The Penguin Post Office My Life

You ready?

-I'm Amy.

-And I'm Daisy.

And we're in the Antarctic.

This is a film we've made about lots and lots penguins...

..a very unusual post office...

..and our dad.

This is our dad.

He is a wildlife film-maker and he goes off for months at a time,

travelling all over the world making wildlife documentaries.

And it sounds like a really cool job, which it is,

but he misses quite a lot of special occasions,

and he misses our birthdays and stuff.

Last winter, he was away from home for five months, in Antarctica,

making a film about penguins.

He was going to be away from us over Christmas,

which would have been awful,

so we packed our bags and...

..we travelled all the way from here to...here

to join him at the coldest post office on Earth,

and this is what happened.

It takes us two days to fly with our mum from the UK

to the very tip of South America,

where we will meet our dad.

He's been away filming penguins for two months already.

He has sailed from Antarctica to pick us up

and it's great to see him again.

And this is our captain, Skip.

-Daisy.

-Daisy. And you must be Amy, then.

'Captain Skip is here with his crew

'and his two children, Luca and Lara.'

'We're going to be living on this tiny boat with them

'for the next few weeks.

'They've been on the boat before so they show us around.'

Is that the beds?

That's where you'll be sleeping.

It's a quite small.

'Other important things to see are the toilet,

'which doesn't have a normal flush...'

And pump this about 25 to 30 times.

'..and the snack cupboard, which has chocolate.'

We're sort of living on top of each other.

A lot of smells and a lot of, you know, that type of thing.

The only really, really strict rule is no farting at dinner.

And we're off! I start filming my dad.

Are you looking forward to going, Daisy, to the Antarctic?

Nod with the camera if yes or no if not!

THEY LAUGH

'Sometimes it's very strange being around my dad

'because he's normally away,

'but then you get really used to him being there

'and it's really cool him being there.'

It will be really interesting watching my dad make a film

because I've never seen anyone make a film before.

There is a five-day voyage ahead of us

to get to the Penguin Post Office -

and it's across one of the roughest oceans in the world -

the Drake Passage -

but we're off to a gentle start.

'To help make this film, we're going to be using a camera ourselves.

'So, first is a mini tour of the boat.'

We're going to go to the supermarket.

On the way, it's Skip's bunk. Lara sleeps up here.

Luca sleeps in here.

There's loads of stuff, like apples and oranges,

lemons and potatoes and onions.

By day three, we're further south into the Drake Passage,

and the weather and waves are worse.

The rocking of the boat makes moving around really difficult

and everyone is suffering from sea sickness - especially Amy.

The trip hasn't been great. I've been really sick.

I think I've been sick about seven times.

I just want the trip to be over with, really.

I'm cursing my father a bit.

I'm kind of wondering why we're kind of on this trip.

Right now I just want to be at home or in school or...

on land!

I feel like I'm going to throw up now.

After almost a week at sea,

we are all relieved to be in reach of land and feeling much better.

We are surrounded by icebergs, which are huge pieces of frozen water

that break off from glaciers and float on the sea.

The icebergs are all amazing.

They're just incredible colours, like blues and whites.

Patterns just look unreal.

This boat is built for cutting through ice,

but, still, after like seeing films like Titanic,

it makes me feel a little bit nervous

when we're going through this much ice.

Every time when we hit the ice, I think we're going to sink and die.

"Is there like a dent in the boat? Is there a dent?"

SCRAPING Aaargh!

We're heading to a small island at Port Lockroy,

which is about the size of three football pitches

and is home to an old British base - a post office and the penguins.

We can see Port Lockroy!

Port Lockroy is just over there!

Right, be careful.

So this is what Dad's been filming for the last two months.

There are penguins everywhere and they're not afraid of people,

so they don't run away,

but we can't touch them as they're wild animals,

even though they look so cute.

At the moment they're sitting on nests

and some of them might have eggs already.

We really want to see chicks,

but we don't know if they will hatch before we leave.

My Penguin Facts!

