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Rod Ledingham
Rod Ledingham
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Rod was raised in Scotland and first worked in the Antarctic in 1966 as a meteorologist for the British Antarctic Survey. He overwintered in 1967 and 1968 at A...view moreRod Ledingham
Staff
Rod was raised in Scotland and first worked in the Antarctic in 1966 as a meteorologist for the British Antarctic Survey. He overwintered in 1967 and 1968 at Adelaide Island (near Rothera Base) and Fossil Bluff. Rod returned briefly to the UK and in 1970 moved to Australia, working as a geologist for seven years before once again returning to the subantarctic with his wife, Jeannie. They wintered twice on Macquarie Island (women were not allowed to the Antarctic from Australia until 1981), but they spent a summer at the site of Mawsons Australasian Antarctic Expedition Hut at Commonwealth Bay in 1978 by chance!
In 1980 Rod commenced work as field equipment and training officer with the Australians and remained there until 2003, equipping, training, and running expeditions and resupply ships to the Australian sector bases Casey, Davis, and Mawson and several summer bases. Over the years, Rod has assisted with work on elephant seals, fur seals, leopard seals, giant petrels, albatross, small petrels, penguins, surveying, geology, and geomorphology in the Antarctic and subantarctic. Rod began escorting tourist voyages in 1991 and has visited Antarctica most seasons since (mainly to the Ross Sea but also to the Peninsula) and has been on several partial circumnavigations and one complete circumnavigation of the continent.
He lives in Tasmania with his wife, Jeannie, who has been south on nine trips and his daughter Kate who made her first trip to the Ross Sea when she was five and has been on four more trips since then. They ran a family vineyard for twenty-three years. Rod assists with the zodiac training of Australian Antarctic staff and is a guide at Mawson’s Hut Replica Museum in Hobart. He has been to Antarctica on eighteen different ships over the last forty-nine years.view less