THE
SILENCE CALLING
THIS ORIGINAL POEM BY SIR DOUGLAS MAWSON WAS DISCOVERED BY CHANCE BY JONATHAN CHESTER WHEN HE WAS RESEARCHING HIS BOOK ON ANTARCTICA, GOING TO EXTREMES: PROJECT BLIZZARD AND AUSTRALIA’S ANTARCTIC HERITAGE. IN 1985 HE VISITED THE SYDNEY HOME OF MARY DAVID, DAUGHTER OF MAWSON’S MENTOR PROFESSOR SIR T W EDGEWORTH DAVID. MISS DAVID, THEN IN HER NINETIES, SHOWED HIM AN ORIGINAL EDITION OF MAWSON’S TWO-VOLUME WORK HOME OF THE BLIZZARD, FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1915. INSIDE THE FLYLEAF WAS THIS POEM, WRITTEN BY MAWSON TO HIS OLD FRIEND WITH THE PHRASE THAT INSPIRED THE TITLE FOR THIS BOOK. TODAY THE SILENCE IS STILL CALLING AUSTRALIANS TO ANTARCTICA.
THE
SILENCE CALLING Australians in Antarctica 1947–97 T
T
H E
A N A R E
I M
J
B
U B I L E E
H
I S T O R Y
O W D E N
ALLEN & UNWIN
Copyright The Antarctic Division of the Department of the Environment, Sports and Territories, and Tim Bowden 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 1997 by Allen & Unwin 9 Atchison Street St Leonards NSW 2065 Australia Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 E-mail:
[email protected] URL: http://www.allen-unwin.com.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Phone: (61 2) 9901 4088 Bowden, Tim, 1937-. The silence calling: Australians in Antarctica 1947–97. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 86448 311 3 (hbk.) ISBN 1 86448 406 3 (limited ed.). 1. Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions History. 2. Scientific expeditions - Antarctica - History. 3. Antarctica - Research - Australia - History. I. Title. 507.20989 Designed by Textart Set in 11pt New Baskerville Printed by Brown Prior Anderson Pty Ltd, Burwood, Vic. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the relevant copyright, designs and patents acts, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publisher. eBooks Corporation
F OR
THE MEN AND THE WOMEN OF
ANARE
FOREWORD
I
n 1947 the Australian Government established the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) and, for the first time in Australian history, assumed full responsibility for Antarctic exploration and research and for financing all the operations. From this small and tentative beginning, the ANARE has developed rapidly into a large and complex organisation, maintaining Antarctic and subAntarctic stations and carrying out extensive exploration and scientific research. ANARE activities were directed to the 6000 kilometre coastline of the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT) and the vast, almost completely unexplored hinterland. The sheer magnitude of the ANARE task produced a breadth of approach and an attitude of mind rather different from those of nations whose fields of operation in Antarctica were much more circumscribed. Fortune favoured the Australian endeavours. An early start gave ANARE time to consolidate before the advent of the International Geophysical Year (IGY), with consequent benefits in scientific achievements during that momentous period. Moreover, being the first post-war expeditions to seek bases in AAT, the ANARE had the pick of the accessible sites. The selection of the Mawson and Davis sites was fortuitous. I was not to know of the existence of the Prince Charles Mountains inland from Mawson or that of the huge Lambert Glacier. These, together with the Amery Ice Shelf and the ice-free areas of the Vestfold Hills, the Larsemann Hills and the islands of Prydz Bay, presented fascinating fields for exploration and scientific studies.
vii
T
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
The Americans had discovered the Windmill Islands and built Wilkes Station in that region for the IGY. When Australia took over this base from the USA, another extremely interesting complex was opened to Australian researchers, while the inland ice plateau and Law Dome paid handsome dividends for ANARE glaciologists. The mountainous regions of Kemp Land and Enderby Land at the western, and Oates Land at the eastern, extremities of AAT completed the vast canvas across which ANARE operations over a fifty-year period were to extend. Patterns of Antarctic adventure had been set in the early years of this century, but those men had no monopoly of heroic endeavour. Countless numbers of young people from many nations have, over successive decades, risked their lives and achieved prodigious accomplishments in the face of the extreme hazards and difficulties of the Antarctic environment. Amongst them the men and women of ANARE stand proudly and Tim Bowden’s history is a monument to their efforts. Phillip G Law AC, CBE, MSc, DAppSc(Hon.Melb), DEd (Hon.Vic), DSc(Hon.LaTrobe), Hon. FRMIT, FANZAAS, FAIP, FRSV, FTSE, FAA and Director, Australian Antarctic Division 1949–66
viii
CONTENTS
FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIV ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVII ANARE TIME LINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XX INTRODUCTION: FLYING THE FLAG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
THE BEGINNING 1947–1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1 2 3 4 5 6
BIRTH OF ANARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 HEARD ISLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 MACQUARIE ISLAND AND PUSHING SOUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 THE FIRST OPERATIONAL YEAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 EARLY DAYS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 TESTING TIMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
ESTABLISHMENT AND EXPLORATION 1954 –1966 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
. . . . . . . . . . . . 97
BREAKING THE ICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 EARLY EXPLORATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 VIRGIN TERRITORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 SPREADING WINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 ANTARCTICA INTERNATIONAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 1959—A YEAR TO REMEMBER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 ANARE LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 FILLING IN THE MAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 WHY ARE WE THERE? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 ix
T
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
TESTING TIMES 1967–1981 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 16 FROM PILLAR TO POST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 17 BUILDING AND MOVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 18 FIELD WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
LIVING DANGEROUSLY 1982–1988
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
19 LIVING DANGEROUSLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 20 TURBULENT TIMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
CONTEMPORARY ANARE 1989–1997
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 21 TOWARDS 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 22 CHANGING THE CULTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 23 SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
APPENDICES I II III IV
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
ANARE WINTERING EXPEDITIONERS 1947–1997 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517 MEDAL WINNERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 VOYAGE LEADERS AND SHIPS’ CAPTAINS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 DEATHS ON ANARE SERVICE 1947–1997 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
ENDNOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 566
x
PREFACE
I
n November 1994, while filming an ABC documentary on Australians working in Antarctica, I stood alone on the top of an iceberg just off the coast of Princess Elizabeth Land near Davis Station. The helicopters that landed me had flown away. There was utter silence. The scene was breathtaking. To my left was the great tumbled mass of the Sørsdal Glacier glistening in the spring sunshine. Below me the sheer cliff of the iceberg plunged down into the frozen sea. In such an incredible location, I was gripped with a heady mix of exhilaration and fear. I have never felt so isolated and insignificant—a human speck in the vast emptiness of Antarctica. Humans do not belong in Antarctica. We go there like astronauts entering deep space, taking with us everything needed for survival— accommodation, food and fuel. Every visitor is a transient, staying for limited periods, a few weeks or months, or wintering for a whole year. No one lives indefinitely in Antarctica. Although ANARE—Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions—has been in existence for half a century, I am in no doubt that almost all those who venture south, for short or longer periods, do so because they are still motivated by a strong sense of adventure. For those lucky enough to go there, Antarctica becomes a magnificent obsession, drawing them back again and again. My own journeys to Antarctica in 1989, 1994 and 1995 have made me an enthusiastic polar recidivist. All travel to ANARE’s four permanent Antarctic stations is by ship, and to go on one of these polar voyages is the ultimate travel experience. It would have been extremely difficult, I think, to have attempted to write the history of ANARE without experiencing the classic stages of a journey
xi
T
xii
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
south by sea, visiting Macquarie Island, Casey, Davis and Mawson Stations, and meeting a variety of expeditioners while they were ‘on the ice’. Each small party not only works in and copes with an implacably hostile environment but has to endure living in isolation, with attendant passions, personal idiosyncrasies, occasional medical emergencies and some grinding routine. Inevitably there are ‘good’ years and ‘bad’ years on the sociological front. My feelings on beginning to write the history of ANARE were rather akin to standing alone on the iceberg—a mixture of excitement and fear. How much of the human drama of actually living in Antarctica should the ANARE historian pursue? Indeed for whom is the history designed—the general reader who may want to know what Australians have been doing down south for the last fifty years, or the professionals for whom a corporate history might be more appropriate? What proportion of this history should be devoted to the adventure/action stories of basic exploration, the raw realities of human interaction in isolation? What of the evolving importance of Antarctic science, Australia’s influence on international politics in Antarctica, the changing emphasis from exploiting resources to conservation? And what of the new awareness of the importance of Antarctica in assessing global climate change, and the Antarctic Division’s own struggles to survive against a backdrop of changing governments, contracting budgets and some inevitable internal dissension? For better or worse, I have tried to involve all these elements in The Silence Calling. I have selected events that are not only interesting in themselves but illuminate the most important themes. Some events and good stories have therefore had to be dropped in favour of others. For example, there were many epic tractor-train journeys onto the ice cap and the interior of Antarctica during the last half century, but it is simply not possible to feature them all. So the Vostok Traverse of 1962 out of Wilkes Station is dealt with in some detail as a contrast to the more modern Davis–Mawson–Davis glaciological traverses around the head of the Lambert Glacier in 1993–94 and 1994–95. I have attempted to describe people and events which give an overview of the feel and flavour of the ANARE experience without duplicating themes already explored. Many ANARE expeditioners who have taken part in notable events are not mentioned, but such omissions are an inevitable consequence of tackling a broad canvas and sweep of history. A great deal of the primary research for The Silence Calling has been gleaned from direct testimony and personal interviews with ANARE expeditioners and Antarctic Division staff whose memories extend from 1947 to the present day. These testimonies and interviews are intended to
P
R E F A C E
enlarge and enlighten the value of the written records. Through these accounts, the voices of ANARE participants can speak directly to the reader. Where possible, transcripts of interviews have been checked with the people concerned and drafts made available to many of the key players for verification and comment. Lists of those interviewed are included in the endnotes and transcript material is held in the Antarctic Division Library at Kingston. The Silence Calling is a commissioned work. I was obliged to show drafts to the Antarctic Division’s Jubilee Working Group as the manuscript progressed and they had the right to correct matters of fact, and to make suggestions. But, in fact, I was given autonomy over the writing of the ANARE history. ANARE’s history is a chronicle of life on a frontier, not only an important Australian frontier, but a significant international one. In the past, Australians have been very conscious of frontier life and pioneering, particularly in areas like the Northern Territory and Papua New Guinea. But Antarctica, far removed from broad-brimmed hats and sunburned faces, remains unfamiliar to most Australians. Mawson, in his balaclava, still seems an uncharacteristically alien image. My hope has been to do justice to the story of half a century of endeavour by ANARE expeditioners, whose enthusiasm, bravery, sense of adventure, patriotism and endurance have helped to keep Australia a world leader in scientific research and related Antarctic activities. They are the men and the women of ANARE—to whom The Silence Calling is dedicated.
