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Extracts from a Diary
by Amelia Bourne-Phipps
-edited by Simon Barber-
  29 March, 1937 to 31 March, 1937


Pole Starlets
The diary of Amelia Bourne-Phipps, as edited by Simon Barber

(Being the twenty-third part of the adventures of Amelia Bourne-Phipps, currently on holiday
 from the Songmark Aeronautical Boarding School for Young Ladies on Spontoon.
She is heading out in March 1937 with her chums for a jolly time in the all-year winter sporting wonderland of Neue Suden Thule, German Antarctica.
Let’s hope she packed her woolly gloves this trip …)


Monday 29th March, 1937

Dear Diary; today has been a day on an aircraft like no other. Actually that is true twice over, as the Dornier X truly is an aircraft like no other I have ever flown in. Not the latest  or the fastest in Lufthansa service, but one of the most spacious aircraft flying – I recall reading that the prototype lifted off with a hundred passengers, five crew and three stowaways. The newer American DC3s as run on the Hawaii route may be sleeker and speedier, but they do not have an observation gallery, a proper kitchen or proper cabins (albeit cramped, but we are used to Songmark dorms. Here the beds are far more comfortable, though so is a pile of dry leaves.)

    Anyway, since leaving Spontoon yesterday we have flown steadily South, stopping at Hawaii and Brisingaland to refuel and pick up more passengers. The passengers are quite a mixed bunch but all look fit and keen, and for many of the more tropical residents it is their first skiing holiday. Some resorts worry about having warmer than average winters cutting down the skiing “season”, but in Antarctica that should not be a problem. Remembering our Aleutians trip I keep wondering if skis would have helped much; possibly not as the islands were rugged and the snow cover very uneven, and to be honest we did not travel very far across them as measured on the map – though in terms of effort expended it was quite enough of a struggle. Snowshoes might have been more use, and helped us avoid sinking in the muskeg swamps.

    On the DO-X one well thought out feature onboard is the stewards are ski professionals who have a compact workshop down by the cargo hold, where they can take their time on fitting skis and bindings to match the passengers who range from mice to bears of the largest size. Not that the aircraft actually carries a warehouse of skis, but all the measurements will be radioed ahead so everything will be ready by the time we arrive in New South Thule tomorrow. Only Maria of us four has skied before, and she says it should be good fun and grand exercise. “Strength through Joy”, indeed! Certainly nobody else of our year will be adding that to their list of skills right now, the last holiday we will have to worry about impressing our Tutors. This is our last holiday, in fact. Our other chums are heading off in all directions; by now Jasbir has sailed out with her sister Meera and pal Sophie D’Artagnan to Gull Island where she will be showing Sind Junior some fascinating Native traditions she has enjoyed herself on previous holidays. Nothing that one might not find on Spontoon, but I think the Sind sisters are probably wearing fur dye and leaving their respectable names behind them for the trip. Gull Island generally has a bad reputation but on her previous trip Sophie reported that a good time was had by all.

    Our “cabin” is a lightweight array of canvas screens that is no more than pleasantly warm at three thousand feet as we cross the equator, all very conscious that we will need the cold-weather outfits soon enough. After our strenuous Spring term at Songmark it is very nice to relax and be waited on – and Eva Schiller has arranged the free tickets via her Uncle, it being the end of the Summer season in the Southern Hemisphere and the resort being less crowded. So we are watching the Pacific unfold beneath us, chatting with the stewardesses and off-duty crew, and have even been outside suitably belayed to examine the engines in the company of the mechanics. A most bracing trip out on the Tropics, but not something we much fancy when we get nearer our destination. Meals are regular, light but tasty, with an emphasis on some unusual European vegetables (at least unusual in British cuisine; kohlrabi, celeriac and radish). Then, their Leader is renowned for being a vegetarian despite being canine.

    Actually, it is not much like the parodies suggest – there is little to distinguish this from any other airline we have been on. We have heard about giant aircraft in Starling’s Russia that have printing presses and cinemas onboard putting out the Party line in flight;  Molly had whispered yesterday that flying with the Reich we would probably all get a freshly printed copy of their Leader’s unreadable book for the journey, and if there was an in-flight film it would be “Attack of the Moon Bolsheviks.” Not so. Still, the brochures are rather over-cheerful in a rather pointed way – the glowingly healthy furs shown sporting in the snow are all definitely pedigree and of the pawfull of species that Eva says were the true inhabitants of the original Thule. Definitely no gorillas, tapirs, zebras or other exotics. She has mentioned that her countryfolk really objected to having such furs billeted on them by the French after the Great War, who used their colonial troops to help cheaply occupy the Rhineland.

    Remembering the last time we had any sort of luxury and being waited on was in Macao, Molly at least is glad that “room service” is of the strictly respectable kind. The stewardesses, though attentive, bear no relation to the three exceedingly willing maids who came with the room in Macao – by all accounts their Leader is red-hot against that sort of thing. Molly approves. Helen pointed out that he is a strict teetotaller too, which shut Molly up for awhile. There is white wine available on the menu but no mixed cocktail bar, which may or may not be significant.

