To the end of the world

I am stumbling like a drunk, blinded by tiny missiles of sand, ice and snow driven horizontally into my face by a howling gale. One minute I'm blown backwards.

The next I'm leaping skyward in undignified panic as a foot narrowly misses the gaping gullet of an outraged elephant seal. Squinting painfully through torchlight, I've little hope of seeing these blubbery beasts. In the dark, they are indistinguishable from the thick kelp and rocks underfoot; only their satanic hisses and gurgling barks tell me when to jump. As I lose feeling in my fingers, numbed by sub-zero temperatures in defiance of two pairs of gloves, I ask myself: Is this what I sailed 1500km to the bottom of the world for?

Later, inside a cosy field hut, sporting a piratical makeshift patch over the sorest of my eyes, I have to admit that the answer is probably yes. This is, after all, the sub-Antarctic. Or to be precise, Macquarie Island: a sliver of land conjured abruptly from the vast watery wilderness of the Southern Ocean. The darkest, coldest months are generally the quietest time of year for human activity on Macquarie, but this year is different. A team of Australian and New Zealand scientists, pest eradication experts and hunters are attempting the seemingly impossible: to rid the entire island - every last inch of its 12,860ha - of all rabbits, rats and mice.

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French eat a lot of rabbits. Just get a load of em and throw them on the Island ( keep back a few polar Bears to eat the French when they've got rid of the rabbits )