Speaker 1:

In the glaring sun of an Arctic night, Jason Roberts is heading home.

He's Australian by nationality, a stock broker by trade, and an Arctic filmmaker by choice.

Nine years ago, he swapped a London trading floor for life in one of the harshest places on earth.

Jason Roberts:

It's very hard to put into words what this place means to me. Very pristine and not many people, which is nice, there's not many places left on the globe that are so, so underpopulated as here.

Some of the recent polar bear films we've done, I've spent nearly two years in the field. It's a bit of an adventure all the time, spending all day, this is what I see every day when we're out and especially when the weather's like this, another day in the office.

Speaker 1:

His home and office is [Spitzbergen], an island on the edge of the polar ice cap in the [Svalbard] archipelago.

(singing)

Jason Roberts:

Could be some [inaudible] chestnut. Randy, can we have pump number input [inaudible]. Okay, yeah. [inaudible].

Speaker 1:

With little more than fuel cans, a snowmobile, food, and film, Jason has explored almost every part of it, working as a guide- [crosstalk]

And consultant for international wildlife films-

Jason Roberts:

And [Antillia] to Franz Josef line.

I say for locals who drive quite hard and fast, 10 minutes' driving is about a day's walking. So you can work that out after a day's travelling how long it would take you to walk home. Okay. Let's head off to [Longbille].

Speaker 1:

The main settlement here, Longbille, boasts it is the most northerly modern town in the world. It is a bizarre mixture of frontier living and designer shopping. A place that sells polar bear skins alongside the latest in animal friendly goods.

Yet this is a geographic location where people couldn't normally survive, let alone shop. It is so deep inside the Arctic that for four months of the year there is never ending daylight. For another four months, there is endless darkness.

Winter temperatures can hover around minus 30, with wind chill that can take it to minus 70. Getting around here means covering every centimetre with high insulation [inaudible].

Jason Roberts:

It's mostly the adventure, I guess. You never seem to run out of things to keep yourself amused with, as long as you're not crazy about the opera, which we have a pretty bad chance of doing here. The, you say outdoor activities are quite amazing. You're, from the edge of town, you're out of, you're in the wilderness. You're gone, so far- [crosstalk]

Speaker 1:

But these days, even the wilderness is getting tamer. The most northerly town in the world now has mobile phones.

Jason Roberts:

The first people started to use phones, which is quite strange when you have an emergency situation and people are on the edge of dying, that maybe they can call home before they die, which has been happening lately. So-

Speaker 1:

So it's getting civilised.

Jason Roberts:

It's getting very civilised and comfortable.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't always so civilised. For centuries this was a no man's land for whalers, trappers, and miners. Men from a score of countries harpooned, shot, and dug up its resources but no country owned or controlled it.

Finally in 1920, an international treaty awarded sovereignty, on condition every foreign venture could stay on. The winner was Norway.

(singing)

But 55 kilometres from Longbille, and there's a glimpse of how things might have been.

While most countries pulled out, the Soviet Union kept its mining operations as a strategic toe hold in the west. Today, the mining town of [Barrettsburg] is like a living Soviet relic. The statue of Lenin still stands incongruously on Norwegian soil.

Relations between the two communities were always good, but inevitably coloured by the Cold War.

Jason Roberts:

There has always been some type of spying on each side. Up until recently the Russian community had eight helicopters when the Norwegian governor didn't have any helicopter support. So you could wonder what they're doing with eight helicopters and a base. I'm sure there's been a lot of submarines in the Cold War period around these fjords and oceans.

Speaker 1:

These days, the Russians survive entirely on coal. Life for Russians here is hard, but it's not as bad as in Russia.

Speaker 3:

[Russian] It’s not my first time on this kind of expedition. Life on land is way tougher - here it is bearable.

They also send some parts of my salary home.

All my family lives there, and around 30% of my money goes to them at home.

And some money accumulates here as well.

Food is free, so somehow, by the end of each trip I manage to save a little.

Speaker 1:

But the future of the Russian settlement is uncertain. The coal seams are running low, and the government won't spend money on exploring for more. Two mines have already closed.

Such a fate might have awaited the whole of Spitzbergen. But seven years ago the Norwegian government decided to make Longbille a viable community even without the mines. The money they pumped in has created an Arctic boom.

Today there is an extraordinary array of infrastructure. Longbille may only have 1200 people, but there are daily Boeing 737 flights from the mainland, even daily floral deliveries.

It's even been opened up to mass tourism. About 10,000 Norwegian tourists come here every year.

Class:

(singing)

Renata Tupental:

It has developed a lot in the last years. They tried to make a town like Norway.

Speaker 1:

It's been a bewildering transition for one of Spitzbergen's longest term residents, schoolteacher Renata [Tupental].

Renata Tupental:

I'm longing for some of the old conditions we had here when we all were friends, knew each other, were insulated, the whole winter. Last boat left in November, first came in May. And we were friends and everybody knew everybody. But of course no, there were, the changes now to the better. For example, for the workers. They weren't allowed to have families here, it was quite impossible.