xiii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
xiv
his project began in 1993 when I was selected by the Antarctic Division’s Jubilee Working Group to write the history of ANARE from 1947 to 1997. The working group has been unfailingly supportive, its members cheerfully ploughing through many thousands of words of early chapter drafts, offering helpful comments and suggestions. Des Lugg and Martin Betts (whose corporate memory goes back to the 1960s), Patrick Quilty, Andrew Jackson, Liz Haywood and Phil Wood were particularly generous with their time and expertise. Peter Boyer, the chair of the group, has steered the project through all its phases with deft diplomacy and unfailing good humour—as well as rescuing the author from occasional lapses into the slough of despond during the manuscript’s four years gestation. The division’s legal officer Wendy Fletcher was extremely supportive. I was able to interview all but two of the Antarctic Division’s leaders and directors—Stuart Campbell, Phil Law, Don Styles (who acted as director for nearly seven years), Ray Garrod, Jim Bleasel and Rex Moncur. Phil Law was unfailingly patient and helpful despite a blizzard of phone calls and letters over the last four years. He also contributed many photographs from his personal collection. It is simply not practicable to list here all those members of ANARE who were helpful with reminiscences, papers and photographs. They are, however, acknowledged in the text and in the captions. In addition we have been able to publish a list of all wintering expeditioners from 1947–97 as an appendix to the history, as well as Polar Medal and Antarctic Medal recipients, voyage leaders and ships’ captains. I hope that will
A
C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
atone to some extent for any omissions. Ian Teague made available his unpublished manuscript Polar Medals Awarded to Australians for Service in Antarctica for reference purposes — for which I thank him. The ANARE Club has been a tower of strength in many ways throughout the writing of the history, not only giving permission to quote from the club journal Aurora, but helping me to amass an enviable collection of back copies. Max Corry, who has been compiling a list of ANARE winterers for many years, made his records available to me at the beginning of the project, which was deeply appreciated. Martin Betts, who took on the herculean task of preparing the final list of winterers for the ANARE history, was able to rationalise division records provided by the librarian Evlyn Barrett with Corry’s independent research. Kathryn Barker keyed the final list on to the computer. Robert Headland, archivist for the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge (whom I met appropriately for the first time in Antarctica in 1995) was kind enough to provide me with a selective computer printout from his authoritative Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events. This gave me access to all the Australian related voyages to Antarctica from Sir Douglas Mawson’s era to the present. As I live in Sydney, it was essential to have a researcher operating from the division in Hobart. Alison Alexander, a noted Tasmanian historian, got the project off to a tremendous start before leaving the project after a year to pursue her own writing career. Her expert preparation of source material and oral history interviews—particularly the preparation of a list of key dates and events—was an enduring legacy. Enter Annie Rushton who quickly mastered a complex brief and became a powerhouse of productivity, combining basic research with oral history interviews recorded in Hobart, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide and Darwin. Annie Rushton’s input has been prodigious. I cannot think how I could have written the ANARE history without her. With office space at the division at a premium, Annie was given a desk in the multimedia unit. This was a bonus when it came to selecting photographs for the history. My personal thanks to Kevin Bell, Rene Wanless, Glenn Jacobson, Wayne Papps and Beverley Wood for their help in accessing and processing images from the division’s collection. Rene Wanless in particular worked well beyond the call of duty on this project. Dave McCormack, Judith Wolters and Nick Lovibond assisted mightily, identifying and coordinating contributions from private sources. Research into the early years of ANARE was facilitated by Gillian Redmond at the Australian Archives in Canberra and Chris Taylor, archivist at the Department of Foreign Affairs, both of whom helped me access
xv
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
key original documents. John Pepper and Moira Smythe at the Australian Archives in Canberra were also extremely helpful to Annie Rushton. My thanks also to Kathleen Ralston, then writing her PhD thesis on the early life of Phil Law, for her generosity with her original research. Geoff Munro was similarly obliging in making available the text of interviews he recorded with ANARE Heard Island veterans. At the eleventh hour, Andrew Jackson prepared the excellent ‘time line’ of ANARE history for which general readers and researchers will thank him down the years, as well as the author. ANU historian Hank Nelson provided a knowledgeable and friendly shoulder to lean on in the early stages of planning the ANARE history— as he has done with most of my major projects since 1980. I thank Patrick Gallagher of Allen & Unwin for backing this project before a line had been written, and senior editor Rebecca Kaiser for her cheerful and continuing counsel. Nina Riemer (who has edited all but one of my books) took on the unfamiliar topic of the Antarctic with her usual unflappable aplomb, and was not dismayed when asked to cut my first draft by 30 000 words. Thank you Nina. I don’t begrudge even one of them. And Nora Bonney was equally equable about casting her astute proofreading eyes over the remaining 200 000 words, for which I remain extremely grateful. Designer Mark Davis has created a very fine artefact. Clodagh Jones indexed this volume with speed, erudition and great competence. Transcriptions of all taped interviews were speedily turned around by Rose Eagleton and Robyn Annear. My father, John Bowden, inculcated into his teenage son growing up in Hobart a love of polar literature, and sowed the seeds of future interest in Antarctic history. This was confirmed by the head of ABC Radio National’s Social History Unit Jenny Palmer in 1986 when she suggested I undertake a major radio oral history project ‘Australians in Antarctica’. See what you started, Jenny? My wife Ros has been amazingly tolerant and supportive during my long periods of withdrawal from family life over the past four years. But above all, I am grateful to all those who have shared their experiences so frankly during the research and writing of The Silence Calling.
xvi
Jubilee Working Group: Evlyn Barrett, Kevin Bell, Martin Betts, Peter Boyer, Rob Easther, Liz Haywood, Jo Jacka, Andrew Jackson, Des Lugg, Harvey Marchant, Rex Moncur, Richard Mulligan, Pat Quilty, Phil Wood.
ACRONYMS
AND
A B B R E V I AT I O N S
AANBUS AAE AAT ACAN ACAP ACOA ACS AGSO ANARE ANCA ANCOSPAR APIS APTS ARPAC ASAC ASOC ASS ATCM BANZARE BIOMASS CATSA CCAMLR CEMP
Australian Antarctic Building System Australasian Antarctic Expedition Australian Antarctic Territory Australian Committee for Antarctic Names Advisory Committee on Antarctic Programs Administrative and Clerical Officers’ Association Australian Construction Services Australian Geological Survey Organisation Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions Antarctic Names Committee of Australia Australian National Committee for Space Research Antarctic Pack Ice Seals (Project) Antarctic Policy and Transport Studies Antarctic Research Policy Advisory Committee Antarctic Science Advisory Committee Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition Antarktis und Spezialfahrt Schiffartsgesellschaft GmbH Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition Biological Investigations of Marine Antarctic Systems and Stocks Cooperative Air Transport System for Antarctica Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources CCAMLR Ecosystem Monitoring Program
xvii
T
H E
S I L E N C E
COMNAP CRC
xviii
C A L L I N G
Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs Cooperative Research Centre for the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Environment CRAMRA Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resources CSIR Council for Scientific Industrial Research CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation DASETT Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism [and Territories] DEA Department of External Affairs DUKW WWII Vintage Amphibian—D (date of manufacture), U (utility), K (front-wheel drive), W (with winch) EAAN East Antarctic Air Network EEO Equal Employment Opportunity EPC Executive Planning Committee ERC Expenditure Review Committee FIBEX First International Biomass Experiment GLOCHANT Group of Specialists on Global Change and the Antarctic GPS Global Positioning System IAGP International Antarctic Glaciology Program IASOS Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies IBEA International Biomedical Expedition to the Antarctic ICSU International Council of Scientific Unions IGY International Geophysical Year IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPY International Polar Year JATO Jet Assisted Take Off JMR Joint Management Review LARC Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo LCVP Landing Craft Vehicle and Personnel LIDAR Light Detection and Ranging LST Landing Ship Tanks NAVSAT US Navy Satellite Navigation System NBSAE Norwegian British Swedish Antarctic Expedition NGO Non-government Organisation NRAC National Radiation Advisory Committee PAC Joint Parliamentary Committee of Public Accounts PCM Prince Charles Mountains PSI Public Service Inspector PWC Parliamentary Works Committee SAB Special Antarctic Blend
A
SAE SANAE SCALOP SCAR SCM SIBEX SPRI STOL WOCE WRE
C R O N Y M S
A N D
A B B R E V I A T I O N S
Soviet Antarctic Expeditions South African National Antarctic Expedition Standing Committee on Antarctic Logistics and Operations Special Committee for Antarctic Research (later Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research) Special Consultative Meeting Second International Biomass Experiment Scott Polar Research Institute Short Take Off and Landing World Ocean Circulation Experiment Weapons Research Establishment
xix
ANARE
20 December 1946
March 1947
May 1947
7 July 1947 9 July 1947
17 November 1947 26 December 1947
28 February 1948 xx
TIME LINE
To build on Mawson’s earlier work and consolidate interest in the Australian Antarctic Territory, Cabinet agrees to refit Wyatt Earp for Australian exploration and research in Antarctica. In the lead up to the 1947–48 expedition, RAAF makes three long-range observation flights in modified bombers over the Southern Ocean including reconnaissance flights over Macquarie Island. Executive Planning Committee established and Stuart Campbell appointed to lead the Australian expedition. Phillip Law appointed as senior scientific officer. Executive Planning Committee decides on the title of Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition. HMALST 3501 sails from Melbourne for Heard Island arriving 11 December 1947. Wyatt Earp leaves Hobart for the Antarctic on a voyage that is thwarted by mechanical problems, weather and ice. On the same day, Heard Island is claimed for Australia and Atlas Cove Station opens with fourteen winterers. LST 3501 sails from Melbourne for Macquarie Island, arriving on 7 March 1948. The station opens on 21 March 1948 with fourteen winterers.
A N A R E
3 January 1949
13 July 1950
22 October 1951
6 February 1953
4 January 1954
13 February 1954
9 March 1955 March 1956
Summer 1956–57 13 January 1957
1–17 February 1957 30 June 1957 3 January 1958
1958
4 February 1959 1 December 1959 21 December 1959
T I M E
Phillip Law appointed as director of the Antarctic Division, which was formed in the Department of External Affairs and which, by year’s end, had a staff of eleven. Cabinet decides to establish a permanent station in Antarctica, but progress is thwarted by lack of a suitable ship. Inaugural meeting of the ANARE Club in Melbourne provides a focus for returning expeditioners to maintain contact. The availability of Kista Dan leads to Government approval to establish the proposed continental station in the 1953–54 summer. Kista Dan sails from Melbourne to seek a site for a permanent station in the AAT, arriving in Horseshoe Harbour on 11 February. Mawson Station commissioned with ten winterers who spend the first year erecting buildings, taking meteorological observations, and commencing coastal and inland exploration. Heard Island Station closes. Aircraft hangar erected at Mawson. The first RAAF Antarctic flight photographs 1600 km of coastline. Discovery of coal in the Prince Charles Mountains. Davis Station established for the International Geophysical Year with a winter complement of five. Wilkes is built by the USA for IGY in just 17 days. Official start of IGY with twelve nations having established Antarctic expeditions. Thala Dan commences a voyage which explores almost the entire coast of AAT and Terre Adélie and establishes Antarctica’s first continuous automatic weather stations on Lewis Island. Overland explorations from Mawson reach Amundsen Bay in Enderby Land. Australia takes over Wilkes from the US. Australia takes over Wilkes from the US. Antarctic Treaty signed by Australia and eleven other nations. The first four women to visit an ANARE station
L I N E
xxi
T
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
Summer 1959–60 Summer 1961–62
8 February 1961
23 June 1961 17 September 1962 May 1963 25 January 1965
April 1966 1967 Winter 1968 Summer 1968–69
February 1969
2 October 1970
25 November 1970
27 January 1971 1971 18 February 1972 xxii
arrive at Macquarie Island on Thala Dan to take part as scientists in the summer program. Helicopters used by ANARE for the first time. Using dog teams, a journey from a camp in the Prince Charles Mountains travels south and makes the first ascent of Mt Menzies, the highest peak in the western sector of the AAT. Magga Dan arrives at Mawson carrying, as a guest of the ship, Nel Law—the first Australian woman to visit the AAT. Antarctic Treaty comes into force. Six expeditioners set off from Wilkes for a 17 week, 3000 km traverse to Vostok and back. In Melbourne the Antarctic Division moves from Collins St to St Kilda Rd. Davis Station closes for four years as construction of Repstat begins to replace Wilkes which has been buried by snow. Phillip Law resigns and is replaced by Don Styles as acting director. Australian Academy of Science conducts a review of Antarctic research. Amery Ice Shelf project—four men winter on the ice shelf in ANARE’s smallest wintering party. Prince Charles Mountains Survey commences an extensive field program that continues for another five summers. Davis Station reopens on 19 February 1969 following completion of Repstat which is renamed Casey. Bryan Rofe commences a short term as Director of Antarctic Division until his death in August 1971. LARCs replace DUKWs at Macquarie Island and then, in the same summer, are introduced into Antarctica. First recorded landing on the McDonald Islands. Radio telephone system introduced to improve communication between Australia and Antarctica. Underground cosmic ray observatory opens at Mawson.
