Horizon

I keep having these vivid dreams at the moment...

about the ice shelf breaking up,

falling in crevasses and things like that.

I remember I dreamt the other week

that the pack ice was going out to sea

and there was water

and I was just on my own floating away and things like that.

So I call this place home, in a weird way.

I feel comfortable when I'm here.

This is Halley VI in Antarctica,

one of the most remote scientific research stations on the planet.

In October 2016,

the British Antarctic Survey invited me to document a world first -

their attempt to relocate the entire station

23km across a floating ice shelf

because it's at risk from a huge nearby crevasse.

Just getting to Halley was no simple task.

I joined some of the other team members

on the nearly 9,000 mile journey,

which took an entire week,

involving this enormous Russian cargo plane

and days of severe weather delays.

My name is Natalie Hewit and, as a film-maker,

I've travelled to some of the most remote parts of the world...

but none of that had prepared me

for my arrival on the white continent.

As we soared towards the endless ice,

I began to wonder what on earth I'd got myself into.

I had no film crew,

no backup team,

no way to escape -

just me and my camera.

I was planning to spend three months

living and filming amongst the team

who had been tasked with moving Halley

and as we arrived,

I wondered how this tiny community at the end of the world

would respond to being filmed by an outsider like me.

Halley VI is made up of eight interconnecting modules.

As well as science labs,

it contains living accommodation for up to 32 people,

a doctor's surgery, a canteen and even a gym.

Everything you need to keep humans alive

in one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

It turned out that this was going to be the first time

I'd slept in a bunk bed since I was a kid.

Scientists have lived and worked at Halley for over 60 years,

carrying out cutting edge research

into some of the world's most pressing problems.

It was from Halley that the hole in the ozone layer

was discovered back in 1985.

A breakthrough that led to sweeping changes

in world environmental policy.

But all of this needs to move

because Halley sits on an ice shelf which is threatening to break up,

potentially casting the station adrift on an iceberg.

Piece by piece, almost 1,000 tonnes must be taken apart

and towed 23km across the ice...

and the team have just three months during the southern summer

to complete the project, before the 24-hour darkness

and brutal storms of the Antarctic winter return.

We were some of the last to arrive at Halley

for the Antarctic summer season,

a short window in the year

where the sun doesn't set for over 100 days

and temperatures briefly rise

from the winter lows of minus 50 Centigrade.

By the time we got there,

work on decommissioning the station was already underway.

Hi, Natalie. Hello.

Get on, Bob!

Are you staying outside? Er, yeah.

When I first arrived,

I was surprised to find that

out of the 90 people on station this season,

only four were scientists

because, actually, most of the team,

like mechanical facilities engineer Tom Clements,

come south to help keep the station running.

Come in, come in. How did you get put in charge of this?

Well, I spent 18 months down here, wintered, absolutely loved it,

you know. Ready for the real world again

and then they offered me a position

managing the mechanical side of the Halley relocation project

and you'd be a fool to turn that down, I think, you know?

I love the place, I know it inside out,

I know all the systems like the back of my hand

and it's exciting and I enjoy it.

I enjoy it, I love it. I do love it here.

It doesn't feel like a job to me at the minute, it's just...

It's life.

Halley sits on the Brunt Ice Shelf,

a huge slab of ice up to 250 metres thick

that is slowly flowing off the Antarctic continent onto the sea

at a rate of 400 metres per year.

Cracks naturally appear in the ice during this process.

The reason Halley needs to move lies just 6km away -

a huge crevasse known as Chasm 1.

Using radar and a network of GPS stations,

glaciologist Jan De Rydt monitors

exactly how quickly Chasm 1 is growing.

The crevasse is actually there,

but there is a little layer of snow

at the surface that covers it up, basically.

Today, Jan is taking a closer look at the crack near the very tip.

Oh, what the hell?!

No way. Look at this!

It's huge! Jesus!

Do you remember we drove over it?

That was not too far from here.

Impressive. It's beautiful.

Are you going to film it as you approach?

Yeah. Is that OK? Yeah, it's absolutely fine.

Clip that onto you.

Nat, if you want to come in the middle of us...

That will be trouble!

OK. Just keep coming a little bit further

and you've got a big step then.

You got it?

Cool, isn't it? What are you thinking, Jan?

It's big. Yeah?

It's big, it's big.

It's much wider than I thought it would be.

Just from the surface, it's not obvious at all.

Like, if you see the surface there,

there's no sign of it

and then you poke around and you find this.

It's enormous. Knowing that this is 25km long...

that's incredible.

At its widest, the chasm measures over 2km across

and as it continues to grow, it will eventually cut Halley off

from the rest of the continent and leave it stranded on an iceberg.

So it is widening

quite rapidly.

It's widening about ten centimetres per day, which is that much.

That's a lot.

Is that quite fast?

Yeah, that's serious. Yeah.

That was brilliant.

That was actually quite beautiful to see.

We all have a certain affection for this chasm.

We look at it every month.

Mixed feelings, Jan. Yeah, it's so close to home.

With Halley's current site, otherwise known as Site VI,

at risk of being cut-off by the chasm,

a new location for the station has been chosen on the other side of it.

Lying 23km away across the ice,

Halley's new home has, perhaps unsurprisingly,

been titled Site VI A.

'Before the station can be taken apart,

'the first task is to build temporary accommodation

'so that we have somewhere to live whilst the move is underway.

'Farmer, as he's known to his friends,

'has just arrived as part of the plumbing team.'

So, Farmer... Yes?

Tell me, what has your first day at work been like?

It's a bit cold, but when you're working, you're warm.

Yeah.

You've been complaining about the cold all day. No, I have not.

You have, so you haven't done any work.

Is that true, Neil? It's 100% true.

You only said you'd got a little bit warm

about half an hour ago when the heating went on.

So, Neil, this has been Farmer's first day at work?

Yeah. You can tell. He's done... all, all day.

He's forgotten how to work, he's been on holidays for that long.

'Like me, for many of the team

'this is their first visit to Antarctica

'and, for some, the isolation can take a bit of getting used to.'

I miss Tinder. And how long have you been here?

Er, a week.

So no more Tinder for 13 weeks?

No Tinder for 13 weeks, yeah, until I get to South America.

And then what's going to happen? I'm going to go mental.

Once complete, our new home consists of

nothing more than shipping containers, some plywood

and a collection of tents...

and it's up to station support assistant Sam Shreeves

to help us settle in.

So we've just got to make sure everything is clean, ready,

set out nicely

so they come in and everyone feels at home, you know?

That's what we do.

We're the homemakers... slash legends.

Do you think it's an important job?

Yeah.

You know, we're the cogs in the big machine.

We're not the shiny outer plating.

We're not the thing people see and they go,

"Oh, wow, that's a Lamborghini." We're the small nuts inside.

If they took it out, it would all fall apart.

What made you want to come

and sort of do washing up and clean toilets?

Thank you for describing my job

in such brutally clear terms.

Um, I don't know.

I mean, I sort of wanted to come to the Antarctic.

Yeah, thought I could do it.

Tell a few jokes, wash a few plates, keep everything tidy,

occasionally drive a Ski-Doo. That's what we do.