Acceptance speech of Dr Clare O'Leary
Please find below a copy of the speech of Dr Clare O'Leary in accepting a special award from Bandon Town Council on St Patrick's Day 2008.
It gives a great insight into the amazing feat that she accomplished. The very modest adventurer, who Bandon is proud to call her own has shown great determination, skill and effort to be part of a very successful team. The youth of today should learn from her fantastic example.
Good evening everybody, I feel really privileged to be honoured by the town of Bandon with this Civic reception and I would like to thank the Mayor, Mr John Desmond and his colleagues for putting on such a fabulous evening.
As most of you know, in early January I was one of a team of four to ski to the South Pole – becoming the first Irish team to achieve this feat. The team was led by expedition leader, Pat Falvey; Jon Bradshaw and Shaun Menzies were the two other team members.
Our Expedition – called the Beyond Endurance Antarctica Expedition – was borne of Pat’s vision to lead a team in Antarctica, honouring our Irish Polar heroes, including Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean, the McCarthy brothers, Patrick Keohane and Robert Forde. This was a major undertaking and preparations first began over 3 years ago. Polar adventure was a new challenge for us, requiring quite different skills and training to what we were used to in mountaineering. We spent several weeks in Norway cross country skiing and sled pulling; at home the training was less exciting, involving mainly tyre pulling – mainly on local tracks and trails! In August Pat, Shaun and I became the first Irish team to ski across Greenland and this was a great preparatory trip for Antarctica.
On November 01 we left Ireland, bound for South America; 10 days later we were on the ice, ready to start our 1,140km trek. It was daunting to think of what lay ahead; we were hammered with bad weather for the first couple of weeks – the unrelenting cold and the katabatic winds were harder to cope with than hauling the 90kg sleds. The reality of it all hit home when Pat got frostbite on his thumb in the first week. A minor error in such an unforgiving environment can have major consequences.
Antarctica is an amazing and spectacularly beautiful place, but it is also incredibly fickle. On a bad day it can be frightening, on a white out frustrating and on a perfect day it’s like heaven.
Over the following 58 days we had to deal with all sorts of conditions, each of us had good days and bad days, but the key was to keep moving, to keep focussed and to persevere. It wasn’t easy and, particularly towards the end when we were all exhausted and really having to work for every kilometre, one of the things that helped us all was the support we were getting from home.
We had very limited contact, but Niall in Pat’s office would relay on messages of support from well wishers and those good wishes were a real boost.
The interest, enthusiasm and passion the expedition has generated has been overwhelming; the expedition really captured people’s imagination and I consider myself lucky to have been a member of the team.
I would like to finish by thanking my parents, family and particularly the people of Bandon for your loyal support through all my expeditions, I’m delighted to see so many people here this evening, thank you for coming out to show your support. I hope you all have a great evening.
It gives a great insight into the amazing feat that she accomplished. The very modest adventurer, who Bandon is proud to call her own has shown great determination, skill and effort to be part of a very successful team. The youth of today should learn from her fantastic example.
Good evening everybody, I feel really privileged to be honoured by the town of Bandon with this Civic reception and I would like to thank the Mayor, Mr John Desmond and his colleagues for putting on such a fabulous evening.
As most of you know, in early January I was one of a team of four to ski to the South Pole – becoming the first Irish team to achieve this feat. The team was led by expedition leader, Pat Falvey; Jon Bradshaw and Shaun Menzies were the two other team members.
Our Expedition – called the Beyond Endurance Antarctica Expedition – was borne of Pat’s vision to lead a team in Antarctica, honouring our Irish Polar heroes, including Ernest Shackleton, Tom Crean, the McCarthy brothers, Patrick Keohane and Robert Forde. This was a major undertaking and preparations first began over 3 years ago. Polar adventure was a new challenge for us, requiring quite different skills and training to what we were used to in mountaineering. We spent several weeks in Norway cross country skiing and sled pulling; at home the training was less exciting, involving mainly tyre pulling – mainly on local tracks and trails! In August Pat, Shaun and I became the first Irish team to ski across Greenland and this was a great preparatory trip for Antarctica.
On November 01 we left Ireland, bound for South America; 10 days later we were on the ice, ready to start our 1,140km trek. It was daunting to think of what lay ahead; we were hammered with bad weather for the first couple of weeks – the unrelenting cold and the katabatic winds were harder to cope with than hauling the 90kg sleds. The reality of it all hit home when Pat got frostbite on his thumb in the first week. A minor error in such an unforgiving environment can have major consequences.
Antarctica is an amazing and spectacularly beautiful place, but it is also incredibly fickle. On a bad day it can be frightening, on a white out frustrating and on a perfect day it’s like heaven.
Over the following 58 days we had to deal with all sorts of conditions, each of us had good days and bad days, but the key was to keep moving, to keep focussed and to persevere. It wasn’t easy and, particularly towards the end when we were all exhausted and really having to work for every kilometre, one of the things that helped us all was the support we were getting from home.
We had very limited contact, but Niall in Pat’s office would relay on messages of support from well wishers and those good wishes were a real boost.
The interest, enthusiasm and passion the expedition has generated has been overwhelming; the expedition really captured people’s imagination and I consider myself lucky to have been a member of the team.
I would like to finish by thanking my parents, family and particularly the people of Bandon for your loyal support through all my expeditions, I’m delighted to see so many people here this evening, thank you for coming out to show your support. I hope you all have a great evening.
posted by visitbandon at
4/09/2008 08:13:00 p.m.
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