Summer 2022-23 Conservation Season

To support the ongoing conservation of the Ross Island explorer bases, this summer the Trust will have a team of five on-Ice led by Collections Conservation Manager Lizzie Meek, including a heritage carpenter, two artefact conservators, and a building conservation support person.

The main focus of the work programme will be returning to the huts the artefacts conserved over winter 2022, and continuing work to stabilise the wooden storage boxes and associated corroding food cans on the south wall of Shackleton’s Nimrod hut at Cape Royds.

At Scott’s Terra Nova hut at Cape Evans work will focus on documenting and stabilising the objects revealed by the extreme thaw of last summer, as well as snow and ice mitigation around the building. Another major task this season is to rationalise Trust conservation equipment currently stored in workshop, lab and storage containers at Scott Base, as the amount of storage space available to the Trust on-Ice will be reduced for the duration of Antarctica New Zealand’s Scott Base rebuild programme.