A N A R E
8 May 1972 Summer 1972–73 Early 1974 December 1974 19 January 1976
1976 26 February 1977 2 March 1977 13 February 1977
1977
Winter 1977
18 January 1978 16 October 1978 December 1978
Summer 1978–79
2 April 1979 November 1979
T I M E
Ray Garrod commences as Director of Antarctic Division. Deep drilling commences on the Law Dome ice cap. Government decides to relocate the Antarctic Division to Kingston in Tasmania. Advisory Committee on Antarctic Programs reports on its review of the ANARE program. Four women arrive at Casey on Thala Dan to become the first women to visit a continental station as part of ANARE. On Macquarie Island, Dr Zoë Gardner is the first woman to winter with ANARE. Geologists land at Gaussberg for the first Australian visit since 1912. First visit of an Australian field party to the Bunger Hills. Qantas operates the first of a series of one day charter tourist overflights from Australia to Antarctica. Federal budget provides for rebuilding the stations, additional staff for the Antarctic Division, commencement of a marine research program, and planning studies for an Australian Antarctic ship. Rod Ledingham (OIC) and Jean Ledingham (doctor) on Macquarie Island become the first husband and wife team to winter with ANARE. Granholm hut erected at Cape Denison to support a summer program at Mawson’s Hut. Construction of new ANARE headquarters begins at Kingston. As the first stage in plans for a cooperative air transport system, RAAF flies four flights on the Christchurch–McMurdo route. US Hercules lands at Lanyon Junction to deliver scientists and summer support staff to work at Casey. Clarrie McCue becomes acting director following Ray Garrod’s retirement. Antarctic Research Policy Advisory Committee
L I N E
xxiii
T
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
Summer 1979–80
Summer 1979–80
20 May 1980
December 1980 Summer 1980–81
January 1981
22 April 1981
January 1982 1983
18 February 1984 5 November 1984 xxiv
recommends that Antarctic research place greater emphasis on resources and environmental effects of their exploitation. For the first time it is necessary to charter a third ship, Nanok S, to carry cargo for rebuilding. New living quarters commissioned at Davis, the first of the AANBUS buildings. Six people camp on McDonald Island for four days in March to complete the first survey of the island. Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources is agreed at a diplomatic conference in Canberra. Australia signs the Convention on 11 September 1980. Kingston buildings completed and transfer from Melbourne commences. Following her modification for marine research, Nella Dan supports FIBEX, ANARE’s first dedicated marine biology cruise and the start of a long-term commitment to Antarctic offshore research. In Terre Adélie ANARE participates in the International Biomedical Expedition to Antarctica—the first expedition solely for medical research. Dr Louise Holliday arrives at Davis to become the first woman to winter at an ANARE station in the AAT. New Antarctic Division headquarters opened by Prince Charles. Later that year in Tasmania’s Central Highlands the Bernacchi Antarctic Training Centre opens—named after the Tasmanian who was the first Australian to winter in Antarctica. Nella Dan commences a 35-day cruise in Prydz Bay for ANARE’s first marine geophysical survey. Joint Management Review recommends significant restructuring of the permanent staffing of the Antarctic Division. Jim Bleasel commences as acting director. Icebird departs Cape Town for Mawson on its maiden voyage for ANARE. The advent of Icebird allows a large number of expedition staff to be
A N A R E
Summer 1984–85
1985 Summer 1985–86 27 October 1985
Summer 1985–86 Summer 1986–87
18 January 1987 3 December 1987
17 December 1987
1 January 1988
5 February 1988
June 1988
29 October 1988 Summer 1987–88
20 December 1988 1989
T I M E
carried, opening up ANARE to many more participants. Fossil dolphin bones discovered at Marine Plain near Davis, proving this site to be of great palaeontological significance. Antarctic Science Advisory Committee established. Installation of ANARESAT satellite communications terminals commences at the Antarctic stations. Nella Dan becomes beset and, unable to be freed by Icebird, waits until 14 December to be released by the Japanese icebreaker Shirase. Some research is deferred and HMAS Stalwart relieves Macquarie Island. Edgeworth David summer base established in the Bunger Hills. Summer base established at Cape Denison near Mawson’s Hut. Two school students win the inaugural Antarctic School Science Prize and visit Antarctica on Icebird. Law Base in the Larsemann Hills opens as a summer scientific station. Nella Dan grounds in Buckles Bay, Macquarie Island, and is subsequently scuttled in deep water off the island on 24 December 1987. Government announces its intention to negotiate a charter for an Australian-crewed and constructed icebreaker. First live television broadcast from the AAT—a link-up with Davis during Australia’s bicentennial celebrations. As design of the new Antarctic ship proceeds, the prime minister announces a competition among young Australians to choose a name for it. Convention for the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activity is agreed by the Antarctic Treaty nations. Keel laid for Aurora Australis. Dovers Base established providing support for a five-year study in the northern Prince Charles Mountains. New Casey opened. The first woman station leaders, Alison Clifton
L I N E
xxv
T
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
22 May 1989
June 1989
18 September 1989
21 December 1989
Summer 1989–90
3 March 1990 4 October 1991
Summer 1991–92
August 1992
November 1992
Summer 1992–93
Summer 1992–93 xxvi
at Macquarie Island and Diana Patterson at Davis, take up duty. Prime Minister announces that Australia will not sign the Convention for the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resources but instead explore the prospects for a comprehensive environmental protection convention. Inquiry into the Antarctic Division’s management by the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts concludes and recommends an increase of staff for the Antarctic Division. Aurora Australis launched at Newcastle to be completed in time for a winter voyage to Heard Island in 1990. Rex Moncur appointed as director after acting in the position following Jim Bleasel’s resignation. A compressed snow-ice runway is constructed at Casey, but heavy snowfalls prevent the trial flights planned for February 1990. Governor of Tasmania Sir Phillip Bennett visits Macquarie Island. Antarctic Treaty meeting adopts the Madrid Protocol which bans mining and designates Antarctica as a natural reserve devoted to peace and science. A temporary station is established at Spit Bay to accommodate five people in the first wintering party on Heard Island since 1954. Antarctic Science Advisory Committee recommends that Antarctic science be restructured into six priority areas. Twenty-two huskies removed from Mawson in accordance with the Madrid Protocol and taken to the USA. Inland from Casey, while the old station is being removed, drilling through the Law Dome ice cap yields a 1200-metre ice core containing climate records going back 15 000 years. ANARE continental stations receive their first tourist visits by US-chartered Russian vessel Kapitan Khlebnikov.
A N A R E
February 1993 August 1993
December 1993 Summer 1993–94
6 April 1994 1994
Summer 1994–95
31 December 1994
September 1995 December 1995
Summer 1995–96
June 1996
May 1996
9 July 1997
T I M E
ANARE enters a partnership with NASA for cooperative research into human adaptation to isolation. Federal budget decides that ANARE should go to a one-ship operation supported by long-range helicopters. A review of ANARE head office staffing and structure commences. Completion of the first traverse around the head of the Lambert Glacier, the world’s largest, to measure ice movement. LARCs are used for the last time in Antarctica ending a 46-year association with army amphibious transport. Australia ratifies the Madrid Protocol. New science strategic plans completed, setting the direction for Antarctic research into the next century. A human impacts research program is established. ANARE operates with one ship for the first time since the summer of 1963–64. Long-range aircraft, S76 helicopters, are used to directly link the continental stations by air. Tourist charter flights to the AAT are re-introduced using Qantas aircraft. Over 2100 passengers see the AAT on six one-day flights. ANARE’s first voyage into winter sea ice. Australian Antarctic Data Centre established to integrate ANARE data sets and make data more widely accessible. With Polar Bird (formerly Icebird) on charter for the summer, this season supports 241 scientists and 116 days of marine research, the highest ever. Government nominates Macquarie Island and Heard Island for inclusion on the World Heritage List. Nineteen of the older buildings at Mawson, the oldest continually occupied station south of the Antarctic Circle, are placed on the Interim List of the Register of the National Estate. The 50th anniversary of the naming of ANARE sees Australia developing plans for the Antarctic program into the next century.
L I N E
xxvii
INTRODUCTION
FLYING
THE FLAG
A
Gypsy Moth biplane droned south over the vast sweep of the Antarctic ice sheet. It was 25 January 1930. Sir Douglas Mawson was sitting in the front cockpit, a leather flying helmet and goggles replacing his usual woollen balaclava. His lips were moving as he read aloud from a document on his knees, but the words, whipped back by the slipstream, were not heard by pilot Stuart Campbell in the rear cockpit: In the name of His Majesty King George the Fifth, King of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India. Whereas I have it in command from His Majesty King George the Fifth to assert the sovereign rights of His Majesty over British land discoveries met with in Antarctica. . .1
The reassuring roar of the Moth’s engine at full cruising revolutions became a puny spluttering as Campbell eased the throttle to idling speed, at the same time holding the joystick back to keep the nose of the Moth up as the air speed decreased. It was the classic way to induce a stall. In seconds the nose of the aircraft dropped with a gut-wrenching lurch as the Gypsy Moth literally began to fall out of the air. At that precise moment Campbell flung a Union Jack tied to a wooden pole from the cockpit. The Moth’s engine roared as the aircraft dived briefly to regain flying speed, then circled as the two Australians confirmed they could see the splash of imperial red lying on the crystalline whiteness below.2 Twelve days before, on 13 January, Mawson had read the proclamation under more conventional circumstances beside a cairn of rocks on the quickly named Proclamation Island. On behalf of Great Britain
1
T
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
he had claimed a generous slice of Antarctica: Enderby, Kemp and Mac. Robertson Lands. While he had not MAP OF ANTARCTICA been on the Antarctic continent itself—as the annexing SHOWING NATIONAL CLAIMS. protocol laid down—it was a distinct improvement on occasional sightings of the Antarctic coastline from the ship Discovery, unable to penetrate barriers of pack ice. Sir Douglas Mawson’s first BANZARE (British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition), supported by the three governments, was to raise the British flag on the long coastline between Enderby Land and Oates Land with the understanding that Australia should control the whole of this enormous segment of the Antarctic continent.3 Although Mawson rated the scientific aims of BANZARE voyages highly, he was equally keen to ensure that Norway, France and the USA did not encroach on what both the British and Australian 2
F
L Y I N G
T H E
F L A G
Governments regarded as their own. There were commercial as well as territorial interests to safeguard, with Norwegian whaling ships active in the area. Australian territorial interest in Antarctica began in the late nineteenth century with the scientific and commercial plans of the Australian Antarctic Exploration Committee, supported at first by Australian learned and scientific societies, but with little encourSIR DOUGLAS MAWSON IN HIS agement at all from colonial legislatures. The Royal CABIN ON DISCOVERY DURING Society of Tasmania was particularly active in making THE BANZARE VOYAGES OF a case for Antarctic exploration, but the first Australian 1929–31. Antarctic Exploration Committee was set up by the (F HURLEY) Royal Society of Victoria in Melbourne in 1866. It tried unsuccessfully for twenty years to lobby for an Antarctic expedition and to raise the necessary funds. The first party to winter on Antarctica, led by Carsten Borchgrevink aboard Southern Cross, established a base at Cape Adare during 1899. Tasmanian physicist Louis Bernacchi, who was among the wintering party, also accompanied Captain R F Scott on his first (1901–04) expedition. Australian scientists seem to have been popular recruits. Ernest Shackleton’s first Antarctic expedition in 1909 included geologist Douglas Mawson and his professor at Sydney University, T W Edgeworth David, who even then recognised the potential of his student: Just as Shackleton was the general leader, so, in all sincerity and without the pride that apes humility, I say that Mawson was the real leader who was the soul of our expedition to the Magnetic Pole. We really have in him an Australian Nansen of infinite resource, splendid physique, astonishing indifference to frost.4
Mawson was a towering figure in every way and his Antarctic achievements over half a century are his greatest legacy. Australia’s claim to almost 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent is based mainly on his exploratory and scientific voyages in 1911–14 and the summer season BANZARE of 1929–31.
