By Owen Amos.
The news is from the BBC.
The images are from the same company.
An elephant pup is in front of a museum.
A British island, a ghost town, and a museum can be found on the icy, southern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
The island is difficult to work in. There is a four-day boat ride away from the nearest airport. The internet is poor to non-existent, fresh food is rare, and the wind is strong enough to tip over a helicopter.
South Georgia has no permanent residents from scientists to maintenance staff. The museum has reopened despite the remoteness.
It's difficult to run a museum at the end of the world. From week-long commute to imports of frozen cheese is how they do it.
When the South Georgia museum opens for the southern hemisphere summer, the staff must come from abroad. Around 8,000 miles north, most of the UK come from.
A two-hour stop in Cape Verde off the coast of Africa is what the journey usually begins with. The journey from the Falklands to the UK takes between four and six days.
Sarah Lurcock is the director of the South Georgia Heritage Trust. It does not always work out.
I was on the boat when it went off in pursuit of a suspected poacher. Three weeks before I got home, I missed a family holiday.
The images are from the same company.
The approach shows the centre of Grytviken. King Edward Point has accommodations along the shore.
The other way to get to South Georgia is via a cruise ship, which brings visitors to the museum.
Most of the 10,000 visitors to South Georgia are visiting the free-of-charge museum. The South Georgian government asked the museum team to leave in March 2020 after Covid-19 rushed across the world. There wasn't much time to pack.
Sarah says they couldn't remember if they left paint pots and ladders in the middle of the museum.
The 2020-21 season was canceled, and it was thought this season would be the same. They were given two weeks to find a team and get on a boat. The doors opened in December.
Normally, five or six staff spend the season at the museum, but this year it was three, plus an artist working on a project. One of them was the museum curator, who has recently returned to the UK.
She says it is addictive and infectious. The sights, sounds and smells are overwhelming.
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The church is more than 100 years old and still used for services.
As a child, she dreamed of going to the penguins. She graduated with a geology degree in 1992 but the jobs at the British Antarctic Survey were not open to women back then.
She became a museum curator and saw an advert to run the museum on the island. She says it was an exciting moment.
The first time she went, for six months, she took a huge stack of books, thinking the wilderness would give her time to improve her hobbies.
She says she considered becoming a yoga enthusiast. The reality is very different.
There is always so much to do on the island, from museum work to cooking and cleaning. When there is downtime, the teams hike, watch films, or engage in conversation.
Every person who works on the island has a skill set that is very different from their own. There is a lot to learn and talk about.
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
South Georgia is over 100 miles long and 20 miles wide.
They don't scroll through their phones all the time.
The internet is patchy at best and was first installed for a US university team. ibble in and out. Sending a picture to someone is rare. People who work on the island say being cut-off adds to the charm.
"Stepping away from the world has been a treat," she says.
Most of the food options are either canned, dried, or frozen.
"In normal life, I don't consider myself a big salad lover, but I crave it when away." You never get used to powdered milk when you're 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217
The craving for fresh food is supported by a review on TripAdvisor.
The Californian tourist wrote that some of the staff from the museum came on board to tell them about whaling. They couldn't get enough fruit for breakfast.
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Princess Anne opened the new post office on a royal visit.
Would you be willing to work in one of the most remote places in the world?
The museum is run by the South Georgia Heritage Trust, which has full-time staff, including Sarah and Jayne. Seasonal workers are recruited to send south and have an internship.
"We've had staff from Europe and Australia, it can be anywhere," says Sarah. They are often people with experience working in a small team.
There are two museum staff on the island. One is from the Falklands and the other is from the Scottish Highlands.
Most workers contact them, having heard of the island, visited it, or worked there already, so they don't need to advertise.
Sarah says they're looking for people who will muck in. You have to do a lot of things, from keeping the cemetery clean to pumping diesel into our fuel tank.
Workers need to be brave. Sarah says that they have breeding, aggressive fur seals on their doorstep. "If you have an alternative exit, you will go the other way, because you don't want to disturb them."
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
A South Georgian seal is calm.
South Georgia has been a British island since the 18th century, having been claimed by Captain James Cook.
The flag features a jack and the Queen is the head of state. The name of the ghost town where the museum is located gives a clue to the island's history.
The settlement was named by Swedish explorers in the early 20th century. The whaling station opened in 1904 to process the whales' meat, blubber, and bones.
In the next 60 years, more than 175,000 whales were killed in the waters of South Georgia alone. There were not enough whales to catch by the 1960s.
The jetties, oil tanks, and barracks are reminders of the whale rush of the 20th century. The villa was built in 1914.
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
After being harpooned with explosives, whales were dragged to processing stations. In 1912, the largest processed at Grytviken was more than 33 metres long.
The villa was suggested to be turned into a museum by David Wynn-Williams in 1989. Originally focused on whaling, the project opened in 1992 and was taken on by a different person.
South Georgia's museum may be the most remote in the world. There are two British bases in the world, one on the Antarctic peninsula and the other in the Pacific.
Standing on the South Georgia shore, taking in the ghost-town vista, you feel a long way from anywhere.
The escape from all the noise is refreshing. It soothed the soul.
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The buildings are used for blubber cookery, a meat plant, and workers' barracks.
The museum was not as busy as usual this season.
The government classes the ships as red, amber, or green. Passengers on green ships can visit as usual, but red ships can't. There is a person somewhere in between.
Less than 20% of ships have been green, and there are fewer ships to begin with. The number of visitors has been in the hundreds rather than the 10,000 that came before Covid.
The death of South Georgia's most famous son 100 years ago is a particular shame. After escaping from the icy grip of theAntarctic Circle, Sir Ernest Shackleton reached the island in 1916, but died on January 5, 1922.
Many tourists still toast his grave with a tot of whiskey. The museum's website is packed with pictures, maps, exhibitions, and stories and is reaching a global audience.
Sarah says that it's not just a museum for people who can't go to the island. We haven't had the resources to make it available to the world. While the museum was closed last year, we got to grips with it.
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
His wife insisted that he was buried in South Georgia after his remains were initially sent to South America. His body faces south in a nod to his life's work.
The website expansion is part of a plan to tell the story of South Georgia to the world.
Alison Neil, the chief executive of the heritage trust, says that South Georgia is a jewel in terms of wildlife.
It has the most seabirds on Earth. Populations of whales are recovering. Thanks to the work we did to eradicate rats and mice, native birds are recovering. The elephant seals are back to their pre-hunted numbers. This is a good news story, and it's to a large extent down to the fact that it's being looked after by the UK.
The three people pictured are: Alison Neil, Sarah Lurcock and Jayne Pierce.
powdered milk and frozen cheese may just be the fuel for the island and museum. Alison says that they both have something important to say about the world.
"We have an obligation to educate people about the stories of South Georgia's past, which was unsustainable in terms of how we dealt with nature," she says.
"If humanity can change its attitude and start protecting nature instead of exploiting it, then amazing things can happen." South Georgia is a good example of what can be done if people care about places.
Jeff Overs is a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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