These gentoo penguins can swim at speeds of 20 miles an hour.

Penguins can drink sea water -

they have a special gland that means they sneeze out the salt.

There are no trees in Antarctica,

so the penguins make their nests out of stones.

All these penguins on this big rock,

they're on all their little nests, they're all kind of lying down.

They're all quite dozy, they're sunbathing in the sun.

'It's really weird walking on the snow this deep

'as it's so different to the ground we're used to at home.

'You kind of sink into snow.'

This is home for the penguins, though,

so they find walking across it easy.

They kind of walk with their arms like that.

It looks so cute.

The island used to be a scientific base

and that's why there are buildings here.

People were even here before penguins colonised the island.

Now the old base is a museum and a post office

that's run by four workers over the summer.

They get lots of tourists visiting who arrive on big cruise ships

and provide income for the upkeep of the base.

Dad's had to get back on with his main job of filming,

so we want to see what he's up to.

So, what are you filming at the moment?

Well, the penguin's looking after the egg that they're sitting on.

It's very difficult to actually see the egg

and that's a shot that we really want to try and get.

The thing about wildlife film-making

is that you've got to be really patient,

so you sit here for hours on end.

How long have you been here, then?

I've been here for a couple of hours now,

and absolutely nothing has happened.

Daddy, this penguin over here has got an egg.

Well spotted, Amy!

-Two eggs!

-I'm going to get it! I'm going to get it!

I'm going to get one!

PENGUIN CROAKS

This is fantastic, I've got a shot right in my viewfinder now

of the penguin and I can see its two eggs.

Ah, that's absolutely fantastic.

You're obviously really lucky charms

because I thought we could have been here for hours.

-Can I name one of the penguins?

-Yeah.

What perhaps you should do is wander around the colony a bit

and find a pair of penguins that you'd like to name

and I'll stay here and do some more filming.

All right.

I'm looking for a penguin

that reminds me of one of my friends back home.

My friend's called Naomi.

I think that one there should be Naomi the penguin.

I've got a lot of friends that have asked me,

"Ooh, can you name it after me?"

But the first person to ask me was someone called Conrad,

and Conrad is quite a... He's quite a funny character

and penguins are also quite funny characters.

So there's one over there that has particularly caught my eye.

So that one is now christened Conrad!

'Penguins all look the same so they're hard to tell apart

'but at least we know they stay on the same nests,

'so we will be able to come back and check up on them.'

It's the height of summer out here

but we're less than a week away from Christmas.

It will be the strangest one we've ever had,

but at least we will spend it with our dad.

Tinsel!

'We're staying on the boat

'because there isn't enough room in the huts for us,

'so we're making it as much like home as possible.'

I'm really excited about Christmas this year.

Obviously, having Christmas surrounded by snow and penguins

is going to be awesome.

'I've got my stocking here and I'm just about to put it up.'

Hopefully Santa will come.

I've been told that he normally does visit.

It's a little bit of a weird Christmas tree,

but I think it will have to make do

and it's got its own kind of character about it.

-ALL:

-Three! Two! One!

Light the tree! Whoa!

It's hard to imagine what life must have been like for the scientists

stuck out here 50 years ago,

so we are going to have a look around the museum to get an idea.

This is an old scientific base preserved as it was

half a century ago, with all the original scientific equipment

used to research weather and the atmosphere.

This is an anemometer.

It measures wind speed in knots.

That was 10 knots.

11 knots. SHE GIGGLES

'These are all the original clothes the scientists wore

'to keep warm when they were based here all year round.'

It smells disgusting!

It's so your style.

And there are even 50-year-old food tins.

Some of the tins in here remind me of home.

Some of the brand names are the same.

It was a hard life 50 years ago

and a lot of things are easier now,

but some things are more or less the same as they were then.

'Dad's job means he's used to living in remote places,

'but we're still getting the hang of it.

'Here there is no mains water

'and you can't drink the sea water as it's salty,

'so if you want a cup of tea or a shower,

'you really have to work for it.'