3
T
4
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
Most territorial claims in Antarctica extend from the coast to the South Pole, the boundaries between the sectors radiating from the pole and dividing the continent like giant slices of a cake. The British, New Zealand and Australian claims are based on priority of discovery, followed by what has been termed ‘a sufficient display of authority’ such as the issuing of whaling licences, the policing of the area and the establishment of scientific and survey bases. Formal territories were defined on these grounds from 1903 onwards. Britain had granted a Norwegian whaling company a licence to operate in Antarctic waters between 45° east and 90° east in 1928 and it was at the end of 1928 that the British, Australian and New Zealand governments decided to support a combined expedition. Britain agreed to provide Scott’s old ship Discovery, at no cost, for an expedition to leave Australia in the summer of 1929–30. Sir Douglas Mawson accepted the leadership and immediately began raising funds. On 12 March 1929 a newly appointed Antarctic Committee held its first meeting in Melbourne to define the territorial and scientific aims of what were to be the BANZARE voyages from 1929 to 1931. The first BANZARE voyage reunited Sir Douglas with Captain J K Davis, who had skippered Aurora on the 1911–14 expedition. In contrast with the harmony of their earlier collaboration, the BANZARE voyage of 1929 was marked by tensions between them. Both men were in their late forties, both in the prime of their professional lives. Relations between them were strained even before Mawson joined Discovery in Cape Town in October 1929. Davis thought Mawson’s expedition untidy, badly organised, haphazard and ill prepared, while Mawson found Davis ‘very difficult. . .a confirmed pessimist, curt, surly, extremely rude and bad tempered’. Davis felt that Mawson did not understand the stresses and pressures a captain had. He found it difficult to get Mawson to make up his mind. Mawson used his diaries on the first BANZARE voyage to rail against Davis’s uncooperative attitude and even wondered if Davis’s lack of stamina and unpleasant disposition were caused by an inadequate diet ‘of pickles and beef’. It says a great deal for their underlying mutual respect—or tolerance—that Mawson and Davis maintained a cordial relationship in later years. On his return to Australia in March 1930 Mawson immediately began lobbying and planning for the second BANZARE voyage. It was fortunate for his ambitions that four Norwegian ships returned to their Australian and New Zealand bases that month with valuable cargoes of whale oil: the international interest in and the economic potential of the Antarctic were on opportune display. The Australian Prime Minister,
F
L Y I N G
T H E
F L A G
J H Scullin, told the House of Representatives on 22 May that a further Antarctic expedition would take place in the coming summer season, and that ‘work in the Australian sector of the Antarctic. . .is of considerable national interest and importance to the Commonwealth for economic, scientific and other points of view. . .’ Discovery was to be skippered this time by the chief officer of the first BANZARE voyage, K N MacKenzie, MAWSON (FRONT COCKPIT) who left Mawson and his scientists in no doubt that he AND PILOT STUART CAMPBELL would be a much more reasonable and indeed bold READY FOR TAKE-OFF ON skipper. But the burden of command fell heavily on A RECONNAISSANCE OF MacKenzie; he became nervous and irritable and made THE MAC. ROBERTSON it clear to Mawson in the latter stages of the voyage LAND COAST. that his whole future depended on getting Discovery (F HURLEY—COURTESY back to port safely. UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE, Although the difficult relations between Mawson MAWSON COLLECTION) and both captains with whom he sailed put some limitations on what was achieved, the BANZARE voyages were strategically and scientifically important. Few landings and flag raisings were possible, but Mawson’s voyages and his advocacy of Australia’s Antarctic interests were strongly instrumental in the British Government making the Order in Council of 7 February 1933 establishing the Australian Antarctic Territory. The Australian Government responded by passing the Australian Antarctic Acceptance Bill through the House of Representatives in May 1933 and the Senate on 1 June—although it was not proclaimed until August 1936.5 Attorney-General J G Latham cited the indiscriminate slaughter of female whales, whale calves and immature whales by the various whaling industries as a prime reason for Australia to take over and administer the territory. The area was close to Australia and might prove embarrassing in the hands of another power. It also had ‘considerable and potential economic importance’. He left the House of Representatives 5
T
H E
S I L E N C E
C A L L I N G
in no doubt as to the significance of Mawson’s BANZARE voyages in claiming the AAT: ‘As a result of the voyage of Discovery, the area had been so thoroughly visited and British sovereignty so completely established, that. . .there was no longer need for delay in providing for the administration of the territory, and for taking it over on behalf of the Commonwealth.’6 THREE CHEERS FOR THE KING In summarising the achievements of BANZARE, Mawson gave more space to the scientific achievements ON 13 JANUARY 1930 AS SIR than geographical discovery. The dredging and specimenDOUGLAS MAWSON AND HIS collecting activities alone resulted in ‘the amassing of COMPANIONS TAKE an immense amount of data regarding the region lying POSSESSION OF MAC. south of Australia and the Indian Ocean’.7 ROBERTSON, ENDERBY AND KEMP LANDS FROM Although the outbreak of World War II delayed the publication of the scientific results of BANZARE PROCLAMATION ISLAND. (some 2700 pages in two series) and forced a pause MAWSON IS FIFTH FROM LEFT. on all Australian Antarctic work, Mawson lived long (F HURLEY) enough not only to be able to reflect on the achievements of his two major expeditions and the claiming of two and a half million square miles [six million square kilometres] of Australian Antarctica, but to be a key influence in Australia’s Antarctic policies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He continued to lobby and take an active interest in future plans, and was influential in getting the Australian Government to establish bases in the AAT and to continue scientific programs, exploration and mapping. Largely as a result of his efforts, the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions—ANARE—was formed in 1947, and has operated continuously for half a century. Sir Douglas Mawson died in 1958. Mawson Station, named in his honour, was the first Australian settlement to be built on continental Antarctica and remains today the longest continuously operated station inside the Antarctic Circle. 6
THE BEGINNING 1947–1953
ONE
BIRTH
OF
ANARE
A
s soon as World War II ended Sir Douglas Mawson resumed lobbying the Australian Government to consolidate claims to the Australian Antarctic Territory. In October 1945 the Australian press reported that he was making preliminary moves to organise—but not to lead—an expedition. By then he was 62. Others were also interested in Antarctica. Scientific bodies, particularly the National Research Council, were anxious to renew work there, public interest was stirred by press hints about uranium deposits and there was talk of renewing the Antarctic whaling industry. The activity of other nations meant that if Australia did not do something to consolidate her hold on the territory she claimed, she risked losing it. The British and Americans were active on the Antarctic Peninsula and in 1946–47 Admiral R E Byrd led a large expedition—the biggest ever mounted in Antarctica—to explore, photograph and map the continent and to extend American influence. Byrd’s ‘Operation Highjump’ succeeded in photographing almost the entire coastline of the continent, as well as several hundred thousand square kilometres of the interior—a tremendous achievement even though it was a massive assault organised on military lines, using 4700 men and 13 ships (including an aircraft carrier).1 Photographs taken of the coastline of the AAT were to be crucial in locating and establishing Mawson Station in 1954. The massive United States operation was regarded with suspicion by Australian diplomats, aware that ‘the State Department had always reserved the position of the United States Government regarding all Antarctic claims’. Australian concerns were heightened by the legal opinion that discovery followed by annexation was insufficient for claiming territory
9
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
if that were not followed by a subsequent continuity of ‘effective occupation’.2 A top secret note from the Australian Embassy in Washington dated 6 December 1946 informed the Department of External Affairs that despite Admiral Byrd’s refusal to be drawn into any discussion of claims to sovereignty in the area, there were grounds for thinking that ‘the United States, standing firm on its refusal to recognise any other nation’s claims to Australian [Antarctic] territory, might seek to lay the foundations for claims of its own to any part of the subcontinent which might turn out to be useful’. This note also expressed concern that the Americans were planning to enter the AAT and had made no formal approach to the Australian Government to do so.3 It was clearly time for Australia to think seriously about its claim to 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent. The key to the post-war activity was the prestige and personality of Sir Douglas Mawson. Later, ANARE’s first director, Phillip Law, said that only Mawson could have talked the Government into an Antarctic expedition when its resources were stretched with post-war reconstruction: Mawson was fundamental in persuading the government to set up the ANARE in 1947. . .It was Mawson who revived the whole business of Antarctica post-World War II and said, ‘Look, the war interrupted what we were trying to do, now let’s get back onto it and get it done’. And then he persuaded them to set up a committee. . .which later became the Executive Planning Committee. He was a strong influence.