Speaker 1:

Renata came here 38 years ago, when coal mining was the only industry, and Longbille was a company town. Until 1992, there wasn't even a food store. She had to order a month ahead. [crosstalk]

So it's-

Renata Tupental:

Now we have everything, just look, just look here. Everything. Whatever you want. Frozen bread, bears, meat, fish, everything.

Speaker 1:

But for all the improvements, the perils of the wilderness are never far away.

Fred Hansen:

You can't expect to kill it with just one shot. You need at least three or four rounds to kill it.

Speaker 1:

These are students at Svalbard University. The world's most northerly university was set up in 1993. The lesson is survival-

Fred Hansen:

In the middle of that target. See the whole bear as one big target, and aim straight for it. Don't think about- [crosstalk]

Speaker 1:

As the safety instructor Fred Hansen points out, this is not an academic exercise.

Fred Hansen:

And you just aim in the middle of that target.

Three and a half, four years ago, there were, a girl actually killed up in that mountain there from a polar bear. Straight, or next to town.

Speaker 1:

With an estimated 3,000 polar bears on the island, no one leaves town without protection.

Fred Hansen:

As soon as you're ready, four shots, fire.

Speaker 1:

The danger does not deter a steady stream of applicants. Not even students like [Nimalan], who came to the Arctic from the tropics.

There's not much ice and snow in Sri Lanka, what are you doing here?

Nimalan:

Yeah. I am the only person from Sri Lanka here at the moment. So I just thought of a different place, compared to Sri Lanka, everything new, the lifestyle is new. Climate is new.

Speaker 1:

Snow is new.

Nimalan:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Jason Roberts is happiest away from town.

There are still no roads between the settlements. Cars and trucks would starve a permafrost. So in summer, the only way around is by sheet or by foot, and in winter, it's by snowmobile.

This trip was in part a joy ride to show us his island. But Jason also had to carry out some urgent repairs.

A polar bear had almost destroyed his field hut. The bear was so ravenous it even ate his mattress.

Jason Roberts:

Lovely animals, these polar bears. All right. Don't want to get carried away.

Speaker 1:

Five kilometres away, we found tracks of the animal that might've been responsible.

Jason Roberts:

It's definitely a young bear. When a bear's young, you can tell, an adult female bear, when they're adult you can tell from the track what type of bear it is here. The male bears get a lot of fur at the bottom, so when, and they have more of a bend in the walk, you can see in the next track further on there's a slight bend, here's the fur coming through. But it's such little amount that it's very difficult to tell if it's a female or male, but it's definitely a young bear. Quite a small track.

Speaker 1:

So, just scooted off over the river there.

Jason Roberts:

It's just gone over the ridge here. And very recently.

Speaker 1:

That put the bear close enough for Jason to load two guns. A signal gun to scare it off, and a 44 magnum in case it came straight for us. Within seconds, it appeared.

It was a young bear, but clearly big enough to be dangerous. Jason kept us at a distance. More out of respect for the bear's safety than ours.

Jason Roberts:

You normally place yourself in front of it, and if it's inquisitive to come have a look at you, you let it come and have a look at you. If not, you let it continue on its own business.

Speaker 1:

The bear heard or perhaps smelled us, and decided to move on.

Jason Roberts:

If it's inquisitive it'll come up and have a look and sniff. Quite often they'll come in to 20 metres, and just sniff and have a look and then wander on. Just wondering what you're, you're probably an alien in their world. So they don't get to experience many people.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever get tired of seeing bears, or is it still always a thrill?

Jason Roberts:

It's still a thrill. It's been quite a few now, I have no idea how many, but it's still a thrill. It's different experiences and when new things happen you see a mother and a cub come out of the den for the first time, it's quite an amazing thing. There's very few, there's more people have been on the top of Himalayas than have seen a polar bear mother and cub come out of the den.

Speaker 1:

And not many people have done this either. We rode 10 kilometres across the frozen Arctic Ocean. Our destination, a freshwater iceberg.

A beautiful spot.

Jason Roberts:

Yeah it's a lovely iceberg.

Speaker 1:

It's an iceberg?

Jason Roberts:

Yeah. It's glacial ice, it's frozen in during the autumn when there's sea ice. We're in the ocean here. So we're about, here the ocean's 300 metres deep below us.

Speaker 1:

You're kidding.

Jason Roberts:

This is surrounded by sea ice here, which is roughly a metre and a half thick. There's movement in the sea ice as the tide and the oceans come under here. So around this iceberg can be quite dangerous, this is quite small, it's not too bad.

Speaker 1:

Well how far have we come from the town, then?

Jason Roberts:

Now we're 140 kilometres from home, to say it nicely. So roughly, and we've been going all afternoon. What time is it now, it's nearly midnight quite soon, so.

Speaker 1:

It's almost time to go back.

Jason Roberts:

Yeah, almost time to go back.

Speaker 1:

Spitzbergen has so far managed an extraordinary balance. It has married modern development with ancient wilderness and done no harm to either. If not for a quirk of history, it could've suffered a very different fate.