Barry Heywood joined the Falkland Island Dependencies Survey in 1961, and wintered at Base H on Signy Island in 1962 and 1963. In subsequent years he worked during summers on Signy Island and on Alexander Island flying out of Base T on the Argentine Islands. He worked summers on RRS John Biscoe between 1978 and 1986 as Chief Scientist on the Offshore Biological Programme. He was awarded the Polar Medal in 1967 and Clasp in 1986.
He has held the following senior posts within BAS: Head, Marine Life Sciences Division 1987, Deputy Director 1988 – 1994, and Director 1994 – 1997. While holding these posts he has spent many summers on all the extant BAS Bases, and in retirement attends as many Base reunions as possible.
A member of the BAS Club since its inception, he became President of the BAS Club in 2008.
Terry Allen joined the BAS Club Committee in 2001 and he has been Chairman of BAS Club since 2003.
He wintered as medical officer at Base T, Adelaide Island, in 1969, taking on the further roles of dentist and vet, as was the practice at the time. Parts of his research into the common cold were sadly aborted when his carefully-collected specimens were lobbed out of their dedicated freezer and replaced with meat which was subsequently enjoyed by all.
He met Julia on a Fid-orientated holiday in Southern Ireland in 1970, and they were married in 1971. Around that time they first attended the MB re-union in Wales. They have continued to attend and support the Marguerite Bay Group through to the present.
They participated in the “MB 2000” and “MB 2005” trips down south and also the somewhat-curtailed “MB Fids Go North” trip to Svalbard in 2009. Julia has the distinction of having a Fid brother (Ian Flavell Smith) and a brother-in-law (Mike Burns) in addition to a Fid husband.
Terry retired from his NHS consultant post in orthopaedic and hand surgery, North Derbyshire, in 1999, but continued in practice as an expert witness until 2012. He plays golf and bridge and is interested in old Lancia motor cars.
He is keen to support ongoing communications between Fids and the identification of those who are experiencing difficulties. One of his main concerns is the plight of some Fids as they get older, and how the help from family and social services can be augmented by the Fid community, perhaps with some assistance from the BAS Club Benevolent Fund.
He is keen to maintain cordial relations with BAS, and to work with BAS on projects of mutual benefit. He is also keen to extend and maintain such cordiality to Antarctic–based organizations, such as the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, ANARE and polar organizations around the world.
He looks forward to greater involvement in the running of the Club by distant members, as a result of improved global communications. Already there is one Committee member in Australia who attends by an internet connection and three other members in the UK, but a long way from Cambridge, who attend meetings using Skype.
Tony wintered at Halley Bay as a builder on the Halley 3 “Armco City”. He met his wife Janet 6 weeks before sailing South. On return to UK he rejoined his old company Bovis Construction until he took early retirement in 2009. During the intervening period Tony worked as Senior Project Manager on projects all over the world. Notably he spent a six year period in the 90’s on MoD Communications in the Falkland Islands.
Tony’s main hobbies are Clay shooting, maintaining and driving a very old Mazda MX 5 Eunos and he is heavily involved in local volunteer/charity work. He accepted the position as Club Secretary in 2011 and plays a main part in the areas of the web site and the Benevolent Fund.
Dog Holden took over from Dick Harbour as the Treasurer in 2016. Dog had been the Membership Secretary of the club until February 2015.
Dog Holden went south as a G.A. in 1973 and had an eventful first summer working with an appropriately-named geologist Fid, Phil Stone on South Georgia. He was badly bitten on the hand by a Furry and underwent an operation to repair the damage at a hospital in Mar del Plata. The local girls helped him to recover quickly. A winter at Stonington Island followed with the Gaels dog team towing him round the local glaciers and finally up Sodabread Slope for a summer on the plateau, supporting a big topographical survey traverse. This season of 1974/75 was the last time the dogs would be used as the main form of field transport on the Peninsula and many were put down. Stonington closed and Dog’s second winter was at Adelaide Island with a great sea-ice year enabling some wonderful fiord trips.
Signing on with BAS for a second tour, Dog was Base Commander of the new Rothera Base in 1977 with a huge building and fitting out work programme. There followed a summer in the Shackleton Mountains, supporting a geology party (alas with skidoos, not dogs) but then was marooned with two other Fids for the winter of 1978 at the Argentinian Army base, General Belgrano, 50ft down on the edge of the Filchner Ice Shelf, close to the old TAE Shackleton Base. Life since has been less eventful!
My name is Alexandra Gaffikin and I have been a member of the BAS Club since I returned from Antarctica in 2001.
My first trip to Antarctica was when I stayed at Halley V for the winters of 1999 and 2000. I worked as a meteorologist. I returned to Antarctica for the summer of 2001/2 to do a field season out of Rothera, running an ice nuclei chamber.
Since then I have attended some of the BAS reunions and AGMs and helped to organise the Halley 50th and Halley 60th reunions.
I am Head of Interpretation and Design at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, Australia. So I will have to ‘attend’ meetings by Skype or the equivalent but a lot of what the membership secretary does is digital so hopefully it won’t be too inconvenient.
I am passionate about Antarctica. I have helped out with the Antarctic Heritage Trust and I am a member of the Antarctic Club. I have also done exhibitions on Antarctica with the Natural History Museum and with the Australian National Maritime Museum. I am also a member of the ANARE club here in Australia.
Committee Member
Anne Todd
Anne has been a stalwart “co opted” member of the BAS Club Committee for quite a time! She serves as a very willing “Girl Friday” on the Committee and proves a font of knowledge with all things Fids and BAS related.
Anne joined the FID Scientific Bureau in 1952 and served BAS until her well earned retirement in 1987.
Anne manages to survive without the use of new fangled media and email and enjoys her retirement in Girton.
