A former South
Crofty miner and local rugby player from Cornwall is set to take on a rather different
challenge after being accepted on an expedition to Bird Island, just south of
the Polar Front.
Simon Parrott,
who will be well known to many Coastline Housing customers locally for his work
as a surveyor with the social landlord, is swapping the relatively warm shores
of Cornwall for shores covered with seals, penguins and a host of other
wildlife.
He has been
granted a sabbatical from his work with Coastline to take part in a
construction project with a team of nine other people in one of the most remote
places on Earth.
While there,
Simon and team will be carrying out various modifications to the island’s
research station and adjoining buildings, as well as extending the nearby jetty
by around 7 metres, allowing bigger vessels to dock at the location.
This will all
be carried out amidst a backdrop of one of the
world’s richest wildlife sites. Bird Island is home to 50,000 breeding pairs of
penguins, 65,000 pairs of fur seals and several hundred thousand other birds
including a large Albatross population.
Simon
says: “It’s a massive undertaking in a really challenging environment. Just
preparing all the equipment for the journey out to the island is a huge
bio-security exercise in itself. In the history of the island, not even 800
people have set foot on it so it’s an incredible privilege to get to live and
work there for five months and witness the native wildlife.”
His
journey to the island in November will take several weeks in itself, and
involve passage on an RAF Globe Master plane to the Falkland Islands and then a
trip on British Antarctic Survey ship the RRS Ernest Shackleton. The island is
only accessible by ship and only when the weather windows required are
favourable, meaning that any trips home during Simon’s stay there are off the
cards.
He
explains: “I’ll miss my first grandson being born while I’m away but we do get
three phone calls home a week via the satellite phone so I’ll be able to keep
in touch with family that way and we will have some limited internet access.”
Simon,
who is a keen photographer in his spare time, will also be packing his camera
to record elements of the mission for family and colleagues back home. His
working life began at South Crofty when he was just 18 years old, and he spent
four years working in different roles at the mine. He came to Coastline
originally as a carpenter following a spell working in construction and, over
several years, worked his way up the ranks to the position of Senior
Neighbourhood Surveyor.
Allister
Young, Chief Executive of Coastline Housing, said: “We offer all our staff the
opportunity to apply for sabbaticals if and when an exciting opportunity comes
up in their personal lives, and this certainly counts as that. We’ve all been
quite astounded to hear about Simon’s forthcoming adventure and we can’t wait
to follow his progress during his time on Bird Island. We wish him every
success.”
Bird
Island lies off the north-west tip of South Georgia in the Southern Atlantic
Ocean, approximately 1000km south-east of the Falkland Islands. The Research
Station is an important centre for research into bird and seal biology and has
been active since 1957.
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