unreliable as each year went by. Coupled with the dangerous task of landing ever increasing numbers of drums of Avtur each year, with heavy swells and ice crashing ashore on what really was a Fid-built jetty which was hollow underneath, and the deterioration of the ramp and airstrip, at the end of the summer relief program in Marguerite Bay, it was decided to re-visit Rothera Point area from both the air and sea, with a view to opening a base there, and this was done from Bransfield and Biscoe during various opportunities in late summer.
Pilots Dave Rowley and Bert Conchie made several airborne low level recces of Rothera – Dave noted “at our own instigation, my last season 1973/74, in light of the rapidly worsening ski-way at Base T “.
Steve Wormald – B.C. Stonington, 1973