Last night I saw a movie about an icebreaker ship, conveniently titled Icebreaker Ship. You know the ones; big clunky numbers, chopping through arctic ice as people go on expeditions and hunt whales and such, except in this movie the people were investigating a crashed alien ship in the arctic. It wasn’t all that realistic- for one thing, the aliens were these big tentacle monsters who didn’t seem like they could tie a pair of shoes, let alone construct a blinky-lights ship for intergalactic travel- but the ship was rendered pretty well.
I had my phone, natural curiosity mingled with boredom (it was a pretty predictable movie) and eventually I was on the web, looking up outboard motor servicing in Melbourne and all kinds of nautical matters. Weird, because I’ve never been interested in boats before. Maybe this movie wasn’t as bad as I thought, since I was so fascinated by the big icebreaker that I wanted to know more.
You probably won’t be too surprised to learn that Melbourne dockyards currently have no plans for icebreaker construction. I guess ice in the waters around Australia isn’t a big concern, although I tried to see if any drifted over from the South Pole. You know, Tasmania is pretty close to the South Pole, much closer than you’d expect somewhere supposedly ‘hot’ to be. No dice, however…ships in the Tasmania harbours seem to have very little trouble with being frozen over by massive sheets of ice. Here, outboard motor servicing and anchor winches are the main industries, so I guess I’ll have to travel to the frozen north if I want to see one of them in action.
Do I even like the cold? Eh, it’s not too bad…but the people on board this massive ship seemed pretty miserable, and not just because of the aliens. Maybe I’ll stick to somewhat-sunny Melbourne, anchor winches and all. I guess those can be exciting.
-Fred