We're all collecting ice suitable for drinking water.

The ice needs to be quite clear.

This one's a bit green.

Yeah, we can chuck it away.

What we'll do with what's in here, once it's melted,

we'll boil it so it's safe -

but this one's, as you say, it's a bit green, it's a bit dirty.

So shall we throw it away?

Dad's still filming, but back at the boat there's more work to be done.

PENGUINS CROAK

Amy and Lara, I need some help!

'There's no escaping the daily chores.'

OK, I need the onions,

I've got to start the soup, or lunch is going to be really, really late.

-Are you ready?

-Yeah...

'Everything here is a lot more effort than at home.

'It's more basic too, so Mum makes us help more.'

Amy, isn't it your turn to do the washing up?

-No.

-Yes!

No!

-Yes!

-GIGGLING: No!

-Washing up.

-I'm fine.

-It's your turn.

I'm fine.

'I've managed to escape and I'm back with Dad and Naomi.'

Hey, look, Naomi's got two eggs, Dad.

I know you've come just as she's showing two lovely eggs.

Dad's got a super-zoom lens on his camera so we can see them close up.

More of my penguin facts.

Gentoo penguins lay two eggs

with extra-hard shells

to protect them against the rocky nests.

Mum and Dad take it in turns

to look after the eggs

so they can each go fishing.

The eggs take about a month to hatch.

I'm really looking forward to Naomi's eggs hatching.

I think it will be really cute.

I know, that's going to be amazing.

I've grabbed the camera again to film some penguins for myself

and Mum's giving me a hand recording sound.

I'd love to have a go on Dad's big camera one day.

This penguin is called Jack,

and that's because he lives under the Union Jack.

Conrad is part of the colony here round by the boat shed.

As you can see, it's got old ruins from boats,

but the penguins really like making their nests here

because it's really sheltered.

Finally, the big day is here

and we're going to be all together as a family.

It's Christmas and I'm really excited!

You know, it's classic Christmas, really, isn't it?

At home you have fake snow and fake penguins -

fake this, fake that.

But here, you know, you have the real thing -

you actually have real snow and real penguins.

Father Christmas did make it all the way down here.

I think it's because of our sign we made.

Yeah, I got quite a few presents from him.

Dad has taken the day off from filming,

but is now bossing us around in the kitchen!

Daisy, Amy, Lara and Luca, can you lay up the table, please?

There's bound to be an argument about something

on normal Christmas day, let alone when you're all

ridiculously close to each other.

Can you actually help your mum and get the potatoes on the table?

Stop fiddling with the table decorations.

I'm sorry.

We've all got a bit of cabin fever,

but we're doing all right, I think.

Is that enough lamb for you?

'Christmas lunch was amazing.'

We had lamb instead of turkey.

Not as much veg, which is good.

I think I had one carrot.

I think that's the only veg I've had today.

Happy Christmas!

'It's been so good to spend

'the whole of Christmas Day with Dad here in Antarctica.'

-ALL:

-Three! Two! One!

'It's been very different from normal but an unforgettable day.'

Winner!

Here you go.

Boxing Day is like any other day on the island

and a cruise ship has come in.

Right now we're not on the island

because the island has been invaded by aliens!

Well, tourists, but...

They've come in to look at the post office and the penguins.

The tourists only get about an hour on the island

so we keep out of their way.

But they spend an awful lot of money in the Penguin Post Office -

over £1,000 each sometimes.

We're over halfway through our trip and, as the days go by,

Dad carries on filming whilst we wait for the eggs to hatch.

To keep us entertained, Amy has started telling terrible jokes.

Why did the penguin go to the theatre?

-ALL:

-I don't know, why did the penguin go to the theatre?

Because he wanted to get into snow business!

LAUGHTER

What do penguins wear to the beach?

What do penguins wear to the beach?

Beak-inis!

A few days later, I ask if we can work in the Penguin Post Office,

so we're not stuck on the yacht when the next cruise ship comes in.

'We're given a quick lesson in how to run the shop.'

