Transcript

Ros Bowden: Did you have a sort of daily routine as a group. Did you have a daily routine that you followed?

Moyes: No, there was no daily routine. The only routine we had was that one man was cook for the day. So he started off after breakfast in the morning and he got the meals, kept the hut tidy, at night time he kept the fire going all night and of course and that gave him the opportunity — we had a little canvas tub to have a bath and to wash his clothes. And then, uh, he got ready and got the breakfast ready for in the morning. At eight o’clock he turned on the wireless on the little radio we had, usually a song of Harry Lauders, ‘Come and put your trousers on it’s going to be a windy day’, and we had breakfast. And then the new cook took over for the next day.

Bowden: The radio came from where, the radio broadcast you heard?

Moyes: Oh no, no radio broadcasts, this was just a gramophone. Oh no, we had no radio at all. We had, eh, we were supposed to have a radio which would receive from 500 miles but we were so far away from Mawson’s Base it didn’t matter, it had also been off-loaded so we had nothing at all.

Bowden: Well, how did you amuse yourselves or how did you relax? What did you do in your spare time?

Moyes: Oh well, our only spare time of course was really in the evening, then we played cards and we didn’t have money but we kept accounts, and at the end of the week the man who had the most cards was presented with a little tiny lovely rope cord to put round his neck with ‘champion’ on it, but the man with least numbers for the week had to wear a collar made from a ship’s hawser with a heavy weight on the end of it. And he had to wear that for the whole of the next week until he got out of being the lowest member of the cards.

Bowden: I suppose you must have got to know each other fairly well during that period.

Moyes: We got to know one another very well and as I say we were a very happy party.