Trending:

Four women to run world's most remote post office and count penguins in Antarctica

Four women have been selected from 6,000 candidates to run the world's most remote post office and count penguins in Antarctica.

TN Viral Desk

Updated Oct 5, 2022, 08:24 IST

Four women to run world's most remote post office and count penguins in Antarctica | Image: Twitter/@AntarcticaHT

Photo : Twitter

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

Clare Ballantyne, Mairi Hilton, Natalie Corbett and Lucy Bruzzone have been picked by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust charity to manage the historic site of Port Lockroy, on Goudier Island
The Port Lockroy site is visited by approximately 18,000 tourists annually in the Antarctic summer between November and March

Four women have been selected from 6,000 candidates to run the world's most remote post office and count penguins in Antarctica.

Clare Ballantyne, Mairi Hilton, Natalie Corbett and Lucy Bruzzone have been picked by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust charity to manage the historic site of Port Lockroy, on Goudier Island - with no electricity or flushing toilet, sleeping in bunk beds for five months.

Bruzzone, 40, from London, who has previously spent three months in Svalbard as chief scientist on an Arctic expedition, will be the base's leader. She called her new job as a "lifelong dream".

Hilton, 30, a conservation biologist from Scotland, will be in charge of monitoring the island’s colony of 1,500 gentoo penguins. "This will be my first time in Antarctica and I'm very excited to set eyes on the white continent," she was quoted as saying by The Guardian. "I have no idea what to expect when we get there: how cold it will be, will we have to dig our way through the snow to the post office?"

Ballantyne, 23, from Lincolnshire, who has just completed a master’s in earth science at Oxford University, will deal by hand with approximately 80,000 cards, which are mailed from Antarctica to over 100 countries. "I'm most looking forward to stepping on to Goudier Island and taking in the cacophony and pungent smell of the penguins, the backdrop of the glaciers and Fief mountains, and being able to call it home for the next few months," she said.

Corbett, a 31-year-old newlywed, will be in charge of running the gift shop in the oldest permanent British base on the Antarctic peninsula. She called the trip her "solo honeymoon". "Who wouldn't want to spend five months working on an island filled with penguins in one of the most remote places on the planet?" she said.

Vicky Inglis, 42, from Aberdeenshire, who has previously stayed on the island, will join for 10 weeks as a general assistant.

Candidates are required to have a good standard of physical fitness, environmental awareness and knowledge of minimum impact living. The trust usually receives hundreds of applications for the job. However, this year, it received a record high of over 6,000 applications.

The Port Lockroy site is visited by approximately 18,000 tourists annually in the Antarctic summer between November and March. However, it had no visitors in the last two years due to the pandemic.

Latest News