John Long: Mountains of Madness

Allen and Unwin

$29.95

Review: Jack Leigh*

Having saved the whales, should we think about farming them? The planet's biggest creatures could become the cattle of the Antarctic, seals the sheep and penguins the poultry, says Australian scientist John Long in this book's final, visionary brainwave.

It makes a change from many other frozen novelties, including the author's nude dip in an ice hole, swimsuit dancing at Scott Base (where to touch a metal surface is to get zapped by static electricity), and drinks with ice at the seven bars in the US McMurdo Base.

Palaeontologist John Long, whose specialty is ancient fish, takes a numbing tour of Antarctic rock surfaces - and yes, he wears long johns - out in the "deep field" which is beyond a 200km radius of Scott Base. He is in a mainly Kiwi team of two women and two men who bring out 380kg of petrified fossils.

The book alternates esoteric scientific comment and description of deep-freeze conditions with the kind of high jinks and trivia-fixation which, you suppose, are a mental defence against the harsh environment.

Some will find the in-jokes, camp recipes and beguiling games less than gleeful. The text cries out for tighter editing.

On the other hand, it is a book to be trusted and valued for its factual data, for telling how people work and live in the sub-zero wilderness, and for its good humour.

Then, having run its course, it makes the last-gasp assertion that if the earth's ecosystem ever looks ready to fail, Antarctica could absorb millions as "a possible last resort for human habitation."

Large cities built on the polar plateau would be cheaper than pressurised cities under the sea or colonisation of the moon.

Antarctica could grow food in hydroponic biospheres, and "harvest" its wild winds and five months' summer sunshine for energy.

Long accepts that the idea of farming whales, seals and penguins for food might be "shocking to some ecologists and environmentalists," and he cannot yet foresee the need.

But the point should at least be made that "we must never overlook Antarctica's huge potential ... for humanity's survival."

Its prehistoric pageant of life including dinosaurs has left fossil links with other lands with which it once formed the super-continent of Gondwana, and to author Long it is now "a metaphor for the unblemished corner of humanity's soul" and needs to be preserved in pristine dignity.

The nearest this book comes to the "madness" of its title is the author's cathartic sobs on the day he twice escaped death, in crevasse and avalanche.

He says his tears, being frozen there, ensure that "a small part of my essence" will remain in Antarctica.

* Jack Leigh is an Auckland journalist.