My map of Kerguelen has arrived, and I am more delighted than I can say. Measuring 6ft by 5ft and composed of three separate charts integrated into one, it has been assembled by my brother Roger. The charts, ordered from a geographical institute in Paris, took months to come. Roger has mounted them with care and precision on a wooden backing, faced with 60mm glass and framed in oak so the thing weighs more than a man. On the wall of my flat in London the weight is taken by a horizontal baton screwed into the brick. This map, every detail, transfixes me. I go up close to study an isthmus, a marsh or a snowfield then stand back and stare in blank wonder at the whole island. I am under its spell.
I always have been. Did you ever, as a child, pore over those great world atlases, in Mercator's projection, with Baffin Island very big and all the British bits in red? I spent a boyhood doing so. What fascinated me were places that looked remote.
Chief among these was an archipelago of islands which (my Britannica said) were the land most remote from any continent in the world. The archipelago lies in the south Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles east-south-east of the Cape of Good Hope, and even further west-south-west of Western Australia. More than 1,000 miles north of Antarctica, Kerguelen is more than 4,000 miles south of India. Situated at 49 deg South (England is about the same latitude in the north) the archipelago belongs to France. It is the main island that is called Kerguelen, or Desolation Island. What intrigued me as a child was how big Kerguelen is. Some 90 miles from tip to tip, a 2,800 square mile spidery tangle of fiords and peninsulas. It seemed mysterious that a substantial island at an apparently temperate latitude was never mentioned in geography lessons. No teacher could tell me about it. Few even recognised the name. So the place took on a tremendous allure: a secret island that I could almost discover. At its other name, "Desolation", my eyes widened. The idea grew fanciful of course that someone was trying to hide the existence of this place. I felt drawn there.
Childish researches established that Kerguelen was first sighted in 1772 by Joseph de Kerguelen Tremarec, a Breton noble. Captain Cook visited in the Challenger four years later and explored. Later came sealing and whaling stations, now abandoned, along with ships' cats, which have reputedly gone feral and tiptoe through the snow, stalking birds. A group of French scientists apparently inhabits the main settlement, Port au France. But I cannot establish that any human being has ever been born on Kerguelen. The climate is not, it turns out, temperate. The winters are bitter, the summers cool. The islands are the windiest place in the world. The gale almost never abates, buffeting Kerguelen in perpetual violent squalls. Of trees, only fossils remain; the native Kerguelen cabbage has been ravaged by rabbits (introduced); the islands are so windy that insects have lost their wings and plants have evolved to pollenate by wind.
Mountains rise to some 6,000 ft. And (speculates an encyclopaedia) there may be hot springs and volcanoes. The archipelago is cut by fantastic fiords. "The scenery is generally magnificent . . . glaciers descend east and west to the sea. The whole island abounds in freshwater lakes and pools. Hidden deep mudholes are common."
I doubt whether there is any way of reaching Kerguelen by air. It seems one or two ships anchor there, but never stay. So one might have to go for six months or more.
I long to. But first I must find out more. Joseph Kerguelen himself described the island, and Captain Cook has an account, which I have yet to find, in his narrative of the Challenger voyage. Another account was written in 1893, in French, and a friend in France has sent me a modern French journal which I am struggling to read. Somewhat introspective, with imaginative interludes much in the French manner, it nevertheless seems likely to provide useful information.
Everyone should make a new year's resolution. Mine is to start making serious plans to reach Kerguelen. One way would be to get together a properly funded expedition, which would have to be photographic. I cannot see anyone being so interested in printing or screening an account of the islands, however, as to stump up the money. An alternative would be to hang around in Mauritius for a year or so until someone else was setting sail there. Time-consuming.
I am also worried about frostbite. Even in Derbyshire I suffer dreadfully from frozen fingers, feet and ears; what will it be like in a 200mph west wind? Such speculations fill my mind.
A letter last week on the page opposite was good enough to remind the Editor that columnists such as me pay for holidays by writing about them. Correspondent, I spit in your eye. Sneak. Modern-day Ferdinands and Isabellas, do get in touch. I await your call. Standing where I shall so often stand again this year, staring at my wonderful map of Kerguelen.
