COVER N.89 - FRANCE - Terres Australes et Antartiques Françaises - TAAF
Postmark: Dumont D'Uurville - T. Adelie - T.A.A.F. 21DEC2021
Posted on the 21st December 2021; received on the 1st April2 2022
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It must be the weather .... as I write, I hear (and feel it) that there is a polar air mass influencing the current European weather , so it must have something to do with it. If not, why would I get a letter from North Pole one day and another from the equally cold opposite side of the globe on the other.... 😃

Thank you so much, Roland. Amazing surprise, as ever!

The Terres Australes et Antartiques Françaises - TAFF (French Southern and Antarctic Lands) include  several territories organised into 5 districts, all located well to the South of the Equator. 

They include (and again I'm quoting Wikipedia):

- The Scattered Islands (Îles Éparses), a dispersed group of islands around the coast of Madagascar;

- The Crozet Islands (Îles Crozet), a group in the southern Indian Ocean, south of Madagascar;

- The Islands of Saint Paul and Amsterdam (Îles Saint Paul et Amsterdam), a group to the north of the Kerguelen Islands.

- The Kerguelen Islands (Archipel des Kerguelen), a group of volcanic islands in the southern Indian Ocean, southeast of Africa, approximately equidistant between Africa, Antarctica and Australia;

- Adélie Land (Terre Adélie), the French claim on the continent of Antarctica.

It is precisely from the latter, that the absolutely delightful cover Mr. Postman dropped on my letterbox, flew in from (at least part of the way, because I suspect that ship transportation must have been involved too), and I can even pin point the place of expedition using the coordinates stamped in on the cover, corresponding to the Dumont D'Urville Station, a French scientific base established in 1956.

 

The cover, as I said, is nothing short of beautiful with a lovely illustration of the "La Curieuse", a French oceanographic research vessel launched in 1989 and based on the Kergulen Islands, which, curiously, (pun intended 😉) has already been chosen to illustrate a TAAF stamp issued in 2019.

If the envelope is nice, the stamp follows suit. It shows a lovely intaglio printed drawing of an Heron (Egretta dimorpha) endemic to specific regions the Southern hemisphere (including the Scattered Islands). With a face value of 1,55€, it was issued as a single stamp set on 02JAN2020. I noted a very small legend on the bottom left corner of the stamp that says EUROPA, (îles Eparses) and I wonder why it is there. I know that Europa is the largest of the Scattered Islands, but usually there is no such mention on any of the TAFF stamps.. could it be that the Heron is only endemic to Europa?

The postmark tells us that the cover was mailed from the  Dumont D'Urville base and it did take a while to get to my letter box as it always happens with mail coming from such weather dependent origins,