Transcript

Ros Bowden: What about personal gear, what did you take down, what sort of clothing did you wear?

Moreton Moyes: Ah well we wore ordinary clothing, er, but when we got away from Macquarie Island we were issued with proper Antarctic clothing: very warm stuff all the way, yes.

Bowden: Do you remember what it was? The details of it?

Moyes: Oh yes, it was very warm we had, our inner clothing was these woollen combinations, very long and very heavy, but very warm , and then over that we had another suit , made of … a shapeless sort of suit, also like the combinations, stuff made of blanketing material and that, er, the legs of that came down pretty well to the boots but they were then covered by a long pair of stockings, and then over that again we wore a sweater. That was the ordinary routine. Of course for the windy days we had overalls made of burberry material, trousers, rather baggy trousers and a blouse and also a burberry helmet, made of burberry material too.

Bowden: Just one set of all this, or did you have a couple of sets?

Moyes: Oh no, we only had one set each. They had to last. It didn’t matter so much. That was one thing, you don’t get as dirty down there, there’s no dirt to get on you, you see, but they lasted quite well, mm.

Bowden: What about the gear that you needed as a meteorologist?

Moyes: The gear?

Bowden: For your professional work..

Moyes: Well all we had, they’d arranged, there was a meteorological screen there, and all the apparatus, the barograph, thermograph and everything else, plenty of thermometers, that was all arranged for me and it just meant I took these observations every four hours and also wrote up notes on the type of weather and so on.