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Postcards From The Bottom Of The World

Gilda Flint
7 min readApr 13, 2021

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Port Lockroy — Wikipedia, Public Domain

A letterbox, a handful of intrepid staff and two thousand Gentoo penguins.

The Antarctic is a strange, otherworldly place: a desolate continent of ice, snow, rock and tussock, where glaciers ‘calve’, and the only sounds are the wind and the crackle of ‘bergy bits’ — the local name for small icebergs.

But even here, things are normal enough that you can post a letter, if you know where to go.

Inspired by the last time I followed the autofill yellow brick road, I’ve been making note of other intriguing queries that I stumble across in the course of my usual googling.

This time, some questing soul — hopefully not already standing on the ice with a handful of postcards, wants to know — Where can I find a postbox in Antarctica?

The answer is pretty straightforward, involves some rather punky-looking penguins, stalwart postal workers, and a dogleg to the Falkland Islands. What’s not to like? So where can you find a postbox in Antarctica?

There are many international bases in Antarctica, most with their own postal systems. For the visiting tourist, though, there’s only one place you can send postcards to your friends and family back home: the Penguin Post Office.

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Gilda Flint
Gilda Flint

Written by Gilda Flint

Finding my groove. Spreading my wings. Being inspired.

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