Frank Hurley came here in March of 1917 after he was picked up from the hell hole of Elephant Island. He must have borrowed a camera from one of the whalers, and his insatiable appetite for photography led him here to Hercules Bay to photograph macaroni penguins.
We arrived one hundred and three years later, after dining in five star luxury and a thrilling Zodiac jaunt around Point Wild. Maybe some of us too have borrowed some camera gear, but perhaps the most pertinent similarity we share with Frank is the passion for these wilds, and a love of creating images to help convey its majesty.
Massive noodles of linguine swirled on the margins of the bay in the form of giant kelp, resolutely fixed to the rocky shoreline as the insignificant surge of the lazy swell rolled in and out, back and forth. This perfect sea state was matched by the weather above, yet another blue sky day penetrating down from the glacier-striated mountain highs, shimmering through the gushing waterfall at the head of the bay, and finally meeting the ocean in a deep saturated expression of paradise.
Life burst forth in the form of comb jelly’s, pulsing out a spectrum of intensity, wishing to star in their own salty science fiction blockbuster, the kelp its dynamic stage. Macaronis perched in patches of steep bare rock above the tide line, and further up, deep into the clumping of tussocks. Light mantled sooty’s soared overhead, while fur seals bathed on rocks and in rock pools, elephant seals on the beach, and a few kings, gentoos and a lonely chinstrap seemed to be paying the macaroni’s an early morning visit, making the most of this exceptional weather.
Weather that was certain not to last, and during the afternoon excursion the fog rolled in. Some of us were already on the Shackleton Walk, making our way from Fortuna to Stromness, others leaving from Stromness to hike as far as the waterfall which Shackleton, Worsley and Crean repelled down in the final stages of their epic adventure, set to then eventually go forth and pick up Hurley and the men from their hell hole on Elephant Island and return them to the heaven that is South Georgia.
