Donald Bradshaw OBE - images from the Antarctic
Jun 4th, 2009 by Keith Chaloner
Donald Bradshaw OBE ARPS visited us on Tuesday 26th May and gave an illustrated talk with the title ‘Antarctic in search of the Emperors’ which, as the title suggests, focussed attention on penguins and Emperor penguins in particular. However, in a thoroughly entertaining and informative presentation he showed slides of all manner of wildlife from the soaring wandering albatross to the home life of a variety of seals. The main feature though was of course the Emperor penguin but even they were accompanied by a strong supporting cast of other penguins including Kings, Adele and Chinstrap.
Not for the faint hearted, these trips had involved sailing in a Russian icebreaker through ice, where it was good and effective, and through the Roaring Forties where its capabilities were less passenger-friendly. Icebreaker-based helicopters were also used to transport passengers to remoter spots and these had added their own unique excitement to the experience. (As an aside, I confess to a literary faux pas when I submitted this piece to the press in haste and ommitted ‘-based’ from ‘Icebreaker-based’. An ‘Icebreaker helicopter’ would surely have provided more excitement than most travellers could handle!).
This event had been keenly anticipated by club members who had enjoyed his earlier talk two years ago on polar bears at the other end of the earth and Donald did not disappoint on this occasion either.
Malcolm Bowditch