10
On 2 December 1946 the Department of External Affairs had convened a committee of interested government departments—Defence, Fisheries, Mineral Resources, Supply and Shipping, Meteorological Service and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)— and Mawson himself. The committee recommended that plans for an Antarctic expedition should be made using a naval ship equipped with aircraft, and with the aim of finding a site for a base. Mawson suggested that Wyatt Earp be used as it had sailed to Antarctica before and was made of ‘stout timbers’. Cabinet accepted the recommendation and on 20 December 1946 the Australian public was told that a short reconnaissance voyage coordinated by the CSIR was to be sent to Antarctica ‘this summer’.4 ‘This summer’ was far too optimistic, but the departments concerned did act quickly. Scientific and practical concern with weather made it obvious that meteorological observations and research should be part of the scientific program. In meteorological terms there was a complete
B
I R T H
O F
terra incognita south and west of Tasmania. In January 1947 the South-West Pacific Regional Commission of the International Meteorological Organisation recommended that meteorological stations be established on Macquarie Island and various other islands. As a result, RAAF flights went far to the south to complete a photographic reconnaissance of Macquarie Island, to investigate conditions in waters south of Australia, and to test aircraft performance and crew fatigue.5 By early May 1947 much had been resolved. The Government had agreed to provide £100 000 [$200 000] towards the Antarctic expedition and £50 000 [$100 000] to refurbish HMAS Wyatt Earp.6 An Antarctic policy committee called the Executive Planning Committee and chaired by the Permanent Head of External Affairs, John Burton, had been set up consisting of representatives of the Navy, Air Force, Treasury, CSIR and Fisheries Department, plus Commander Oom, the captain of Wyatt Earp (and a veteran of BANZARE), Mawson and J K Davis. On 5 May this committee decided that Group Captain Stuart Campbell, a third veteran of BANZARE, was the most suitable leader, that he and other team members should be obtained at once, and that another ship would be needed as well as Wyatt Earp. Work the following summer should be limited to reconnaissance of a site for a base on the continent and setting up a station on Macquarie Island.7 The meeting was followed by a conference on the proposed expedition. There was concern whether Wyatt Earp, 28 years old and rather small, could do the job. The aims of the expedition were necessarily limited. Discussion took place about who would have command— a seaman while at sea, and the expedition leader on shore. 8 It all sounded unpromising, particularly for those who remembered the clashes between ship’s captain and expedition leader on the BANZARE voyages. The fragile nature of these plans was not made known to the public, but on 7 May there was an announcement that Group Captain Stuart Campbell had been offered the position of leader. At first undecided whether he would accept the leadership, Campbell eventually did so and set about organising the expedition.9 Later that month the Executive Planning Committee had firmed its ideas. There were to be two island bases and the continental reconnaissance party, with eleven or twelve people in each island group—meteorologists (from the Meteorological Bureau), physicists (from universities), geologists and geomagneticians (Mineral Resources), radio operators (RAAF), surveyors, cooks and diesel mechanics (Army, Navy or civilian).10 Men were to be recruited from government departments as far as possible, then universities and the armed services. As a last resort, advertisements
A N A R E
11
T
12
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
would be placed for the remainder. A scientific liaison officer and a medical officer were needed, and an LST (Landing Ship Tanks) would be used as well as Wyatt Earp.11 Davis, consistent with his nickname ‘Gloomy’, advised Campbell that LSTs were unsuitable for the Southern Ocean because of their shallow draught and box-like design, but Campbell told him that the seaworthiness of the LSTs could not be questioned.12 By July the Executive Planning Committee had ordered scientific equipment, appointed an advisory scientific committee to coordinate scientific activities, and decided on a title: the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition, with the pleasing acronym of ANARE.13 The Antarctic was not in the forefront of the Australian Government’s post-war thinking, although strategic concerns were evident—there was always the chance of other nations moving in on an empty AAT. The Government, with an eye to revenue, was interested in exploring the commercial possibilities of fishing, whaling and any mineral resources that might be found, and the need for meteorological and other scientific observations in the Antarctic was also acknowledged.14 But there was the usual reluctance to begin spending large sums of money. Because of Mawson’s lobbying of the Minister for External Affairs, Dr H V Evatt, to take some action to buttress Australia’s Antarctic claims, the ANARE office was loosely attached administratively to the DEA. The executive officer of the fledgling ANARE, Stuart Campbell, was appointed in May 1947, knowing that the first expedition to Heard Island on HMALST 3501 would have to leave before the end of that year. Campbell came from the Department of Civil Aviation, where he was the Director of Air Navigation and Safety. He was reputed to be a good administrator and one of few people with Antarctic experience—he had directed flight operations during Mawson’s two BANZARE voyages in 1929–31. His flying experience was extensive, including a period in Papua New Guinea in the 1930s, after which he was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. During World War II he commanded the famous Catalina squadron from Darwin, and flew many missions against the Japanese. He was a man of action, an adventurer and a hands-on administrator. Campbell had no intention of flying a desk in Melbourne while all the action was elsewhere. He planned not only to accompany the Heard Island team on LST 3501, but to stay on the island for four months and be picked up by Wyatt Earp on its way back from its voyage to pick a site for a permanent Australian station on the Antarctic mainland. He set up the ANARE office in a suite of rooms in Victoria Barracks, St Kilda Road. His small staff consisted of administrative officer Trevor Heath, storeman George Smith and several typists. Smith worked at
B
I R T H
O F
A N A R E
Tottenham, a suburb thirteen kilometres west of the city of Melbourne, where the RAAF had provided a building in their No. 1 Stores Depot as a packing and storage area for the Antarctic venture. Smith’s interview with Stuart Campbell consisted of Smith putting his head round Campbell’s door and Campbell saying, ‘Oh, you’re George Smith. All right, you’re to go back to Tottenham and work with the RAAF till I tell you we want you.’ Six weeks later he told Smith, ‘We’ve got a bit of work for you.’ Smith said, ‘Well I’ve been around for about six weeks—is there any chance of getting a bit of pay?’ George Smith stood six foot four inches in his socks [193 centimetres] and possessed a voice that could THE ANTARCTIC DIVISION’S eclipse that of any sergeant major on parade. He was LEGENDARY STOREMAN to be the indispensable storeman for ANARE for the GEORGE SMITH IN RELAXED next 31 years. With Norm Jones (his clerk) and Trevor AND CONVIVIAL MODE. Heath he had to organise supplies for an unknown (P LAW) number of men going to an unknown destination in the south. Smith and Heath went through RAAF catalogues, choosing anything they thought might be needed. Smith, who understood RAAF procedures, wrote out his own vouchers, typed them up, put them through the RAAF process, and withdrew the material he wanted on the basis that ‘if you wanted it, there and then you took it’. It was ten years before the RAAF caught up with him. Physicists came from the universities, particularly Melbourne University where Dr Henry Rathgeber had his postgraduate students making equipment to study cosmic rays. Four of them became so interested that they joined the expedition. Melbourne University also provided another recruit. Phillip Law, a Victorian and the son of a schoolteacher, had always been interested in bushwalking, skiing and the outdoor life and had read all he could about Antarctica. After finishing school he studied physics at Melbourne University and in 1947 was a lecturer there. His professor, Leslie Martin, was often in Canberra, and one day as Martin and Law were walking down a passage Martin commented that the forthcoming Antarctic Expedition was having trouble finding a chief scientist: I stopped in my tracks and said, ‘Did you mention my name?’ and he said, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t be interested in that, Law, would you?’ I said, ‘I’d give my right arm to go on that’. He said, ‘Good gracious me, I’ll
13
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
go and ring up’. And within a few weeks I had an interview and I was appointed the senior scientist for the expedition.
Phil Law (who would take over the reins of ANARE within two years) was, like Campbell, a born adventurer and a fitness fanatic. A short, vigorous man, clean shaven in those days, Law was then 35 years of age and crackled with energy and enthusiasm for what lay ahead. He was appointed senior scientific officer on 7 July 1947. Two days later the Executive Planning Committee decided that the official title of the expedition should be the ‘Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition 1947’.15 Law was to coordinate the scientific programs and carry out cosmic ray observations during Wyatt Earp’s proposed voyage to the Antarctic. Setting up major expeditions from scratch in six months was difficult and compromises, acceptance of second bests, were inevitable. While the practical problems were being solved, Law had to put in place a scientific program that not only would yield useful results immediately, but would look towards the future of Australian scientific research in Antarctica—if there was one. He was aware that meteorology and geology were the priorities from the Government’s point of view. Australia’s weather was profoundly influenced by the Antarctic, and any advance warning of what was coming would be clearly and immediately beneficial. If there were valuable mineral resources available for easy picking, naturally they would not only benefit Australia, but would help justify the millions of dollars to be spent. There were also longer term scientific objectives to be considered: As a physicist I was familiar with various aspects of geophysics—meteorology, gravitation, seismology, geomagnetism, upper atmosphere physics and cosmic rays—and it was obvious that Heard Island and Macquarie Island would provide opportunities for unique observatory studies in those fields. Even more obvious was the need for investigation of the zoological and biological species and general ecology of these sub-Antarctic islands and of their geology.
14
Law took up his duties as senior scientific officer at the ANARE office at Victoria Barracks on 1 August 1947. Later, he said that his job was to sit at a desk and think up all the possibilities, then try to get appropriate people interested. Law believed that the main scientific interest lay first in meteorology, followed by geology, biology (because of the abundant animal life), geophysics ‘and anything else you could think of’. He knew that the Government’s priority was to establish a territorial claim on Antarctica.
B
I R T H
O F
A N A R E
Having said that the main purpose is political, one must realise that they used science as a pseudo reason for going—as all the nations did—in order to cloak the real reason. No one likes to come out and say, ‘Oh, politically we’re colonialists, we want to go out and grab another bit of empire’. So you say, ‘Well, we’re going down for scientific purposes’. Later on it became pretty clear that Antarctica—apart from the Falkland Islands area—has no strategic importance. But in those days there was a possibility that it might be strategically important, but that’s political, it’s not scientific. So I had to design a scientific program for two reasons: first to produce the facade behind which all the rest could be carried out, but second to try to get some pay-off. . .and get as much scientific work out of it as we usefully could for the big money being spent.
Stuart Campbell set about finding personnel. He did this as far as possible by the ‘old boy’ network, interviewing men who were suggested by their government departments, especially ex-servicemen who could be recommended by their commanding officers. He liked strong characters, people he thought could cope well with the conditions they were likely to meet. For most positions he had plenty of people to choose from. Many jobs were not advertised; however, even limited publicity brought over 500 applications, mostly from men, but also from two schoolboys and one woman. People of several nationalities applied to go to Antarctica, but only Australians were chosen as it was an Australian venture. There was no thought in those days of taking women to the Antarctic, so the woman applicant missed out.16 Nor was there any psychological screening, later an important part of the selection process. Campbell: If they looked like good kids, I put them on. . .you’ve got to make a judgment. Most people are all right—give them a job and they’ll stick to it. Psychological screening came in during the war to screen people to see if they were going to be successful pilots, but it couldn’t be done. You can’t tell what a man is going to be like until you give him a job and he goes and does it.
ANARE expeditioners were recruited by formality, association and random collision. Stuart Campbell told applicants there were to be three parties, one for Macquarie Island, one for Wyatt Earp and one for an unknown destination. Heard Island was being kept a secret. Phil Law: The Heard Island bit was put in at the specific request of the British Government who said Heard Island—our claim on it—was disputed by
15
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
the Americans because they reckoned they discovered it. The British say it was first sighted by an Englishman. But certainly the first person to ever go there was an American. And the French island of Kerguelen is just a few hundred miles to the north-west. . .the Germans had used it as a base for raiders to raid allied shipping in the Indian Ocean during World War II. So you see, Heard Island was pretty important. And the secret instruction or request from London to our government asked that we do something about it. It was all kept very hush-hush in the early part.
