A new start after 60: my father died when I was a child – and I followed him to Antarctica

Amanda Barry’s dad had always wanted to return to the continent, where he worked in 1948, but died before he had the chance. She fulfilled his ambition, and felt closer to him than ever Amanda Barry was rummaging for something in her mother’s loft when she came across her father’s trunk. Delving beneath the old blankets, she uncovered a trove of photographs, letters and journals that would set her on his trail, all the way to the Antarctic. Barry’s father, George, had died suddenly after a heart attack when she was nine. Her mother had kept alive the sense of him; his pipes and cigarettes were still in a drawer of the sideboard. Like her four older siblings, Barry owned a photograph, taken at Port Lockroy in Antarctica, where in 1948 he was base leader. “He always wanted to go back,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘Well, Dad, I’m going to go. For you and for me.’” But the Antarctic is not the easiest place to get to. Barry, 63, who grew up in Essex, had worked as a publicist for video games after her A-levels. Following a stint with Lynne Franks PR, she built her own public relations company, specialising in environmental issues. “I never had children, and