Product Description

An account of one couple's life on a remote island beyond the Polar Front, a tale to rival the exploits of the great nineteenth-century explorers. After twenty-five years of cruising the world's oceans, renowned blue-water sailors Pauline and Tim Carr found themselves being drawn to the lonely places of the higher latitudes to experience earth's last, scarcely touched regions. Antarctic Oasis records the culmination of those exploits. True adventurers, the Carrs have lived year-round on South Georgia for five years--its only civilian inhabitants--experiencing a way of life that has all but vanished from our modern world. A center of the Norwegian whaling industry in the last century, today a remnant of the far-flung British Empire, South Georgia is a splendid if forbidding land of towering, glacier-clad mountains and a treacherous, storm-torn coast punctuated by sheltered bays. During its brief polar summer, the island's verdant shoreline offers Antarctic wildlife a place to feed, mate, and rear their young. The only humans on the scene, the Carrs have learned intimate details about the lives of whales, penguins, seals, albatrosses, skuas, and many others. In all seasons the Carrs explore South Georgia's uncompromising coast aboard their yacht Curlew. Their deep fascination with the island, its wildlife, and its history will stir the spirit of adventure and discovery in us all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81150 in Books
• Published on: 1998-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Booklist
The first thing you notice about this handsome book is a surfeit of color. In the mind's eye, the Antarctic is a study in sterile white, but in the Carrs' spectacular photographs, the Antarctic island of South Georgia is brilliant with green and gold lichen and grasses, the bright orange markings of penguins, the tawny beauty of caribou, and spectacular skies. One hundred miles long and glacier-clad, South Georgia is the South Pole's oasis, home to 2.2 million fur seals, hundreds of thousands of penguins, the world's largest flock of wandering albatrosses, countless petrels, and two human beings, the Carrs, a couple famous for their sailing prowess and love of far-off lands. Their gorgeous and unexpected photographs, lively history of the island, and personable account of their lives onboard their 100-year-old yacht reignite our sense of wonder in nature and remind us that it is possible to live in the wilderness and do no harm. Donna Seaman

Soundings, December 1998
A magnificent book....[T]he pictures are the best I've seen in a cruising narrative.

Science News, 7 November 1998
Stunning photographs, accounts of the Carrs' experiences, and a survey of Antarctic natural history void the impression of a stark, lifeless place. Instead, the Carrs, the only two permanent inhabitants of the island of South Georgia for the past five years, reveal a land abounding with albatrosses, seals, and plush greenery during the summer months.

Customer Reviews

Antarctic Adventure
Over 20,000 people a year go to Antarctica and only 5400 people went to South Georgia last year. I am going in November and feel this is probably the one book for people to read if they are going there. Everyone I have talked to that has gone to the Antarctic Circle says that South Georgia is a must. Read this book before you book your cruise and if it is in your budget add South Georgia. It is one of the great ecosystems of the world so if you have done Africa and the Galapagos or other A list eco-tours this book will probably convince you to add South Georgia.

Travelling to such an unreachable land
It is a wonderful collection of pictures taken by Tim and Pauline Carr, during their long stay in the South Georgia Island. Such remote and unreachable place for normal people as I am, but to dream with.... a land where the human touch almost changed the landscape, but where the nature took over, after the last whalers left the island, with the rebirth of a new natural chain.

5 Stars for the Colour Photography. Next best to going there
Fitting tribute to the sometimes threatened wildlife on this island - South Georgia. Apart from the stunning bird photographs with those amazing snow-capped peaks, there is the effusive commentary, emphasizing the natural moods of the place, with journeys by boat, hiking, on skis, explorations made more meaningful with some of the scientists from their bases. In fact the Carr's are the only permanent residents here, so taken with the wildness of the place, and actually run the Whaling museum. Not the least of characters is the famed one hundred year old Falmouth (England, UK) built cutter with whom we can share it's history in the final chapter of the book. This is no ordinary boat, not for all that the Carr's have taken her through these last 25 years. First hearing of the Carr's exploits in John Ridgeway's 'Then we sailed away', somehow the dangers of their journeys, although not exactly glossed over, are not depicted as felt experience as in the Ridgeway work, feeling more like the safe narrative encountered in a childrens' version of a day at sea. The reader is not aware of the friction and general mayhem that is so well recounted by John. Also there is no sense of the 'burden of the possession of mind', lonely outposts bringing on philosophical musings than is done here, unless of course they were were always an idyllically matched and happy couple. It is not that sort of book, rather allowing the displacement of humanity as much as possible in order to bring out into greatest relief, the exorbitant wildlife.