We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
DUTCH ACTRESS AND Adventurer Manon “Tractor Girl” Ossevoort arrived at the South Pole today after chugging along on a tractor from Europe through Africa and across the frozen wastes of Antarctica.
“It’s quite emotional, I’m very happy,” Ossevoort told AFP by satellite telephone shortly after arriving at the Pole and fulfilling a decade-long dream.
It feels quite magical really, to have made this happen and arrived here!
The ebullient new mother of a 10-month-old baby said the the 16-day, 2,500 kilometre trip across the largest single mass of ice on earth from Russia’s Novo base to the Pole had been tough.
MasseyFerguson / SoundCloud
Driving the huge red Massey Ferguson tractor over the rugged, icy landscape at an average speed of about 10 kilometres an hour was “like rodeo riding”.
Ossevoort said the worst part of the trip was “the day that I was driving for hours and hours and could not go faster than between 0.5 and five kilometres per hour”.
I really was worried then that the expedition could come to a halt if conditions would get just a little bit worse.
Now she has to do the return trip.
It will be a race to make it home to the Netherlands for Christmas but the “return journey to the base will be faster because the tracks of the tractor will be frozen up and it will be easier to drive.”
Finally made it
Ossevoort began her trip in 2005, taking four years to drive from her home village in the Netherlands to Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa — and then missed the boat that was due to take her to Antarctica for the final leg due to delays.
Frustrated, the former theatre actress spent the next four years back in the Netherlands, writing a book, working as a motivational speaker and desperately trying to get back on a tractor.
With sponsorship from Massey Ferguson and other companies, she finally made it.
’The best adventure’
Ossevoort travelled alone through Africa, but in Antarctica the tractor needed to creep forward day and night, so French mechanic Nicolas Bachelet shared the driving.
In total, she was accompanied by a team of seven, including crew who are filming the journey for a documentary.
Asked whether this was the end of her crazy adventures on a tractor, Ossevoort’s infectious laugh bubbled through the crackly satphone:
Yes. I think this is the best adventure on a tractor that one can come up with.
She now plans to write a children’s book and produce the movie of her journey.
Asked what she is looking forward to most about getting back to civilisation, she replied:
To go back home to my happy ever after and to hug my little daughter.
Ossevoort’s daughter, Hannah, has been in the care of her partner, airline pilot Roger Nieuwendyk.
Homage to Edmund Hillary
Cradling the baby in a tractor shed in Cape Town as Ossevoort made final checks before leaving for Antarctica, he told AFP she had his full support.
“We’ll be there to meet her at the airport when she comes home,” he said.
Ossevoort’s tractor is named Antarctica 2 in honour of legendary explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, who travelled to the South Pole on a tractor in 1958.
His vehicle was equipped with full tracks, however, while Ossevoort’s has normal inflatable tyres which have been slightly modified for better grip on the snow and ice.
While fulfilling her own long-held dream, Ossevoort carried with her thousands of ‘dreams’ collected from people in Africa and around the world.
Scraps of paper and emails have been converted into digital form and will be placed in the belly of a big snowman she will build at the pole — to be opened only in 80 years time.
“I want to turn them into a beautiful time capsule of the dreams of the world so that in the future children and people can read something about our dreams and not only about politics or war,” she said.
Fear holds people back from pursuing their dreams, she says, and many believe that “putting them into reality is as impossible as driving a tractor to the South Pole”.
The tractor for me symbolises this very down to earth fact that if you want to do something, maybe you will not be so fast but if you keep going and keep your sense of humour you will get there.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
That’s nothing. Tom Crean got within an ass’s roar of it wearing a pair of wellies.
I heard Tom Cream pulled a Massey Ferguson to the South Pole!
No that was Chuck Norris.
I hear that Massey Ferguson will sponsor a mission to Mars by tractor…
Tractor porn for the farmers
A 5510..I was sure it was a 5455. Fair play to her….and Ms. Ossevoort:-)
Lol
Sorry guys but a MF 5610 is far from a ‘huge’ tractor!
Glad she didn’t try the trip on a Dexta
105 Horse power, its on the medium to small end of the scale.
Magic story, cheered me up no end after reading the whinging and moaning on other items on the journal.
Water charges.
Just no one had mentioned it in the comment section yet.
Burn the Bond Holders
Garth Brooks!
Pat Kenny Newstalk
The Massy is classy,but the Zetter is better
Neither fit to change the tyres on a John Deere.
I wonder if there was tailback stuck behind her
@Donnacha..And if there was, and she was Irish, she’d sit there, ease up on the foot throttle, turn up the radio, and grin into the three mirrors at the gobeens behind her! Although I should say its getting better…the younger farming folk do pull over first chance they get, it’s the oils lads of 40+ that sit there and ignore all around them….
Probably had John Deere anti freeze in it.
Poteen.
Has to be said that if she was Irish she would have taken the babby with her, seen that carry-on far too often down the years. One idiot had his 3 sons in his cab just days after the burial of a child killed in an overturned tractor not 5 miles away from us.
Red thumb away, do you want his name and address?
Do throw out the name
You are willing to give his name and address, while you have an anonymous username?
Why would someone take an agriculture machine to the South Pole? Why is that even news? Be better off ploughing a few meadows, or whatever they use those big quad bikes for.
In case you didn’t realise Tractors are used for far more than Agriculture. As for the reasons for using one on a trip like this, there is multiple possibilities. Ground clearance, grip, etc.
Why did anyone ever try and go to the South Pole?
To see if they could
Bayjasus!
How are we only hearing about this now??
have your say