THE LIGHT SPRINKLING of snow you might have noticed over the past couple of days isn’t anything compared to what one Irishman could experience soon.
Anthony Galvin has applied to become a postmaster at Port Lockroy on Goudier Island, a tiny spec of land off the top of Antarctic.
He told The John Murray Show on RTÉ Radio 1 this morning that it’s hard to call where he could be staying ‘a settlement’ – it’s a wooden hut manned by four people during the summer months of the year.
As well as the post office, the UK Antarctic Hertigate Trust (UKAHT) takes applications for anyone wishing to run the shop, museum, and also for general maintenance.
“It’s a stopping off point for penguins, and for tourists on cruise ships, and nobody else really,” Galvin told the programme.
If he fends off competition from thousands of other applications, he will stay on the island for several months with no running water aside from what you can boil and melt yourself, electricity provided by a generator, temperatures unlikely to peep above zero, and no internet.
Galvin said the island is visited by as many as 18,000 tourists every year, who want a taste of the Antarctic without experiencing the more extreme conditions.
But why would you want to go there?
“For some reason I have always loved polar regions since childhood,” Galvin noted.
And, who wouldn’t want to go there? It’s one of the most extreme and isolated spots on the globe. It appeals to most of us in some way.
The Clare Herald reports that Galvin, living in Cork but originally from Ennis, works as an author, magician and children’s entertainer, and visits Lapland every December to work as a magician at a Santa village – something he hopes will help him stick out among the competition.
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