We attach tow ropes to the quads and climb up the tyres of the Hagglunds and haul ourselves into its cabin. Jim hands us both a set of headphones. Over the rumble and roar of the engine he tells us that back at the station the blizzard tossed an empty shipping container as easily as a chip packet on the beach. We smile and say nothing. We can hardly see outside. The side windows of the Hagglunds are covered in ice. Max and I remove our gloves. Our two little fingers are the only things that touch.

Jim looks at us in his rear-view mirror.

‘When are you two going to get married?’

We laugh. It’s as if words have been sucked out of us by the blizzard.

Back at the station there are stars in the glass of the south facing windows. Small stars on the outside surfaces that flurry the view. The glass has been scoured, like the bottom of a pot, by grit in the flung snow. Close scratches brand the paintwork of vehicles along the length of their south facing panels.

Wesley plugs the quads into the heater and their oil warms and they kick over fine. Pamela says, officiously, don’t ever do it again, and then takes down her bottle and pours us all a gin and tonic. We click glasses wearily and smile.

‘You journos,’ she says, and shakes her head. ‘I bet you don’t know how to build a snow cave.’

‘What’s that?’ I ask.

‘It’s a survival shelter, for when you get stuck. But we don’t tell the journos how to make them.’ We all laugh.

The bar’s buzzing with socks and wigs and dresses and skirts. It’s the night before sailing and it’s Jim’s birthday. The party’s fancy dress. Come as your favourite woman. Jim gets slabs of beer and lots of Lamborghinis and some dope someone’s managed to grow secretly in a corner of the hydroponics shed. Wesley presents him, very solemnly, with a brightly wrapped tube. We all have a guess what it is. Jim rips off the paper. It’s a fluoro light from the store.

‘I just thought it’d make an interesting shape when it was wrapped,’ says Wesley in defence, at the laughter.

Max is back in the donga and Wesley comes and sits next to me. We don’t say much at first. It’s our way. I stare at the Aussie blokes in their lopsided wigs and crude red lips and tall heels and dresses and I feel a sudden flooding of fondness for them. Cross-dressing’s big in Antarctica. Wesley tells me that in the old days some of the blokes used to get just a bit too excited over the men in stockings. I ask him what difference women have made down here.