16
Alan Campbell-Drury read an article about the expedition in the newspapers. He was in Japan with the navy but wrote to Mawson, whom he had known in South Australia, asking to go on the expedition. Mawson told him to come to Australia, so he did ‘the quickest exit from the navy ever!’ Mawson also recommended John Abbottsmith to Campbell. He was taken on as a diesel fitter. Alan Gilchrist, a young doctor, heard at a British Medical Association meeting that the expedition was having trouble finding medical staff. He loved the snow country, so applied to go. The next essential was equipment, and here George Smith’s expertise and the expedition’s needs came together. If the RAAF did not have what the storemen wanted, they ‘scrounged’. Some cold-weather gear, including heavy white high-necked sweaters made from unscoured wool smelling faintly of lanoline, came from Royal Navy disposals (the Royal Navy having sent warm clothing designed for the North Sea with its Pacific ships). Huts also came from disposals; the best were the fourteen-sided American buildings designed for Alaska. The Australian models, designed for the tropics, were not as successful, despite modifications. Food came from the RAN and landing pontoons from the Army. There were still shortages, and Smith had to forage around Australia for many essential items such as valves for transmitters. As cargo space was not a problem—the LST had plenty of room—he took everything that might possibly come in handy on the stations. Across the road was an old building containing tent pegs, mallets and mallet handles, so he put them in the store. If they could not be used as mallets, they could always be used as firewood, he reasoned. Wood itself was also a problem but, fortunately, the huts at Tottenham stood on wooden supports which were stayed by four-by-two struts. ‘I don’t think there was one left within any of the sheds within two hundred yards of us by the time we finished. How the place didn’t fall down, I don’t know’, Smith said. Many items could be obtained for nothing, but when things had to be paid for there was a problem—money. As a start, firms were asked to
B
I R T H
O F
donate goods, and many were generous: MacRobertsons (as they had done for Mawson’s BANZARE voyages) gave chocolate and confectionery, and Commonwealth Oil Refineries supplied fuel. Other goods were obtained as cheaply as possible. Rather than buy expensive huts the expedition built its own, using the doctor as carpenter’s assistant. In later years Phil Law persuaded MacRobertsons to donate the four-gallon [18.18 litres] tins in which nuts arrived from South America. They became polar toilets—and expeditioners sometimes scored the bonus of a few handfuls of cashew nuts before the containers were pressed into sanitary service. As their work would be finished when the expeditions left—or so it was thought—Campbell asked George Smith and Norm Jones if they would like to join an expedition south. Smith was only just out of the army and did not feel fit enough, but Jones agreed to go and was taken on as a cook. By July the itinerary of Wyatt Earp was fixed. She was to go to Commonwealth Bay in December for scientific work and reconnaissance of the Cape Freshfield area, then to Princess Elizabeth Land to look for a site for a continental station, and refuel at Kerguelen on her return to Australia. LST 3501, meanwhile, would set down the shore parties, first on Heard Island, then on Macquarie Island.17 The Executive Planning Committee held few meetings after July. It had decided the main outlines of the expeditions and the rest was up to Campbell to organise and implement. The Minister for External Affairs, Dr Evatt, then had the pleasure of reporting to Cabinet in August 1947 that scientific and meteorological stations were to be established on the two sub-Antarctic islands, reconnaissance was to be done in Antarctica itself, and a ship was to be obtained for Antarctic work.18 Meanwhile the new chief scientific officer, Phil Law, found he did not have to spend much time in his bleak office at Victoria Barracks. By a fortunate coincidence earlier in the year, Law had been invited by Leslie Martin, his professor at the Melbourne University Physics Department, to join a research team to develop a program of cosmic ray research. Working in conjunction with Dr Henry Rathgeber of Melbourne University’s Cosmic Ray Research Group, the team decided to send cosmic ray equipment on Wyatt Earp and to Macquarie and Heard to study longer term variations in the composition and intensity of the rays. Law, on Wyatt Earp, would measure latitude variations between Australia and Antarctica. Most cosmic rays—charged particles from outer space—are deflected by the earth’s magnetic field, but they occur at much greater frequency near the poles. The measuring equipment to be used had to be tested in the snow, in a hut specially built at Mt Hotham in the Victorian Alps.
A N A R E
17
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
The Cosmic Ray Group included six postgraduate students, David Caro, Ken Hines, Fred Jacka, Jo Jelbart, John Prescott and Leigh Speedy. Getting the cumbersome scientific apparatus to ‘Cosray Hut’ in August was difficult, involving not only vehicles but also packhorses. On the way one packhorse slipped on slushy snow and rolled fifteen metres down a steep slope, neighing shrilly and losing its load. Fortunately the horse was not hurt nor were the instruments irreparably damaged, and by 23 August ‘mechanical counters clicked intermittently and neon bulbs flashed as the incoming mesons of the cosmic rays triggered off the Geiger counters’.19 During the trips to and from Mt Hotham, often under dangerous conditions, Law established a leadership style in field work that changed little over the years. Fred Jacka, a 22-year-old physicist who was to join the Heard Island party, was impressed by Law’s knowledge of the mountain conditions and his capacity to get things done: Phil was a small man but extremely energetic and fiery. His drive, his energy and his determination were very apparent in the beginning. He was very much the leader in the field exercises. . .very effective, very sympathetic, but there was no letting up at all.20
Sometimes the scientists in Cosray Hut were snowed in for days, and Fred Jacka remembers another facet of Law’s leadership style that was to be a hallmark of later years and many Antarctic voyages: Phil took charge in a very masterly way and entertained the gathering very well with a clarinet. . .he played and we sang songs and he told stories. He was very much the centre of the whole social scene at that time.21
18
Law’s own discipline was physics. Oceanography and marine biology would be attempted during the voyages of both LST 3501 and Wyatt Earp, but he could find no professor in an Australian university prepared to take responsibility for the Island biology programs—seals, penguins, flying birds and plants. A young biology graduate, Ron Kenny, was found for the pioneer Macquarie Island party, but no one for Heard Island. It was hoped that Alan Gilchrist, the medical officer, would carry out bird observations in addition to his other duties, with Law acting as his supervisor for the biological work. By September the cold weather testing of the cosmic ray equipment was over and ANARE had more recruits. Jacka and Jelbart had been appointed to take one set of cosmic ray equipment to Heard Island—Hines and Speedy would go to Macquarie. Law would operate the third set on Wyatt Earp.
B
I R T H
O F
A N A R E
On 6 November 1947 the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon. J B Chifley, publicly announced that Australia had organised an Antarctic expedition. There was a good deal of media interest which must have pleased the Department of External Affairs bureaucrats who had drafted a top secret Cabinet minute recommending such publicity, ‘with a view to consolidating Australian territorial claims in Antarctica. . .’.22 It was hoped regular broadcasts would be made from Heard and Macquarie Islands—and indeed from Wyatt Earp . Photographers would accompany each party to ensure a wide pictorial coverage of expedition activities, including a flag-raising ceremony to be conducted by Campbell on arrival at Heard Island. The Postmaster General’s Department would also arrange for the special postmarking of envelopes posted from Heard Island. The Government was determined to get maximum publicity and Clause 4 of the Cabinet minute left no doubt as to the real reasons behind the venture: That the leader of the Expedition be directed that in the event of a landing by any other party during the Expedition’s stay on Heard Island, he should peacefully assert Australian rights over the islands [ie Heard and the neighbouring McDonald Island].23
Expedition members did not undertake any special training for the Antarctic; they were meant to know their jobs already. The two cooks worked for a couple of days in a bakery to look at bread making, but there was no fire drill or any other specialist work. The men did have medical tests and Abbottsmith remembered that he had his teeth specially done with different fillings—porcelain, gold and amalgam—so dentists could see which were most successful in low temperatures. All worked well, he said. With no other training to do, the men were sent to Tottenham to organise their own gear, practise assembling huts and other pieces of equipment and help with the packing. This last was an advantage—when they came to unpack the material on the stations, they had some idea of how things had been packed, and they all got to know each other in the packing process. When the radio operators arrived back in Melbourne late in October after training at the RAAF wireless school in Ballarat, they found Headquarters working at full pressure to make the sailing date in the middle of November. They joined the others in choosing gear and packing, and Arthur Scholes was fascinated by one piece of equipment he was given—a silk combination suit, ‘a neck-to-ankle affair’—but without the holes where combinations usually have holes. He never solved the mystery of what to do with it.24
19
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Every morning the men reported to Victoria Barracks where Campbell had his office. Two luxurious hire cars with uniformed drivers, the usual transport for the Department of Foreign Affairs, would arrive. Instead of their normal passengers in dark suits they carried expedition members, dressed in an assortment of old uniforms and overalls, out to Tottenham. There the men crated bags of cement, loaded trucks, boxed and stored different items all day, and then climbed back into the luxury cars for the ride home.25 Already some members of the expedition were standing out. Dr Alan Gilchrist rode to Tottenham each day on his beloved motor cycle. On wet days he wore the expedition clothing to test it, but these tests came to an abrupt end when he skidded off his machine in wet concrete in the middle of Melbourne. Despite this incident, he planned to take his motor bike to Heard Island.26 Expeditioners Bob Dovers and Johnny Abbottsmith were sent to a Melbourne record store to buy records for the Heard and Macquarie parties. Abbottsmith: We said, ‘Look, we want 200 records’. The girl nearly fainted on the spot. She said, ‘Oh, I’ll take you to the manager. . .’ He said, ‘What do you want?’ We said we didn’t know. I wouldn’t know a record from a record in those days. So we left it to them and they made two parcels up, one for Heard and one for Macquarie.
20
The physicists were still working frantically on the cosmic ray equipment. Fred Jacka remembered reading a great deal about Antarctic matters and studying the subject he was to work on. J K Davis told him Heard Island was ‘the most God-forsaken place I’ve seen in all my days’, but this only made Fred all the more anxious to see it. On 6 November Prime Minister Ben Chifley announced the expedition’s aims: to maintain Australian and British interests in Antarctica, to find a site for a permanent base and to undertake scientific work.27 Commander Karl Oom was to command the recently commissioned HMAS Wyatt Earp. Of Swedish ancestry, he had served in the RAN during the war. All the stories about him were untrue, he said cheerfully when interviewed. Oom had experience in Antarctic waters as a hydrographer on Mawson’s second BANZARE voyage in 1930–31. The wooden-hulled Wyatt Earp had been further strengthened against the ice. She would carry radar, echo-sounding gear, instruments to measure cosmic rays, fifteen months’ food supply and the carcasses of thirty sheep. The ship would also carry an aircraft, flown by Squadron Leader Gray, who had never seen the snow and hated the cold.28
B
I R T H
O F
A N A R E
The captain of LST 3501 was Lieutenant Commander George Dixon, an experienced and popular skipper. Dixon had extensive seagoing experience, including rounding Cape Horn in a sailing ship before the mast. Someone, probably Campbell, had drawn up advice to station leaders. They were to delegate responsibilities and give the men as much freedom as possible, always treating them as equal members of a team. They were to remember PHIL LAW MAINTAINING HIS that the aim was the success of the expedition, ‘nothing ELABORATE COSMIC RAY else!’. They were to be fair and impartial, and espeMEASURING EQUIPMENT ON cially nice to the cook, who had a ‘lousy job’. To keep BOARD WYATT EARP, 1948. morale up, they should not allow too much spare time, (E MCCARTHY) and should break the monotony with celebrations, such as special Saturday nights, birthdays, Christmas, and a sweep for the Melbourne Cup. Spirits were to be limited to a nip a day, and port was provided for the Royal Toast.29 Preparations for the Heard and Macquarie expeditions continued at the Tottenham store where the men were loading trucks until two days before the first departure. There was no guarantee that the stores, carefully packed and checked by George Smith, would all get on board. According to Heard Island radio operator Alan Campbell-Drury: There was a lot of pilfering on the wharf. One morning just before we sailed, old Alf Hayter, the bosun on the LST, was in the middle of having a shave. I went up onto the bridge and Alf was waving a shaving brush at the wharfies down below and shouting, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you blokes. You get twice our pay and half the cargo, and you’re still not happy!’ And that sort of stuck in my mind. They were getting into our chocolate and what grog we had. And, mind you, some of this chocolate was our emergency rations! But anything sort of went in those days.
Arthur Scholes remembered how excited and tired the men were as the last truck, loaded to capacity, left the depot. Then the Heard Island
21
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
party was sworn in and signed statutory declarations of allegiance, and everyone headed for the LST, berthed at Station Pier, dwarfed beside two large overseas liners. LST 3501 had been built in Canada in 1943. Before she left for the south on 17 November 1947 she was inspected by the Minister for the Navy, W J F Riordan. Members of the expedition lined up in front of the ship, facing a naval guard of honour, and newsreel and press photographers were busy while Campbell introduced each man to the minister. Arthur Scholes was standing beside Norm Jones, the cook. ‘Ah, the most important man in the party!’ said the minister. ‘How right he was!’ commented Arthur.30 Once this formality was over, the first Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition was ready to leave.
