Campbell Island is situated 52 degrees South, about 1400 km South of Wellington, New Zealand. There are no regularly scheduled ship or aircraft services to the island. In fact, the original purpose of a weather station was superseded by an automated satellite weather service when Campbell was abandoned a few years ago. The problem was one of simple logistics. There is nothing on the island except abandoned buildings. We would be forced to take everything. Five tonnes of gear, 23,000 watts of generated power and enough antennas to put a signal everywhere in the world so that ZL9CI would be easy to work.

 The Campbell Island group is the eroded remains of an ancient shield volcano that is embedded in the continental crust. The volcano is 6 to 11 million years old and probably centered in the Dent Island, Northwest Bay area. Marine erosion has whittled away the western side of the volcano, and in the east, the sea has flooded a series of radiating valleys to form fiord like inlets. One of those inlets, Perseverance Harbour is where you enter the Island and anchor offshore at Tucker Cove. Tucker Cove, at the end of the harbour is under the shadow of Beeman Hill, the "plug" for the extinct volcano 187 metres high. Mt. Honey, the highest point on the island, is across the inlet to the South and rises to 569 metres. Mt. Lyall, on the North side of the harbour with it's rocky, castle like peaks at 420 metres, and dominates Tucker Cove.

 Campbell Island is a nature reserve. The flora and fauna are protected, and for good reason. During the middle 1800s, Campbell, McQuarrie, Auckland, Heard and other islands in the Southern ocean had huge populations of sea lions, elephant seals and whales. Most of these species were decimated by the whalers and sealers of the past. It's a fact, that in one year alone, one whaling company based in Australasia took 165,000 skins and 56 tons of seal and whale oil. It is hard to imagine how Perseverance Harbour, named after the ship that discovered it, looked a long time ago.

 I quote from NZ Geographic Magazine.

"The harshness of the weather dominated every aspect of men's lives. Down here one has to be accustomed to drab colourings, and the soul simply screams out for light and bright colours. There are a few exceptions on really fine days - blue sky, white clouds and green scrub, but for the most part we live in a world where all the colours are dull: gray seas and skies, brown peat, gray rocks and yellowish green tussock everywhere."

 Some interesting statistics are:

a) Annual rainfall of 1450 mm, with rain falling on an average of 325 days of the year.

b) Light snowfalls are common in winter and spring.

c) Winds are persistently from the west and hurricane gusts at times.

d) Gusts of 96 km (50 knots) occur on at least 100 days per year.

 The ZL9CI Site was located at Tucker Cove in Perseverance Harbour. The harbour is about 1 km wide and 4 km long. The site rises from the wharf to the ridge where we located the antenna fields. The weather can change from 8C and pleasant sunshine to a howling gale with 70 knot winds and horizontal driving rain within an hour. It is cold, wet, windswept, wild and strikingly beautiful. The rapid weather changes are quite remarkable as we found out on the third day there. The CW antenna site was situated south of the "Technical" building (the old meteorological office) which became the shack and the SSB antenna site was sited 100 metres north. Each antenna field was separated by about 200 metres. It was a magnificent sight to look at the line of nine big yagis, 80M/160M Battlecreek special, 80M Vertical and 40M Four Square array on the ridge when we were on the ship. The second morning we were there, Jun and Lee were on the ship looking at a giant rainbow over the ZL9CI site with black clouds behind. It would have made a classic photograph. Sadly, both had left their cameras on the island.