After my first experiences with the pristine, ancient rocks in Greenland, geological field work in tropical northern Australia was a shock. The rocks were either completely overgrown with thorny vines or weathered to a deep red soil, or both. My first foray into the geology of northern Australia was in October – not the time …

Before moving to Greenland, I did not know that the word ‘winter’ could be made into a verb. I had never ‘winterized’ anything before. Well, actually, I still haven’t. But each year I help out a little when my husband winterizes our boat. Winterizing the boat involves emptying the fuel tank, pumping out the seawater …

There is always an element of slapstick when my son dons his bright orange dry suit. He wasn’t particularly keen on it when we first bought it, but after trying it out at home and discovering that he couldn’t get wet, it was difficult to extract him from the bath where he flapped about like …

The job advertisement all but leapt from the page. It was exactly what I’d been looking for all these years since we left Denmark and – with it – Greenland, where I had been working as a mapping geologist in the summers. The job was managing a research station on a remote island in Disko …