22
TWO
HEARD ISLAND
Heard Island is a very threatening place, the sheer malevolence of it hits you when you go there. It is essentially black and white, stark, because the black volcanic rock cliffs rise out of a grey seething sea, the wind is blowing, and the birds are just floating around in the gale and screaming. The tops of the island’s black cliffs are coated with a thick, 50-foot or so layer of glacier white ice, and this disappears up into the swirling mists that are engulfing this great mountain. I’ve brought men who have wintered in Antarctica into Atlas Cove, and they lean over the rail and say, ‘Jesus what a place!’ Phil Law
F
inding a ship capable of carrying passengers and heavy cargo and able to combat the wild seas and hurricane-strength winds of the Southern Ocean was difficult in post-war Australia but the Naval Board, after some collective soul searching, decided that an LST (Landing Ship Tanks) could do the job. Landing Ship Tanks were substantial vessels mass-produced during the war as multi-purpose, cargo-carrying work vessels. They were designed to run up on to the beach and discharge tanks, troops, and heavy equipment through their blunt bow doors, over a big steel ramp which dropped down for that purpose. (It was unavoidable, considering the speed of construction, that some LSTs were jerry-built. Numbers of them had broken in half in Atlantic storms while ferrying goods from America to England during the war.) They were essentially vast cargo holds with engine, bridge and accommodation tacked on the back, so there was no shortage of cargo space on HMALST 3501 for the Heard Island operation.
23
T
H E
H
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
eard Island has a unique record in the history of exploration. It was ‘discovered’ no fewer than eight times. An active volcano, rising sheer out of the sea to 2745 metres, its peak, Big Ben, is seldom seen through the constant swirling clouds. Situated south of the Antarctic Convergence, where the chilled Antarctic waters of the Southern Ocean meet the warmer waters of the Indian Ocean, it is 4000 kilometres south west of Western Australia and some 1500 kilometres from the Antarctic coastline. A 42-kilometre-long island running north-west to south-east, it is heavily glaciated and ice cliffs form much of the coastline. The climate is Antarctic, while the vegetation and animal populations are sub-Antarctic. Winds in excess of 130 kilometres per hour are common throughout the year. The first person claiming to sight it was Englishman Captain Peter Kemp, who in 1833 was exploring the area in his ship Magnet, looking for sealing and whaling opportunities. The island appeared on his track chart.1 Sixteen years later an American, Captain Thomas Long, also reported sighting land, but neither he nor Kemp published his discovery. This was left to another American, Captain John Heard, who saw the island on a trip from Boston to Melbourne in his ship Oriental. If discovering a place means publishing its location so that others can find it, Heard’s discovery of
Heard Island was the basis for America’s claim to ownership.2 News moved slowly, however, and the following year four British captains thought they had discovered the island, as did a German in 1857.3 The importance of discovery lay in the promise of wealth from the thousands of seals found on the island’s beaches. By the 1850s, whaling and sealing had been established in the Southern Ocean for 70 years and in many places the supply of animals was declining. Heard Island was plundered from then on by visiting gangs of sealers for its fur seals and blubber from elephant seals.
After the 1880s, due to indiscriminate slaughter, it was difficult to find enough seals. Few further voyages were attempted and in 1902, when a German group under Professor von Drygalski visited, the island had been deserted by humans for some years.4 In the early years of the twentieth century Heard Island was deserted and little interest was taken in it until in 1908 a Norwegian asked the British Government whether they had claimed the island and if so, whether he ➤
H
could operate a floating whaling factory there. Some whaling was carried on for a short period, and the island was claimed for Britain.5 Whaling was revived in 1926 when a South African firm obtained a licence to operate in the area and in January 1929 one of its ships, Kildalkey, visited Heard Island under the command of Captain H O Hansen. Kildalkey also landed a French geologist, E Aubert de la Rue, who carried out a survey on the northern part of the island.6 Later in 1929 nine members of the BANZAR expedition under Sir Douglas Mawson stayed for eight days and undertook surveying, photography, biology, and exploration. Elephant seal carcasses were abundant, they observed, and had been stripped a few weeks previously, so some sealing continued.7
E A R D
I
S L A N D
In the 1930s all sealing and whaling finally ceased on Heard Island as the price of oil crashed during the Depression, and the next phase in the island’s history was as a possible base for submarines. During World War II the Australian Navy checked it to see if the Germans were operating there. They were not, but German raiders did use the nearby Kerguelen Islands on a number of occasions to shelter, make running repairs, take on fresh water, and change the identity of individual ships.8 After the war the British Government, aware of the American interest in Heard Island based on historical precedent and its strategic importance, asked the Australian Government to occupy the island as part of its post-war Antarctic activity.9
The Captain, Lieutenant Commander Dixon, had encouraged his ship’s surgeon, Peter Blaxland, to put his MG sports car in the cargo space so that the two men could have transport from Fremantle to Perth during a stop-over there. Even with the prefabricated huts, a year’s stores, and a bulldozer, there was plenty of spare cargo space. The expedition’s doctor, Alan Gilchrist, put his prized 500 cc Indian motor cycle on board and took it south. Dixon had selected LST 3501 for the Antarctic expeditions from the LSTs available after the Australian Government had acquired a flotilla of six in 1946. Allegedly the pick of the bunch, she had lost her bow doors in an accident in the Coral Sea in 1946, and without them (they were designed to give the bow a modest convex shape to help steer the ship) looked even more like a shoe box. Dixon, with the help of naval architects, redesigned the devices which held the bow doors in place at sea, enabling them to be opened and closed more quickly in emergencies. This was to be a blessing later at Heard Island. On 17 November 1947, LST 3501 passed through Port Phillip Heads and turned her reconstituted bows to the west. Bass Strait was relatively calm, with a slight swell. ‘Doc’ Gilchrist began the time honoured ANARE tradition of breaking out sea sickness pills for the landlubber expeditioners. He thought they might help 50 per cent of sufferers, but fell foul of his own statistics. He was one of the first to succumb.10
25
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
As the ship neared Fremantle the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh was celebrated with loyal toasts. The party practised landing with an LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle and Personnel) and were entertained at the Fremantle Town Hall with beer and sandwiches. ANARE leader Stuart Campbell joined the party, and LST 3501 HMALST 3501—LATER sailed for Heard Island on 28 November 1947. Dr Peter LABUAN. Blaxland’s MG sports car had to remain on board, as (P LAW) Dixon was told by the navy that he might have to return directly to Melbourne from Heard. For the first four days south the weather was warm and calm, the nights tropical and balmy, and everyone enjoyed the trip. Expeditioners were allowed a full run of the ship—even access to the bridge at any time, a privilege that became a cherished part of the ANARE experience in later years, with most polar captains allowing expeditioners to come and go at will, except while entering or leaving port. Fine weather left with December, and the Roaring Forties struck. The flat-bottomed LST not only rolled alarmingly (40 degrees from the upright was not uncommon), but the whole vessel flexed and twisted. Dixon was heard to say that they were the biggest seas he had ever seen and later he wrote: An enormous green wall of water would appear ahead. Up the bows would rise, and the white top of the oncoming sea would break angrily and disappear beneath them. Occasionally when the sea had passed, the bows would fall unsupported and pile-drive an oncoming sea with a resounding crash. Seeing is believing the way an LST can bend. The whole structure quivers like a spring board after a diver has jumped off. The decks bend in ripples like a caterpillar in progress. Bulkheads pant with a loud banging noise as the ship gathers for another attack. And so it goes on, making sleep out of the question.11
26
With no land masses to break the onrush of wind and waves around the globe, 30-metre-high waves are not uncommon in the Southern Ocean. When the trough is taken into consideration as well, the towering
H
E A R D
I
S L A N D
walls of water are higher than substantial ships. Sub-Lieutenant John Lavett remembered that first storm: We made only 50 miles [93 kilometres] one day, which would have been even better if it had been in the direction we really wanted to go. The wind shrieked. The swell ahead of us was immense to the point where the waves had separate breakers, of say seven feet [2.23 metres], on top of them. The overall size of the seas was difficult to measure because they towered over the ship. Our height above sea level on the bridge was about 36 feet [10.9 metres], and we were still looking up at walls of water. Fifty feet [15.2 metres], seventy feet [21.3 metres]? Who knows?
At the height of the tempest came a dramatic call over the loudspeaker system: ‘All hands and expedition personnel muster on the foredeck! Deck cargo is loose forward!’ A particularly venomous wave had crashed over the forecastle, and washed aft over the main deck. A bridging pontoon, torn from its lashings, stove in the bows of a motor boat. Drums of aviation fuel broke loose and began rolling about the heaving deck. Stuart Campbell, in tennis shoes and overalls, worked beside navy and ANARE men, slipping and sliding over the oily main deck securing the cargo. Expedition radio operator Arthur Scholes wrote in Fourteen Men: Once I paused in the middle of heaving on a drum, my stomach muscles exhausted with strain. I glanced at the rising and plunging bows. It was an awe-inspiring sight! Magnificent, yet dreadful. Great mountains of turbulent water lay ahead. Down in the trough the water surrounded the ship like the grey walls of a prison. The water walls were higher than the funnel. . .we worked with the energy born of despair.12
Fears that the LST might actually break in two were fuelled by a crack, about one metre long, which developed in the steel deck near the bridge. Johnny Abbottsmith, the expedition’s diesel mechanic, recalled how they watched this crack open and close as the LST bucked and twisted, riding over the huge seas. It could not be welded because of the continual expansion and contraction. The ship’s chief engineer came up with an ingenious solution. Holes were drilled in a steel plate big enough to straddle the fracture: Then when all the holes were drilled everybody stood by. The people under the bulkhead were ready with the nuts, and the sailors up on top had the bolts ready to drop into the holes when they lined up. And when we were down in the trough of a wave they banged in the bolts and they
27
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
had the nuts on the bolts from underneath before we hit the top of the wave again. Then they tightened them up and stopped the crack from developing right across the boat and breaking it in half.
After four days of full gale, the weather began to ease, but it was still very rough. At 9.45 pm, Sub-Lieutenant John Lavett was on the bridge when the engine room telegraph rang. The engines were about to be stopped as there was a problem with the fuel. Lavett said his first thought was: ‘Gee, you can’t stop here!’ But stop we did. The lights went out and the only sound was the loud ringing of the gyroscope alarm bell in the bowels of the ship, working off its temporary emergency supply. We began to wallow and broach. If this had happened a few hours earlier, I do not think our chances would have been better than minimal, but again we were lucky. The enormous pounding the ship had experienced had started a couple of plates, and salt water had entered a fuel tank.
Landfall was made on 11 December, with a rare sighting of Big Ben, the 2745 metre volcano almost permanently cloud covered. Johnny Abbottsmith: When we first saw the island we just looked at it in amazement! We were forty miles [74.4 kilometres] out to sea and all we could see was this big ice-cream cone sticking up in the air, out of the clouds.