I'm shown where all the gifts and goodies are.

'And I find out about the stamps and money.

'I hope we're ready for the big arrival.'

The boat's just come in.

Apparently they're all English speakers,

but it's still quite nerve-racking, I've never really...

Well, I don't think I've ever worked in a shop before,

especially not one in Antarctica.

I'm scared that I'll mess up or do something wrong

and then I'll get really embarrassed.

Are these the children's books?

Yes, we've got children's books.

Yeah, I'm really happy that we've got a sale.

I'm feeling quite proud!

Yay!

How many stamps do you want?

Just two, I think.

It's the first time I've ever really worked anywhere

'and it's been really tough.

'I had to look at what the customer wanted to buy

'then add it all up on the calculator.'

That'll be 265, please.

And then if they wanted to pay in pounds or euros,

then I had to transfer it into pounds and euros.

Then I had to put it all in a bag, give it to them.

If they had change, give them the change and say thank you.

Aargh!

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

'We've been living on this small boat with Skip's family

'for a couple of weeks now and we are spending a lot of time together,

'preparing meals, washing up and even just hanging out.

'We do get on well, but it's not always easy.

It's really odd because I don't even see my friends as much

as I'm seeing this family,

and sometimes it's really claustrophobic

and you just want some peace and quiet.

Every family's got their own view of how things should be done

and it's simple things like what happens at meal times,

who does what, how everything works.

Both families have to compromise, just making sure that,

you know, you're not causing too many problems for each other.

Come on, someone get the lid on this.

'It's an exciting day for me as Dad is teaching me

'how to use his professional camera.'

So we're on quite a long lens at the moment,

so that makes focusing more difficult.

The longer the lens, the more critical the focus is.

I've been using the one we're filming on

and that's a lot of fun, but this is a pretty cool camera.

Obviously, there's a lot to learn

but just learning how to, you know...

Focusing and zooming, recording all, like, the key bits.

It's just really fascinating.

Conrad spends all his time lying on eggs.

I really hope we get to see them hatch before we leave.

For now, Dad's set us another challenge,

but how come I'm the only one going for it today?

OK, the tradition of the polar plunge is you just...

Well, in the Arctic or the Antarctic, you just jump in.

'The water here is three degrees centigrade -

'it's colder than our fridge at home.'

I'm trying not to think about it.

'I've got a small camera on my head so you can see just what I see

'as I hit the water.'

-That's definitely recording, is it?

-I think it's recording.

'Skip's tying a rope around me

'in case I get cold shock and drift away.'

I'm a bit nervous now. I'm a bit nervous.

I'm really nervous!

No, I don't want to. It's going to be so cold!

It's really cold, it's really cold, it's really cold.

Come on, come on, you can do this. You really can.

No, no, I really can't do this. I really can't do this.

-It's so cold.

-Go.

Look, Skip, shut up.

If it's going to be really cold, though, what if I die?

You won't die.

-No, I might actually die.

-Well, I'll come to your funeral.

OK, OK, OK. OK, OK.

I just need to do it.

Three...

two...

one...

zero...

OK. Sorry, I am going to go on the next one!

Three...

two...

one...

Three...two...

one.

At first it was weird.

For the first, like, second, you don't realise how cold it is.

Something just hits you and then you realise how cold it is,

and then you are kind of swimming to the top,

swimming, swimming, swimming.

SHE GROANS

SHE SCREAMS

'I couldn't speak I was so cold.

'Like, I was just going...'

SHE GRUMBLES

-SHE SCREAMS

-So cold!

It's so cold.

I don't think I've ever experienced being that cold.

Yeah, it was a really weird experience.

I think the challenge has definitely now been set for the others.

We've all kind of talked about maybe doing it,

but I think it's kind of like game on for Lara and Amy.

I think I might do the polar plunge,

but on a day which is nice and sunny and calm.

And we have had one or two of those days,

but I still haven't done it!

'The next day, Dad's back filming Naomi

'and I start to wonder how he keeps filming for so long.'

