The weekend!

Saturday January 17th was sunny and beautiful.  Here's a view of the station from Telegraph Hill, just to the North of the station.  There are about three dozen people here for the summer, a few working off-station at any given time.  Later in the day we hiked to Hand Spike, on the West coast.

This sooty albatross was waiting for us at the top of the hill.

The pleurophyllym hookeri is in bloom.

Sunday was also beautiful (two days in a row of good weather are not a common occurrence on Macquarie.  We hiked down the East coast to the Nuggets (the large pointed rocks sticking out the ocean).

At the Nuggets there's a huge Royal penguin colony.  Here are a few of the little guys up close. The colony has many, many thousands of penguins.

Ian, decked out in his sunnies and beanie (a warm day on Macquarie is still brisk).

Lastly, a few King penguins enjoying the nice weather.