The tour continues. Dip puts me on the back of his quad, a four wheel drive motorbike he uses to get around the station. As he accelerates away I hold tightly to his waist and my heavy helmet click-knocks with his. There’s a ridge and we go over it with another big helmet click. My grip tightens.

‘This is as intimate as I’ve got with anyone in eighteen months, since my medical!’

Dip’s yell in the wind is carried back to me. I laugh.

‘I don’t reckon a finger shoved up your bum is too bloody intimate,’ and I squeeze tighter. His laughter’s flung back in my face.

When we climb off the quad he asks me if I have a boyfriend and I hesitate and tell him no. It’s too complicated to explain. And it’s fun mucking around with him.

He tells me there’s a harem of seal cows just about to pup that he knows about, eight kilometres from the station limits.

‘And there’s only one thing cuter than a baby seal, Fin, and that’s me covered in marmalade.’

‘Wednesday nights are wank nights and blizzards are a bonus.’

It’s an old Australian Antarctic saying according to Wesley, an old expeditioner with a lot of sly, quiet wisdom. He’s been down south seven times before. It gives him an authority no-one can match. He can talk about the days when it was just men on the station and huskies and sleds were still used and they didn’t have computers and satellite television. He says wanking’s extremely important in Antarctica. He says someone’s got a tape of a blizzard to play, for when things get really tough. I don’t know whether to believe him.

Wesley’s in his fifties. He doesn’t speak much during the course of a day. He’s like a careful shepherd who fences his words tightly. But in the bar, late, there’s a loosening. After Dip makes a Lamborghini for both of us. It’s the station specialty. There’s a lot of Kahlua and powdered milk involved. I have to keep quietly diluting it. It makes me realise that my drinking situation prior to the voyage wasn’t a problem at all. After several Lamborghinis, Wesley’s talk skitters. He tells me he wants to stay in Antarctica for a very long time. He tells me back home his wife has just moved in with his best mate. She’s taken their two youngest kids with her. He doesn’t want to go home.

‘What’s there to go back to? You tell me.’