Is it boring just standing here?

Um, at times it can be boring, I have to be honest.

But when you're concentrating on trying to get a shot,

actually, time goes really quickly.

Of course we don't know when Naomi's chicks are going to hatch,

but it could be any day now.

That would be cool.

Probably have to just stay here for another three hours.

Are you going to stay and keep me company?

I think I'll do something else.

All right, then, doll.

Perfect.

Dad isn't just in the Antarctic to film penguins,

he also has to film seals.

We haven't seen many around Port Lockroy,

so we're heading south for a few days to look for them.

My dad's just over there and he's filming us right now.

It's a chance for us to take some pictures of seals too.

Just on the iceberg just back there we saw two crabeater seals.

It was really cool how close we were able to get to them,

so hopefully we're got some good photos of seals.

It was great to see Dad filming something other than penguins,

but we're back at Port Lockroy now and guess what?

Chicks are hatching all over the island!

(A baby chick has just hatched.

(Actually, I can see it right now.)

The little grey, furry little chick underneath it

and it's just cheeping and cheeping and cheeping.

'It's come out of its egg and it's really amazing to be looking at it.'

PENGUIN CHEEPS

(I am so excited right now.)

The chick was quite ugly.

It just looked a bit scrawny and it was still in its egg,

but it was really cute as well.

My baby penguin facts.

When they first hatch,

they are the size of a tiny hamster.

Their feathers are downy and not waterproof,

so they can't swim until they're older.

Parents feed the chicks

by sicking up their own food.

Bleurgh!

Right now, we're in front of Naomi

and her two eggs are now little chicks.

And they're really cute and really, really adorable.

How is your penguin doing, Daisy?

Conrad seems to be a pretty boring penguin.

Makes a bit of noise every now and again - just like the real Conrad.

I'm hoping to see some chicks quite soon.

But at the moment, nothing's been happening.

With wildlife film-making,

you can't always record the sound and film something at the same time.

So, before we leave, Dad has asked us

to look back over stuff he's already filmed

where the sound is missing and then record the right sound

to match these bits ourselves.

Daisy's got the microphone.

I've got the recorder and I can hear chicks, like, tweeting.

'And we're going to record them.

'This is what they sound like close up.'

CHICKS CHEEP

OK, I'm going to do it this time. I will.

Our time here is drawing to an end,

and this is Amy and Lara's last chance

if they really want to do the polar plunge.

'I can't wait to see how cold Amy gets!'

I can talk! I can talk!

THEY SCREAM

It's not that cold, actually.

I'm not that cold.

How did they not find it cold?

I'm fine.

I was, like, panicking.

I couldn't speak, I was so cold.

Yeah, it's fine.

It wasn't cold.

Ooh, thank you.

I feel a bit gutted, to be honest.

It wasn't that cold. I could do it tomorrow.

I think I'm just going to do it once.

Can't believe it's the end of our trip.

'It was really cool to see what Dad does for a job when he's away.

'Now he has to concentrate on finishing his film

'and we've got to get back to school.

'I'm really going to miss him... and Conrad.'

'And Naomi!'

I am looking forward to going home to have my own bedroom,

a nice shower...

A flushing toilet, dishwashers.

-And washing machines.

-Duvet.

-Hmm.

Being on a boat has definitely made me realise

what is and what isn't important.

So you have to just let things go that might normally have, you know,

ticked you off a bit.

I mean, even with Mum and Dad, like, I mean, you know,

you see your mum every day,

but, I mean, how long do you actually spend with her?

But on a boat, you spend hours and hours

constantly seeing, speaking, doing something together,

and I've had to learn how to deal with doing that,

and I have become a lot more patient

and I think I'll definitely take that away with me.

Bye! Love you!

Bye!

After we left, Dad carried on filming for another two months

before coming home.

During that time, he filmed the chicks growing up

and entering the water.

We had the most amazing experience in the Antarctic.

This time with Dad made me want to do more stuff with cameras.

And I'll appreciate him more when he's at home.