New Field Camp for Oldest Site

A chance chat at a workshop between Trust Programme Manager Al Fastier and Queenstown adventurer Erik Bradshaw established a mutual interest in water tank huts.

Al was in the process of designing a remote field camp and Erik had built a prototype tank hut as an emergency backcountry ski hut.

From there, a desire was born to work together to design a ‘tank hut’ that would be suitable for the extreme Antarctic environment.

Erik worked with Al and the Trust’s structural engineer Win Clark to design the turks.  Each turk has a 10m2 floor area and the three structures form a living area, work shed and store room.

Based on this design Antarctica New Zealand then commissioned Erik to construct three huts, which Erik calls ‘turks’ – “not a hut, not a yurt not a tank, so it must be a turk”.