THE PRESS, CHRISTCHURCH Saturday, May 30, 2009 D1

D MAINLANDERMainlander Editor: Ewan Sargent Contact: mainlander@press.co.nz 03 943 2518

Saturday & Sunday, May 30-31, 2009

SaleStrictly limited quantities, store stock only, no rainchecks. Open box and demo stock complete with remainder of factory warranty. Stock may vary from that illustrated. Sales are final.

21 Carlyle Street · Sydenham · Christchurch · Phone 03 366 5454www.magnummac.co.nz

Ex demo and previous model iPod clearance, verylimited quantities and colours

Limited number of ex demo and open box

iMacs, MacBook & MacBook Pro computers

on selected items

Queen’s Birthday Weekend

Printersfrom $20

iPod speaker systems from $22

AND…Loads more specialsin store: iPod accessories from $1, Games from $11, Software,Blank CDRW discs, Headphones, Hard drives, Laptop bags, andTutorial books.

Must end4pm Monday

Cold comfort

Up in flames: The A-frame hut near Scott Base blazes after catching fire during a routine fuel changeover. Photo: ANDY MAHONEY

The old five metre by three metreA-frame hut near Scott Base inAntarctica was a haven forvisitors to the continent. Ordinarypeople, artists, lovers, politiciansand national heroes used it toescape the cold. Inside it, in theclutter shared by all, they wereinspired by their dramaticsurroundings. And in the old hutbook they wrote lines of truthand revealed their souls. Lastweekend, the hut and its bookwere destroyed in an accidentalfire. NAOMI ARNOLD offers aglimpse of what’s been lost. D3

Cold comfortTODDY’SDEBUTTodd Blackadderreflects on thisCrusaders season.

❯❯ MAINLANDER D2

A NOSE FORTHE JOBSpending a daywith airportbiosecurity dogs.

❯❯ MAINLANDER D8

BRIGHT ANDBEAUTIFULColourfulechinaceas areback in vogue.

❯❯ GARDENING D18

REGULARS❯❯ Viewpoints D9❯❯ Books D13❯❯ Diversions D15❯❯ Gardening D18-19❯❯ Obituaries D21-22❯❯ Family notices

D22-23

THE PRESS, Christchurch Saturday, May 30, 2009 MAINLANDER D3

MON – FRI 9AM–5.30PMSAT – SUN 10AM–5PM

HLS

May

-04P

RNELSON • CHRISTCHURCHDUNEDIN • INVERCARGILL

220 MOORHOUSE AVETELEPHONE 982 4815

CAT 10 LEATHER CAT 65 LEATHER CAT 15 LEATHERMOMO FABRIC

Saveyourself

$1500 OFFANY LEATHER SUITE*

$750 OFFa minimum of

ANY FABRIC SUITE*JOLAN CHAISE SUITE

SAVE $1500 + 10 year warrantynow$4999

CALVINO 2.5 + 3 SEATER

SAVE $1500 + 10 year warrantynow $5499

AMALFI 2.5 + 3 SEATER

SAVE $1500 + 10 year warrantynow $5499

SOHO 2.5 + 3 SEATER

SAVE $1200 + 10 year warrantynow $2299

> MUST FINISH – GET IN QUICK & DON’T MISS OUT!! *conditions apply

Yeah, no, we can be a confusing bunchElizabethOsmersGordon

Living Language

Flip flop: Did Dancing WithThe Stars competitors take tothe floor or take the floor?

Photo: NEIL MACKENZIE

Afew weeks ago I wrote aboutour overseas visitorsidentifying New Zealandwords and phrases. David

Elms told me he had problems whenhe came to New Zealand with theexpression ‘‘to flog something’’.

In Britain if you flog somethingyou sell it. I can remember mybrother’s concern as a youngAnglican curate in Yorkshire, whenmembers of the youth group told himthey were flogging some bicycles. As aNew Zealander, he thought they wereconfessing to stealing them.

Elms also told me about anewcomer to New Zealand who wasshort of money and wanted to buildhis own bookcases so ordered some‘‘white pine’’.

When it arrived, he was distressedto find how expensive it was. What hehad been given was kahikatea, NewZealand white pine, a native wood,not the common pine he wasexpecting.

Several people have commentedon my statement that in Britain abench is only something you sit on.They have pointed out that in Britainyou can have a carpenter’s bench or aworkbench. They are quite right and Ishould have seen the connectionbetween these and our New Zealandkitchen benches.