    There are charts of Antarctica on the aircraft, showing the ski resort of Wotansberg and mentioning various exploration and scientific camps further inland. No mention of Professor Schiller’s archaeological works, but considering the Antarctic has never been officially inhabited according to any textbook we have read, that might not be surprising. Exactly what archaeology he has found (if any) – that is liable to be a surprise.

   
Tuesday 30th March, 1937

We are certainly heading South at a good rate of knots; last night we stopped at South Island, New Zealand to refuel before heading into the colder seas. Although we touched down at midnight, we had an hour to look around the docks and hear the last native English spoken for awhile, albeit in Colonial style. Of the four of us only Maria speaks German, and that not fluently. Still, in Neue Suden Thule according to the films as long as one can remember to shout “Schi heil!” at every opportunity (their Leader was a corporal in the Alpine Corps in the Great War) one is sure to blend in.

    There was also a guide to “fascinating advances of science” that I think could be controversial. The big idea in Germany these days is something they call the “Welteislehre” that I have heard of as being the inspiration of a Mr. Hans Horbiger. Seeing it presented as solid fact that most of the stars are really made out of ice is rather odd, even though by some coincidence the “discoverer” was no astronomer but an Austrian refrigeration engineer. Perhaps the idea is that someone whose career is in making ice should recognise it when he sees it. I know nowadays they have a great fondness for what they think are practical, common-sense theories (and nothing by Mr. Albert Beerstein on principle), but deducing the moon and stars must be ice because they shine so, is rather a stretch. Why not deduce on the same basis they are made of silver or platinum, which should stimulate high-altitude research and rocketry with the promise of profitable moon mining instead? It would make as much sense, as far as any of it does. Even the old idea of green cheese should be more promising economically than ice.

    Maria snorted, and opined that a Universe made of fire and ice is seen as theologically sound to the Reich in that it fits in well with all the Nordic mythology they have adopted without looking at too closely. Fitting reality to religion like a square peg in a round hole is hardly new – she confessed that the Church for centuries enforced the view of a flat world because according to the Bible, on Judgement day the Saviour would descend from Heaven and be seen simultaneously from “all the kingdoms of the Earth”, which is difficult to do on a globe. One of her ancestors on her Mother’s side was one of those Papal Bulls one reads about in history.

    There are certainly some odd things done in the name of religion. Last week I recall Beryl telling us of one of her school-chums who graduated from Saint T’s with top marks in Scripture and Handicrafts, being given a commission for a giant gilded religious statue by Archbishop Crowley himself. I believed it as much as anything Beryl tells me – until I saw in the airmailed newspaper the plans for the work, dedicated “To the eldest and most beautiful of all the Angels”. Even the inscription on the base was just as Beryl had mentioned – “We fall for Him, who Fell for Us.” Perhaps a little controversial, but as Jasbir often says, at least it is all in the same pantheon. Her religion has roughly 36 thousand deities and has been known to happily adopt anything else the Missionaries bring over, putting the icon or symbol on the wall next to all the other deities much to Missionary horror. Comprehensive Scripture lessons must be time-consuming in her home town, with that many deities to memorise. Every one of them has a history quite as involved as any Hollywood actress’s scandal-laden career, and they have so many more centuries for the plot to develop.

    By nightfall we saw our first iceberg, looking like a Modernist sculpture in search of an art gallery with a suitable dock. It was already getting chilly and the engineers wrapped up warmly to go “topsides” onto the wing and close the cowlings over the engines. The original Dornier X had cooling problems with the rear-facing engines, and even this model has to be adjusted as it crosses from the equator to the polar regions. There is another thing one cannot do in flight on a DC-3. It is a great comfort to know a mechanic can get out to fix the engines in flight. Safety is definitely first in aviation; nobody would be happy to book tickets on a charter to a firm with a name like “Hopefully Trans-Pacific Airways.”

(Later)  We have touched down on the water. The clock reads 3 in the morning and we have arrived at the Neue Schwabenland port where the transport switches from aircraft with water hulls to skis. Only the crew are quietly busy; the passengers are mostly still asleep while the baggage is carried off. This being a holiday flight, we get to sleep in till breakfast rather than troop out into the cold just because we have arrived. Very different from Songmark!

   
Wednesday 31st March, 1937

Well, here we are. We are in our room in the “Ice Palace”, with a fine view through the triple-glazed windows at the snowy scene outside. This morning we had a last breakfast aboard the DO-X as it rode at anchor- Helen passed on the breakfast, except to pocket some rolls and pickled herrings to snack on when she got to dry land. Actually she later wolfed them down hungrily when we were flying through turbulence with no trouble at all. It is strange, the way her seasickness works!

    The Neue Schwabenland port is at the end of a deep fjord with high sheltering cliffs and most impressive ice formations towering around. Almost everything is under cover, and folk are working at digging great tunnels in the solid rock to accommodate sheltered repair and docking facilities. Even though the surface is frozen hard, according to the brochures there are rivers under the glaciers that power hydro-electric works. It seemed a little odd that they use old-fashioned overshot water-wheels geared up to turn modern dynamos until I read that the water coming from under the ice is laden with rock fragments that would play havoc with any modern high-speed turbine. As long as the mix of water and grit can flow, an old waterwheel will keep turning. In terms of technology it would be like throwing grit and gravel into a racing engine though a horse and cart would hardly be affected.

