Written Sunday 31st January: Home Sweet Barracks

In case you were worried that I am spending my six months on Tern Island living in a sub-human, cockroach-infested shack with a bucket for a toilet, I thought I would describe our accommodation. The building we live in is affectionately known as The Barracks. Built by the coastguard in 1978, The Barracks were designed to house many more people than currently occupy them. The building is shaped like a square U, with each arm of the U being a long corridor and the bottom bit being an enormous, open-plan common room and kitchen area and a large food store room. Although The Barracks were no doubt once shiny and robust, years of exposure to wind, sun, salt spray and the action of termites have taken their toll, resulting in a somewhat dubious structural integrity. The roof leaks, the walls are cracked, the door frames are warped and occasionally a piece of the building simply falls off.


Tern Island Barracks.

The southernmost of the two corridors has 16 bedrooms and two bathrooms, and I therefore not only have my own room, but have comandeered two others, one for drying clothes and another as a kind of study. The northern corridor has fewer bedrooms but these are larger and en suite. These rooms are reserved for 'officer' class personnel only (ie. Pete) whilst the southern corridor is for the rest of us grunts.


The South Wing.


My quarters.


This mysterious sign is taped to the ceiling of my room. Can anyone tell me what it says?

The common room is gigantic, with not one but two pool tables, a ping-pong table, a fusball table, a huge TV, multiple sofas, a 14-seat dining table and Tern Island's enormous collection of books (600 odd). Like I said it's quite big. The kitchen is similarly well appointed with several fridges and freezers, toaster, microwave, coffee machine, gas cookers and so on. However, we do occasionally get a reminder that we are living in the wilderness, as the following photo demonstrates:




The common room.


The comfy area.


The eating zone.


The dishwashing region.

Contrary to what you might expect, we do not subsist on spam and backed beans. The store cupboard has a huge selection of dried and canned goods (including, but not limited to, spam) and we have freezers full of meat, fruit, veg, cheese, yoghurt, bread, and even ice cream. Everyone takes turns at cooking for everyone else, except on Sundays when everyone fends for themselves. To my great relief I have not managed to cook anything that was truly inedible yet (apart from a packet mix cheesecake which had been in the storeroom for several decades and apparently packet mix cheesecakes don't last that long). There was some initial confusion with the American weights and measures system- they measure all ingredients by volume rather than weight, and it took me a very long time indeed, for someone who has undergone such a protracted and expensive education, to figure out that one cup of water and one cup of flour do not weigh the same amount. This led to me producing a series of hilariously short cakes (about a quarter inch tall) though everyone kindly said, after they had stopped laughing, that they tasted OK.


Tern Island supermarket.




These old artillery cases now have a more peaceful purpose.


Preparing another delicious meal.

All of our freshwater comes from rain collected from the roof of the building and also from an area of concrete next to The Barracks which used to be a tennis court in the more decadent coastguard days. The water funnels down into an underground cistern and is pumped into five enormous cedarwood storage tanks, each capable of holding 12,000 gallons. This way enough water is collected during the winter to last through the drier summer. Before coming out of our taps the water passes through a ferocious array of filters, a wise precaution since the roof is liberally splattered with guano and the occasional bird carcass. First there is a sand filter, then two porous filters (25 micron and 5 micron), then a UV filter, then a charcoal filter, producing water that is drinkable but which tastes a little funky, so all drinking water is Brita filtered as well.


Three of the five water towers.


The sand filters, with the author for scale.

Washroom facilities in The Barracks are none too shabby either- we have sinks, flushable toilets, showers and even a washing machine. This is a desert island, however, so water is strictly rationed. Thus we only flush the flushable toilets when it is absolutely necessary, we only wash our clothes when they are so completely caked in dirt that they have lost all flexibility, and I personally, in the name of water conservation and for no other reason at all, like laziness for example, have reduced the number of showers I take to one per week. Perhaps it is a blessing for the other residents that I have my own room at the far end of a long corridor.

Electricity and hot water are both provided by solar panels on the roof, though we also have two diesel generators for pumping water into the tanks and in case of a sunlight shortage. Fortunately there has not been a shortage of sunlight since I have been here, and feel free to hate me for being a little smug about that.


The impressive solar array.


The solar panels have to be de-guanoed every week.


This albatross chose to nest under our washing line. It has never helped hang out the laundry though.


These black noddies like to use our picnic table for sunbathing.

As if the flushing toilets, suite of rooms, microwave oven and dysentry-free water were not enough, Tern Island also has its very own, very exclusive gym. This is found in the recently refurbished warehouse and consists of a room full of weight machines, punchbags and an exercise bike, all elderly and gently rusting in the salty atmosphere. Some of the equipment works fine but some of it is nothing short of terrifying. One weight machine in particular looks like at any moment the high tension cables holding it together might snap and decapitate you. This particular machine is called 'The Crossbow' after its striking resemblence to said weapon of death. I think more pieces of gym equipment should be named after medieval machines, and look forward to working out on 'The Rack', 'The Iron Maiden' and 'The Brodequin'.


The most exclusive gym in the world.

So, in short, for a field station Tern Island is nothing short of luxurious. But I should add, in case you thought I was getting a little too comfortable here, that it is infested with cockroaches.


This is where we keep the turtles.