Dave Gough came to New Zealandfrom South Africa. The first time hetried to get money from an ATMmachine in New Zealand it was out oforder. He received a friendly but tohim incomprehensible message onthe screen that it was ‘‘crook’’ and

that he should try again later.He told me that Westpac later

changed this because of ‘‘migrantbafflement’’. In his first week at workhe was asked to ‘‘uplift’’ somedocuments. He only knew of‘‘uplifting experiences’’. He was alsoasked to have ‘‘oversight’’ of variousareas. This use of ‘‘oversight’’ as anoun from ‘‘oversee’’ was quiteforeign to his South African Englishdialect, where the only meaning of‘‘oversee’’ is ‘‘overlook’’. He was alsopuzzled by a New Zealand gesture ofgreeting where the greeter cocks thehead. He said that when he attemptedthis it was described by a competentpractitioner as ‘‘resembling a severetick’’.

Gough (who is also a linguist)made an interesting comment about‘‘yeah-no’’ that I wrote about in anearlier column. He tells me that inSouth African English there is asimilar usage ‘‘ja no’’.

There is speculation in South

Africa about its relation to theAfrikaans ‘‘ja-nee’’ which is incommon usage, but is more generalthan ‘‘yeah-no,’’ meaning somethinglike ‘‘oh well’’.

Several people have suggested tome that ‘‘yeah-no’’ could have comefrom ‘‘you know’’. I can see why theythought this – ‘‘yeah-no’’ and ‘‘youknow’’ are superficially similar.

Also they are both discoursefeatures, assisting continuity andconnecting the speaker and thelistener. But because of semanticdifferences, and the difference in thestress pattern, we can say that thesimilarity is purely coincidental.

Bevan Rogers followed thetelevision series Dancing With TheStars where the announcer said overand over again, ‘‘Will [the dancers]take to the floor’’.

He always thought that dancers‘‘took the floor’’.

For him ‘‘taking to the floor’’involved a demolition man with a

sledge hammer. I checked with TonyDeverson, editor of the New ZealandOxford Dictionary. He agrees that‘‘take the floor’’ is the usual idiom inthe dancing context. But he suggeststhat there has been confusion withand interference from the phrasalverb ‘‘take to’’ meaning ‘‘to repair toor resort to [a region or a place]’’.

So we might take to the hills, ortake to the bush. But the term has lostthe meaning of escaping somewhereand is now used more generally asjust going somewhere.

So maybe that’s why dancers nowtake to the dance floor.

I was taught ballroom dancing byMiss Comyns Thomas in herSaturday morning classes in theOrange Lodge Hall in Christchurch.She always told us to ‘‘take the floor’’.But then those classes were nothinglike Dancing With The Stars.

words@press.co.nz

Memories: Sir Edmund Hillary stands outside the Ross Ice Shelf Hut during his 2007 visit to Antarctica.

Coldcomfort

It was a sad day when the A-frame hut nearScott Base in Antarctica caught fire during adiesel exchange and burned down lastSunday. NAOMI ARNOLD looks at the historyof Sir Ed Hillary’s favourite Antarctic haunt.

‘ It’s been terrific tobe here – it’s been50 years and I canhardly believe it.It’s been a greatoccasion in afabulous placewith the skiesclear and MtErebus over thereand us sitting herein considerablecomfort full ofScotch and wine –but we’re preparedto suffer thesethings because ofthe importance ofthe occasion.Seeing everybodyrelaxed and happyis a very nicefeeling and it’scertainly been agreat occasion foran old gent likeme.

Sir Edmund Hillaryon his last visit to theA-frame

It’s getting late and cold by the timeI unclip my skis and collapse insidethe front door of the A-frame,shouldering it shut against theblowing wind. The door bangs

open again almost immediately. Thewooden bolt-holes are almost wornthrough from long years of fighting theconstant, wearying blasts, and after only ascant couple of hours, so am I.

‘‘Anemomania’’, someone has writtenin the hut book: ‘‘wind madness’’.

A refuge on the edge of Antarctica, thehut was a triangle two levels high, anunassuming but welcome beacon on theblank snowy plateau.

Like any well-loved bach, it had simplecomforts – a hot-breathing stove, alantern, shadowed eaves, graffitied woodand a whistling, clattering kettle.

It was full of the homemade ingenuitynecessary in Antarctica: radio and CDplayer powered by car battery, a knocked-up flue to pull warm air from the ceiling.The platforms along the walls werecushioned with mattresses, blankets andpillows.

Stacked games, packs of cards, oldcopies of National Geographic. Limp,unmatched curtains. Watercolours ofemperor penguins and a tuatara, tornfrom a sketchbook. A mezzanine withpull-down ladder and nest of sleepingbags. Digestives. Bell tea. Milo.

Just 5m by 3m, the A-frame began lifeas an office at McMurdo Station. TheAmericans discarded it in the 1970s,dumping it on the sea-ice, leaving it to

sink through to the bottom of the bay.Scott Base staff rescued it and dragged

it out to Windless Bight for use as ashelter for field training instructors.

