MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Life on South Georgia as a Government Officer, “the best decision of my life”

We have welcomed over 100 cruise ships this season (Photo John Fowler)

By Nadine Orme - As I walk to work this morning, I pause to allow a group of penguins the time to wander down the path in front of me. This may sound like a dream, but for me it is day to day reality, and it’s absolutely incredible. From the moment I arrived here I knew I had made the best decision of my life in coming to work on South Georgia as a government officer.

After four days sailing from the Falkland Islands on our fishery patrol vessel Pharos SG, I was excited to get my first glimpse of King Edward Point, and even more excited to get back on dry land; Pharos SG has a tendency to roll and so it wasn’t the smoothest of journeys!

I stepped off board straight into the middle of the busy tourist season, meaning that I was pretty much straight off one ship and back onto another!  We have welcomed over 100 cruise ships this season. When the ships arrive in the bay, we go on board to carry out customs and immigration checks, give a briefing to the expedition team and then we do a biosecurity audit on passengers. It’s really important that we protect our environment here and not introduce any new non-native species or spread any existing ones between different parts of South Georgia, so we check a sample of passengers’ clothing and boots for any risks, for example seeds or insects. On some of the larger ships this can mean over fifty pairs of boots need to be checked! Once we are done on the ship, we spend time watching the visitors as they visit the old whaling station at Grytviken, making sure people keep the appropriate distance from wildlife so as not to disturb it. It also provides a nice opportunity to chat with the visitors; I love seeing their faces light up when they spot their first seal or penguin and this reminds me just how extremely lucky I am to be able to call this spectacular corner of the world my ‘office’.

Fast forward back to today and I am getting to grips with the various aspects of being a government officer – not only do I deal with tourism, I also have many roles, which include being a fishery protection officer, customs and immigration officer, reserve police officer, coroner’s officer and a registrar… the list goes on! Now we are heading into winter, the main focus turns from tourism to fisheries. South Georgia has sustainably managed fisheries and part of my role is to carry out inspections of fishing vessels. This involves travelling out to the vessel by jet boat and getting onboard by climbing up a pilot ladder. Once on board we brief the captain, and inspect documents, safety equipment and fishing equipment.  Throughout the season we will monitor the progress of the vessels and will go out on Pharos SG to conduct further inspections at sea to ensure compliance with license conditions as well as patrolling the marine protected area to keep an eye out for any illegal vessels.

One of my year-round roles is to carry out regular rodent monitoring. Following a successful eradication campaign, the island was declared free from rodents in 2018 and it is vitally important we keep it this way. Before the eradication, the population of ground nesting birds such as the pintail duck was seriously impacted, due to rodents eating the eggs, and watching a flock of pintails is a great visual reminder of how important our continued work is as I go about my task today. This morning I am checking for any signs of rodent activity in one of the many rodent monitoring stations on base, navigating carefully around the resting fur seals which often pop out from behind the tussock grass or from underneath a nearby building. The fur seals are another success story of population recovery; once almost hunted to extinction, they are now thriving here and even have the right of way; many a time I have had to stop and wait for a seal to cross the path in front of me. They breed here at King Edward Point; for the past couple of months I have had a mum and pup living right outside my house; on several occasions I have opened my front door to find a pup on the step staring up at me.

This afternoon marks the return of the Pharos SG to King Edward Point. As well as fishery patrol, and transporting people to and from the island, Pharos SG brings supplies, meaning two vital things for people living on base – post and food. I hadn’t realized just how excited you could get over a delivery of vegetables! Of course there are no shops here, so food is supplied annually – think tinned, dried and frozen, but we are extremely fortunate that Pharos SG supplements us with fresh fruit and veg. This time round people were really excited to receive onions as we had not had any for weeks, we were also treated to the extremely rare surprise of one banana each, something we barely see here.

Generally our food store is well stocked and you can make most things (well, depending on how good you are at navigating the kitchen) and we receive ‘rations’ of chocolate and crisps at the start of each month. I’m often asked whether I miss takeaways or similar… when what I actually miss the most is lettuce. Any food that arrives here has to be carefully checked for any seeds or pests before they are allowed on base, with certain foods, such as leafy vegetables not being allowed; they cannot be checked thoroughly enough and so are deemed too much of a risk. 

As the ‘freshies’ are being checked over, I grab the post bags and start processing the incoming mail. In the summer season we have two post officers who run the Post Office here, but now they have finished for the winter this is another role I have taken on. We are relatively well connected here now and are able to video call home, but it is still a joy to receive post and it’s fun to send postcards to friends and family back home, although usually by the time they receive them I have already told them the content over the phone.

After the excitement over incoming postcards and peppers, it is time to finish work for the day. Tonight there will be a ‘pub quiz’ which has high stakes as the prize is chocolate and crisps! At the moment there are only eleven of us living here but there is still plenty going on socially. We get together for dinners, craft evenings, film nights and games nights. There are many annual events to look forward to, such as the regatta – where we all make a model boat to race on a lake (with varying levels of success for this year’s entrants), the half marathon (I think next year I will settle for marshalling it), and the next big event being the midwinter celebrations in June. It is tradition to exchange homemade gifts, so I really need to get crafting!

I have just enough time to get out for a quick walk before the sun sets and the quiz begins. I stop to watch some king penguins slapping each other with their flippers. The wildlife is by far my favorite thing about working here, from fur seal pups learning to swim, massive elephant seals hauled out on land, to giant petrels and albatross soaring up above; there is always something to watch – you definitely don’t need a TV here! I have a particular soft spot for the penguins – it’s certainly not every job where you find yourself sending a message to your manager ‘sorry, sending it now – I got distracted by a handsome penguin’.

I continue my walk, wandering up to Hope Point, which has a panoramic view over Cumberland Bay and where I am treated to a beautiful pink sky as the sun begins to set over the mountains. I reflect on the past few months so far and how incredible every moment here has been. I don’t know what the next few months will have in store for me here, but the one thing I do know is that I can’t wait to find out. (South Georgia Newsletter)