Leading on the Edge: Extraordinary Stories and Leadership Insights from The World's Most Extreme Workplace

Chapter 19      

Feeling stressed and overworked? It could be your boundaries

One of the great things about the way the AAD prepare our expeditions is that they go to great lengths to make sure we never run out of anything. Sometimes it doesn't work out quite right, as I had seen from the green store debacle, but they always try to err on the side of caution. With resupply anything from three to nine months away, we just couldn't run out of important supplies.

Sex on the ice

Which is why I was shocked that after just two months on the ice we had run out of condoms.

Many people were, and still are, intrigued about how normal daily functions operate in Antarctica. It was commonplace for journalists to ask me how we went to the toilet, whether we had showers and what we ate. Less commonplace, perhaps because of the delicacy of the topic, was what we did about sex and intimacy.

I can picture the accountant back in Australia with his spreadsheet, trying to work out how many condoms we would need:

1. Firstly, many people, say 50 per cent, are in relationships with people back home, so I'll assume they won't need any …
2. Then, we'll have a certain number of people who just aren't interested in pursuing any kind of lovin’ …
3. Then, among the people who are interested, many will bring their own supplies …
4. So, maybe out of up to 120 expeditioners we could assume, maybe 30 would try their luck in ...