Four women are heading to the most southern post office in the world where they can sort mail and count penguins in Antarctica.
Clare Ballantyne, Lucy Bruzzone, Natalie Corbett and Mairi Hilton beat a record number of applicants in order to become the team who are responsible for managing the Port Lockroy site located on Goudier Island.
The staff members share a single bedroom with no private space and no flushing toilet. Instead, a camping toilet, which they say is merely a sturdy bucket, must be emptied daily.
There’s no internet access or cell phone reception, and satellite phone calls are costly. Staffers will have “very minimal communication with home,” according to the job advertisement that went viral earlier this year.
The team of four will travel 9,000 miles from the United Kingdom to reopen the bay for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, reported the BBC.
They will then spend five months there with newly wed Ms Corbett in charge of running the gift shop at the site’s museum. They were among 6,000 people who applied for the jobs despite the isolation and harsh conditions.
Speaking to the BBC, the 31-year-old from Hampshire revealed that she couldn’t resist the chance to spend time working on the island, adding that it was like a “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.
The women will share the island with a colony of gentoo penguins, which will be under the care of Ms Hilton.
Speaking about the trip, she said: “I’m a conservation biologist, so personally I can’t wait to see the penguins and other wildlife like seabirds and whales.”
She added: “This will be my first time in Antarctica and I’m very excited to set eyes on the white continent.
“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?”
The adventurous women will be joined for the first 10 weeks of the trip by 42-year-old Vicky Inglis, from Aberdeenshire, who worked as a UK Arctic Heritage Trust general assistant in 2019-20.