Paul Coslett joined BAS in 1966, having graduated in Civil Engineering at Imperial College, where one of his surveying lecturers was Alfred Stevenson of BGLE fame, who encouraged him to go South. Paul applied as a surveyor, but was offered the position of glaciologist at Halley Bay. Initially, as did all the other Fids, he worked on the building of “Grillage Village”, the local name given to Halley 2 and he then worked on the Brunt Ice Shelf and the surrounding Inland Ice for two seasons, mainly doing a level survey along a flowline.
After leaving BAS in 1971, he worked for the Kier Group of construction companies, as contract engineer, agent and buyer, mainly in the Plymouth area, but also in Iraq and Papua New Guinea. He retired in 2009, and has since been a committee member of the Devon and Cornwall Polar Society.
Ellie Stoneley took over her father’s membership of BAS when he died in 2008. Bob Stoneley went to the Antarctic shortly after graduating from Cambridge in 1951. He spent 18 months as the geologist for the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, carrying out geological surveys from Hope Bay.
For his efforts Bob received the Silver Polar Medal in 1953, awarded for ‘extreme human endeavour against the appaling weather and conditions that exist in the Antarctic’. He certainly left his mark in Antarctica and a headland guarding Whisky Bay on N. James Ross Island carries his name — ‘Stoneley Point’.
Ellie is widely travelled and has worked as far afield as China, California and as a volunteer in Madagascar. She has served on the committee since 2009 and works on website and Facebook pages for BAS Club. She has been known to attend meetings with her daughter, Hope, born in 2012. It is her ambition to have a whisky for her father at Stoneley Point one day.
I was asked by ‘Bunny’ Fuchs in 1958 when he lectured at Brighton on the TAE ‘have you ever thought of venturing to the Antarctic’. Nine years later, having graduated from Birmingham University in biochemistry and about to complete a higher degree in the NHS, I applied to join BAS as a physiologist. I wintered at Halley Bay in 1968 where base members were used as subjects to look at the effect of a low sucrose diet on glucose tolerance and dental plaque formation. The enticement to become a subject was an electric tooth brush – then a very novel means of tooth brushing! The work was written up and published on my return to the UK and I joined the staff of the Medical Research Council at Hampstead – then the BAS base for medical research programmes.
Rejoining the NHS as a clinical biochemist, I was involved with the organisation of research programmes for the base doctors for a number of years until this was taken over by Nelson Norman at Aberdeen.
Since retiring, I returned south with the MB 2005 trip and have also travelled to the Arctic in 2011 and have journeyed widely in Australia, New Zealand, India and Sri Lanka as well as camping and caravanning in Europe.
Outside interests, besides the Polar Regions, include mountain biking, long distance walking and digital photography and I am also chairman of a locomotive owning group on the Bluebell Railway.
1968-1971 Base F. 1971-73 Base T. 3 winters 69, 70, 72 as cook.
Lived and worked in Western Canada 1974-79 including a season at Resolute bay. 1988-94 6 summer season as cook at Z for the building crew. 1994-95 summer cook at Rothera. 2001-02 summer season cooking for Morrisons at SG and Signy.
Fuchs medal 1992 and Polar medal 92 (presented 95) BAS Club coordinator on the BAOHP (oral history) from 2010 to the present. Joint organiser of the Marguerite Bay reunion (with Jenny Dean) since 2010.
Allan has taken over the Benevolent Fund portfolio from Petra Searle.
Keith wintered at Halley 67/68 as Radar Tech. Started at Halley 1 and installed WFII at Halley II. Helped in moving the Met Office from Halley I to Halley II. Seconded from the RAF for this duty. Apprentice trained by the RAF in Radar and Communications which led him to be a Radar Tech at Halley.
After leaving the RAF in 1974 spent over 22 years in the oil industry living and working in Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, Sultanate of Oman with brief stints in Nigeria, Dubai and Kuwait. Obtained his first degree at the age of 50, a BA(Hons) in Business which never helped in finding work but gave great personal satisfaction.
Bev was Recorder for the BAS Club Committee from 2014-2018 and Web Editor from 2017. She has worked at BAS Cambridge in Information Services since 2013, taking on the role of Librarian in 2018. Bev visited Antarctica during the 2017-18 season, working as an Admin Assistant at Rothera.
Committee Member
John Blunn
John Blunn was elected to the committee at the 2015 AGM. John has wintered at Halley, Rothera and South Georgia as a Field Assistant and Base Commander.
Joined BAS 1989, worked in clothing store at BAS for the summer, before sailing south on John Biscoe to Rothera for two and a half years as Field GA. Worked Avery/Bruce Plateau, Rouen Mts., Traverse Mts. and Cape Berteaux.
Returned to BAS 1996 for two summers and a winter at Halley as Field GA. Expedition Liaison Officer on Bransfield sailing south. Worked Dronning Maud Land and The Shackleton Mts.
Returned to BAS in 2000 as wintering Base Commander of the new BAS base at KEP. South Georgia. Arrived during the construction of the base and the rapid handover from the military.
Left KEP Oct.2001 to take up permanent Base Commander post at Signy Is. Arrived to open base and then to manage the base during the demolition of Tonsberg House, the Plastic palace and the fuel tank.
Worked as BC at Cambridge summer 2002 before returning to manage Signy for a final Summer. Left BAS March 2003.
Recorder
Alysa Hulbert
Alysa fell in love with the poles after a two-month expedition to Spitsbergen in 2010. Her dream of working for BAS was realised in 2018 where she joined the BAS Archives Team working initially with the Biologist’s Records, before moving on to a project funded by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. She continues to work at BAS Cambridge within Information Services; across the Polar Data Centre, Library and Archives Service, and is very excited to be joining the RRS Discovery on a research cruise around South Georgia in early 2019.