But in the mythology of the Antarctic,it became so much more for the NewZealanders and Americans who used it – aplace for rest, an escape and a bolthole inthe wilderness.

In all such places there is a hut book, apersonal yet completely public diary.

The two volumes of the A-frame hutbook were a time capsule going backdecades, recording the sublime – girls’nights in with cryptic references to melonsand wine; effusive times with bacon, eggsand friends; the thrill of solitude after asummer of cramped conditions back atbase.

And the pedestrian – quick trips torestock, diligent recording of date, timeand weather conditions, new carpet, acuppa on the way home from a ski.

Complaints of cold, a quick sentenceof joy, someone’s terrible, affectionate,12-stanza poem.

The hut cocooned the sleeping headsof field guides and skidoo mechanics,artists and politicians.

John Key, Robert Muldoon, DickFrizzell, Lloyd Jones, Jane Ussher,Grahame Sydney and many more eitherstayed the night or escaped the cold withcups of tea and biscuits.

Tessa Duder found it a magical even-ing of deep silence and beauty. ‘‘No wind,blue sky, little sleep,’’ she wrote in the hutbook – ‘‘but Erebus quiet, all well.’’

‘‘It was a tough night,’’ wrote a contentJohn Key on November 26, 2007.

‘‘Roast chicken, lemon tart and heap’sof grog.’’ John Key had recurring troublewith apostrophes. ‘‘It’s condition 3 so if Idon’t make it out my team mate’s ateme.’’

‘‘Kiwi A-frame,’’ he concluded: ‘‘anational treasure’’.

‘‘NOW OUR MIGHTY LEADER2008!’’ someone wrote alongside.

In January 2007, on Sir Ed’s last visit toAntarctica for Scott Base’s 50thanniversary, he asked to stay on a fewmore nights to enjoy the solitude of thecabin with old friends.

Flipping through the hut book, Icouldn’t find a written record of his visit –but journalist Mike White recorded hiswords that night.

‘‘It’s been terrific to be here – it’s been50 years and I can hardly believe it. It’sbeen a great occasion in a fabulous placewith the skies clear and Mt Erebus overthere and us sitting here in considerable

comfort full of Scotch and wine – butwe’re prepared to suffer these thingsbecause of the importance of the occasion.Seeing everybody relaxed and happy is avery nice feeling and it’s certainly been agreat occasion for an old gent like me. Butthe day has passed, time has moved alongand it seems to me it’s about time I wentto bed.’’

Visitors sat down at the table or on thesquabs, and wrote.

Tina and Kirby, married two years,with indelible ties to Antarctica: ‘‘Twoyears ago I forgot to put in an entry.Forgot, maybe because the -107 F justmight have short-circuited something inmy brain, maybe it was the shock that theman I so desperately loved, my home inhuman form, asked me to marry him aftera night of polar plunging, butt sledding byCastle Rock, frozen wine and cheese . . .’’

Tina wrote for a whole page in denseblack ink, grateful, happy and full to thebrim. Someone drew blue stars andflowers across the top of the page.

Hut books beckon for an entry, toremember a passing moment and leave itfor someone else. Private jokes, crudedrawings, promises made from warmthand wine to remember this night, thesefriends, that meal, forever.

‘‘Crisp night, good food, wine andauroras. To those that came before, pleasedon’t forget to put a bucket in the shitterbefore use.’’

Memories and a connection to place.‘‘October 2007. Had a very pleasant ski

out here on a very calm evening. It’sremarkably pleasing and rather nostalgicto be writing on the table I built fromscavenged materials in 1985 . . . andremembering the masses of wonderfulpeople who’ve been here in between.’’

A lonesome retreat and cry.‘‘Wish you were here . . .’’Lovers closing the curtains against the

polar sun.‘‘8.3.03. In years to come when we are

asked where did you spend yourhoneymoon? we will say The A-Frame! In

this inconceivably wild and beautiful place. . . we’ve spent 24 hours here, alonetogether in our little world, revelling inwhat has just taken place, admiring ournewly-ringed fingers. We are as we havealways been from the start, best friendsand loving each other, easy as breathing.’’

In the dry polar night, the A-frameblaze was so intense that Scott Base staffcould only stand back and watch.

Antarctica New Zealand chiefexecutive Lou Sanson says a couple ofcontainers will probably replace it fornow; and a few staff hope maybe a newhut might be built in a few years.

For now, there is an acute sense of loss.A memorial to Sir Ed is gone. The Milo,the biscuits, the curtains and sleeping bagsare gone. The scrawls of mountaineersGary Ball and Rob Hall burned on thewalls.

And those hut books are gone – a lossof over 30 years’ worth of memories, ofvisitors taking a brief refuge from thehowling continent.