    Our stay there was brief  as we trooped up from the docks into a white world, blinking in the brilliant sunshine. It was about a kilometre up to the airstrip, on the plateau above the fjord (I recall my friend Angelica’s favourite insult in school, that someone was so stupid they could not tell a fjord from a fjeld. One is the lake and the other the highland between them.) There was already an aircraft awaiting, a sturdy Junkers 52 tri-motor on skis that we are assured has an excellent safety record. As our guide explained, in a couple of years they plan to have four-engined airliners that can fly the land route all the way from New Zealand or Tierra del Fuego – though how they will get skis and wheels working together, will be something to see. There are plenty of “Amphibian” aircraft with water hulls and retractable wheels, but wheels and skis as a mix should be interesting.

    The Junkers 52 is certainly sturdy but tri-motors are rather going out of fashion. I know the Italians build a lot but that is mostly because until now they had difficulty getting sufficient power from two engines. Maria says her Uncle has taken her advice, gritted his teeth and paid to licence-build the latest German engines to go with the admittedly fine Italian airframes. He has brought in hard-nosed managers from Vostok to help with factory efficiency, and they have scrapped several hopeless projects before they wasted too much time and resources. So, no more Breda 88 “Lynx” fast attack aircraft, no matter how good it looked on paper – the design flaws were just too big and too numerous to fix. Italy has been very good at bold craftsman-built designs as the Schneider Races can testify, but translating that into reliable mass-produced service machines has until now been quite another story. Maria says the Vostokites are somewhat hated by her proud countryfurs but her Uncle has decreed they are to stay till the Italians can prove they can perform as efficiently or better. Quite an incentive, and one she admits was her idea. Her folk have the reputation of being hard to motivate, but where honour is concerned it is quite another story. As a by-product they might actually get to build some first-class aircraft, though Helen has her doubts.

    We had been chatting with our fellow tourists, several of whom had heard of Songmark. Considering there are scarcely sixty of us studying there at any one time, that used to surprise me till I discovered how many of its graduates then go off and become famous, or infamous.  Though only that one dorm of our first year to graduate actually went off to be Air Pirates, one expects Adventuresses to tread on a few famous paws and tails in the course of their careers. I fear that Kansas Smith might not be so untypical of the profession.

    Anyway, of the dozen furs that squeezed into the Ju 52 with us, we had been talking with Snorri Snorrisen, a large and very capable-looking polar bear who had joined the flight at Vanierge. It is a strange idea, a polar bear who has never seen ice before! Technically speaking the nearest ice to his homeland might be in the Andes, but they have no ski resorts there as far as I have ever heard. Snorri is named after his father, using the old Nordic traditions of not having a long-running family name. I suppose it is about the opposite tradition to that gentleman we ran into in the Aleutians, Mr. Beauregard Pennington the Fourth. I always thought that a rather conceited notion; royalty should rightly be the only furs with dynastic numbers after their names. Though in less well-run nations I suppose furs have to do the best they can.

    Snorri was looking out at the great white expanse of ice and snow with a very peculiar expression; he says it stirs something deep within him that he had never felt before. Not surprising, given his ancestry. One of the stewardesses, a grey vixen, beamed very approvingly and volunteered that her people are doing a lot of work on ancestral memories which carry wisdoms not available to furs who have mere cleverness and book learning. It was certainly a view to get excited about, as the aircraft climbed briskly in the cold, dense air away from the coast and headed into the interior.

    Antarctica! I believe we are the first Songmark students to set paw on the continent. This is a landmark to put in our reports, as surely our classmates have visited or come from most other nations and certainly every other continent. Molly pointed out that the next time a Songmark girl steps on a new continent it will have to be the steaming supertropical jungles of Venus or the ancient canal-side ruins of Mars. A fanciful notion, but I daresay she will be correct. There are no new continents to explore on Earth, unless those furs who keep expecting to find a big hole in the poles leading to an inner realm are right (personally I would rather trust Beryl with my bank balance).

    The tourist town of Wotansberg is quite a warren of tunnels behind a smoothed cliff looking rather like the side of an ocean liner with rows of sturdy portholes. All the guest rooms have windows – they do not open but it is somewhat bracing outside and in a storm one might lose valuable tourists that way. Our room is nicely furnished in rather Spartan style with big Continental eiderdowns on each bed, all locally sourced penguin down according to the labels, and well heated with “mains hot air” from vents.
 
    The “public” tunnels deeper into the rock are indeed like the gangways of a liner – on our arrival we were introduced to our local guides, Trudi and Anneka, a pair of very keen-looking wolves of about our age with long, braided head-fur. They speak English quite embarrassingly well – in fact rather better than Molly does. Our heights, weights and paw measurements were all awaiting us for our skis to be fitted – and tomorrow we head out!


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