With only rudimentary maps and charts available, Dixon approached Heard Island with extreme caution. The first plan was to run down the eastern, more sheltered side of the island and land the expedition at Spit Bay on the extreme south of the island. Then it was hoped to establish a cache of stores at Atlas Cove in the north (where a small dwelling, Admiralty Hut, already existed, built in January 1929 by the crew of the whaler Kildalkey to shelter shipwrecked sailors). With depth sounder pinging and engines at dead slow, the LST nosed towards the inhospitable shoreline of Spit Bay.13 Campbell began to organise a landing party to find a suitable camp site. Aub Gotley, the senior weather man and OIC of the first Heard Island ANARE wintering party, was posted on the bridge to warn of sudden changes in the weather. So sudden and violent are the changes in those latitudes that after one hour Gotley warned the captain the barometer was falling and a change in the weather was imminent. Arthur Scholes: 28
The captain did not hesitate. Preparations for the landing party were abandoned and the order was given to up-anchor. With her bows point-
H
E A R D
I
S L A N D
ing to the NE, the LST steamed out of the bay. The departure was not a moment too soon. The wind came tearing in from the west, whipping up the waves. Grey clouds turned to black ones. Fog descended round the rugged coastline, as if nature herself was laying a smoke screen to hide the secrets of her wild stronghold.14
Several hours later the LST steamed cautiously into the relatively sheltered waters of Atlas Cove flanked by the bulk of Rogers Head to the east (thought to have the profile of a Red Indian) and Cape Laurens to the west. Again Campbell began to assemble a shore party. An LCVP barge—a mini version of the LST with a drop-down landing ramp—was used, and Arthur Scholes was included to operate the walkie-talkie radio between shore and ship. As penguins watched impassively from the shore, the LCVP ground to a halt some twenty metres from dry land. The bow ramp went down, and they were free to land. Scholes said no one seemed to want to make the first move. Eventually David Eastman, the official photographer, took the initiative. ‘Well I’m supposed to get the pictures. I might as well be the bloody hero.’ With his movie camera slung over his shoulder he jumped off and sank to his thighs, shouting over the laughter of the rest of the party that ‘it’s as cold as charity’. Campbell was next, and then they all splashed ashore. Scholes: The barking of the elephant seals in the nearby tussock and the shrill protesting cries of the birds, flying inches above our heads, were the only sounds which greeted the first visitors to the island in many years. The absence of other noises was almost disturbing to ears accustomed to the shipboard cacophony. It was the strange mysterious silence of an unknown land.15
Two hundred metres from the water’s edge stood the tiny Admiralty Hut, still in good condition. Two elephant seals lay wallowing outside the door, but were persuaded to move by Campbell, who belted their tails with a piece of driftwood. Inside, he found seven bunks, emergency rations and a Union Jack left by the Mawson BANZARE party in 1929. After an hour the weather closed in again, and the shore party was asked to return to the ship. The next day the LST again steamed south down the east coast of Heard Island to Spit Bay to try to find a site for the main camp. The weather was fine and clear and an LCVP and a dinghy were sent off to attempt a landing. But a heavy surf was breaking onto the rocky beach. Wide open to the north-easterly winds, without shelter for the landing barges, Spit Bay was clearly not suitable for the main station. The LST
29
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
returned again to Atlas Cove. Taking advantage of the fine clear weather, the Walrus amphibian aircraft was winched over the side and at 4 pm on 13 December the amphibian took off, circled LST 3501 twice in salute, and flew down the east coast to Spit Bay. It was piloted by Flight Lieutenant Mal ‘Smithy’ Smith, and his crew included Warrant Officer Peter Swan to take still photographs, ADMIRALTY HUT WAS BUILT radio operator Warrant Officer C Dunlop, and David IN 1929 AT ATLAS COVE BY Eastman with a movie camera.16 During the first part THE CREW OF THE WHALER of the flight they saw and photographed an unknown KILDALKEY TO SHELTER lake on the west side of the southern extremity of SHIPWRECKED SAILORS. Heard Island. (AAD ARCHIVES) The big surprise was Big Ben, thought to be only about 7500 feet [2286 metres] high. Smithy reported that when his cockpit was level with the top of Big Ben’s dome, his altimeter read 10 000 feet [3048 metres]. ‘But that was nothing! We saw another peak about a thousand feet [305 metres] higher. It was mostly hidden by clouds, but we could see the top sticking up like a pimple.’17 The existence of this second ‘pimple’ peak was unknown, and hidden from view at ground level. At a confirmed 2745 metres Big Ben did not measure up to Smithy’s enthusiastic first observations, but it was significantly higher than first thought. It had been a good day’s work and the historic flight had lasted an hour and a half. Smithy was disappointed not to be able to fly over Big Ben’s summit—he was recalled by radio because of bad weather moving in. David Eastman suffered a frostbitten right hand operating the camera trigger without a glove as he filmed the summit of Big Ben. The Walrus was taxied onto the beach at Atlas Cove and tied down to large stones and concrete blocks brought ashore from the LST. In navy parlance, Walrus aircraft were known as ‘ducks’, and Captain Dixon went ashore to check on ‘the duck’s’ security. Dixon noticed under the aircraft a large almost perfectly oval stone resembling an egg, and ordered it to be taken back on board where it was painted the same colour as the 30
H
E A R D
I
S L A N D
‘duck’. In the wardroom that night he presented it to pilot Mal Smith and sent a whimsical signal to the presumably bemused Australian Commonwealth Naval Board: ‘Duck has laid an egg. Is this unique?’ There was no immediate reply from Melbourne. Campbell was still undecided where to put the main camp. Admiralty Hut on the western side of the Atlas Cove beach had obviously survived Heard TETHERED WALRUS Island’s worst weather, but it was well away from any AMPHIBIAN AIRCRAFT AT sources of fresh water and besieged by elephant seals WHARF POINT, HEARD wallowing and belching in the high tussocks surrounding ISLAND. it. An alternative site (later known as ‘Windy City’) at (A CAMPBELL-DRURY) the eastern end of the bay needed to be checked, and a seven-man party, including Fred Jacka, one of the expedition’s physicists, was sent off in the LST’s work boat with a tent and camping gear to check out the site, make tide measurements, and establish a site for magnetic observations. Two LCVPs were sent to take the party to Windy City, and the first of many near disasters to plague unloading operations took place: one LCVP began to take water and sink, and had to make a run for the shore. At Atlas Cove, the plan was to unload heavy cargo on to pontoons and tow them to shore, augmented by the two LCVPs. But the plyboard pontoons were hopeless in the swells rolling in to Atlas Cove, and the LCVPs were plagued with mechanical breakdowns. One of the expedition’s main radio receivers was badly damaged on a pontoon and after a week’s activity at Heard Island, very little cargo had reached the shore. LST 3501 was burning up so much fuel that there was concern that she might not have enough oil to get back to Australia. The weather, in typical Heard Island style, was capricious and vicious. Dixon made the courageous decision to run the LST up on to a rocky beach so that the heavy cargo could be unloaded directly and quickly—otherwise there would be no wintering party at Heard Island that year. The beaching was made without incident and a party of navy personnel and expeditioners cheerfully plunged up to their waists in freezing water, 31
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
UNLOADING THROUGH THE BOW DOORS OF LST 3501—A RISKY BUT NECESSARY OPERATION.
(A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
32
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
shifting rocks to try to make a primitive jetty to the lowered ramp of the LST. There was a gap between the ramp and the beach, making the manoeuvre to drive the expedition’s tractor ashore a critical task. When a gangway of planks was built Doc Gilchrist decided it was time to get his prized Indian motor bike ashore. The duty officer in charge of unloading refused permission, so Gilchrist waited until he went to lunch and the more amenable Captain Dixon took over: I revved her up and Captain Dixon turned his navy cap back-to-front, grabbed the carrier, and pushed like mad. I zoomed across the bridge and up the beach, and then I hit a grass tussock and the bike went over and I was ashore.
That was Gilchrist’s sole Heard Island motor cycle excursion. The Indian was no trail bike and simply bogged down in the volcanic sand. He claimed to be the first man to ride a motor bike in the Antarctic. LST 3501 had beached early in the morning and unloading went on furiously all day. The most backbreaking task was to roll the 44-gallon [200 litres] drums of oil up over the rocks of the landing beach. The uphill shove became known as ‘The Burma Road’, after the famous wartime supply route from Burma across the Himalayan foothills towards China. Abbottsmith bulldozed a track through the tussocks to Admiralty Hut and at the end of the day 300 drums and tonnes of food were on shore.18 By 8 pm Aub Gotley warned of approaching bad weather and the LST prepared to pull back from the beach. She came off the rocks, but swung around and went aground broadside to the beach. The port and starboard engines were juggled to no avail. Nothing would shift the ship and it was getting dark. All available boats were launched to take out extra anchors to try and winch the ship to safety. It was decided to take the stern anchor farther out in the hope that the extra pull might move
H
her off the rocky bottom. The officers on the bridge signalled to the work boat to take the stern anchor out; there was no response. They hooted irritably on the ship’s siren several times, but the work boat’s engine had failed. The situation was verging on desperate. Even with the stern anchor moved further out and both engines straining, the LST could not be budged. John Lavett recalled that there was nothing more they could do:
E A R D
I
S L A N D
THE ‘BURMA ROAD’— HAULING STORES ASHORE,
WHARF POINT, HEARD George Dixon went below for a cup of coffee and no ISLAND, DECEMBER 1947. doubt to contemplate our next move, leaving me on (A CAMPBELL-DRURY) the bridge alone. I stood there for some time, in a somewhat melancholy state, when I heard a ‘click’, then another, and after a while another. It was the gyro compass. I took the two flights to the wardroom in two bounds to shout to George: ‘She’s swinging sir’. He was half a pace behind me on the way up again. Indeed she was. She came off gently, by herself, evidently as the result of a very soft wind and tide change. We quickly got ourselves further out to anchor, tired but elated. Half an hour later a full gale burst on to the area we had just left. Had we still been there, we should certainly have been finished. We had been very lucky again.
But in weather terms Heard Island had only been toying with the first ANARE expedition. On the morning of 20 December Gotley told Dixon that the weather was changing rapidly and warned against either beaching the LST or attempting another flight. There were two expedition groups on shore; one had access to the Admiralty Hut but the other, at Windy City on the eastern side of the bay and living in tents, was more exposed. By 8 pm a 50 knot gale was blowing in Atlas Cove and so steep was the barograph fall that Gotley decided to keep an all-night vigil on the bridge. By 3 am on 21 December, the pressure had fallen to 28.14 inches [71.47 centimetres], lowering by half an inch [1.27 centimetres] the record for those latitudes, and was still falling. Dixon ordered
33
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
that LST 3501 be prepared for sea. The two anchors began to drag and, even with both engines at full speed, the ship was being driven on to the rocks.19 Dixon later described the gale as the most violent he had ever experienced in a lifetime at sea. No sooner had he cleared Atlas Cove than his radar failed. His dilemma: to ride out the storm at sea, or to nose blindly into the lee of the unknown, shoal infested western shore of the Atlas Roads peninsula to seek some shelter from the 200 kilometres per hour westerly winds: If I remained at sea it was inevitable that, sooner or later, the upper deck would be swept clean. Boats, rafts, precious drums of lubricating oil—would all be swept away or destroyed. The wooden structure of the bridge house quivered and shook. Its sides bulged so that the doors flew open, and one wondered if it would collapse altogether. Ears drummed as though one were at high elevation in an aircraft. At every moment we expected the glass windows to blow in.20
When Captain Dixon stepped out of the chart room on to the rear of the bridge, the wind immediately knocked him down and hurled him against a gun platform. He decided it would be less risky to seek shelter under the lee of the island and nosed his ship blindly towards Heard Island to ride out the hurricane. Meanwhile, at Windy City, Campbell and his small party piled up cases of supplies around the walls of their army tent on the windward side, but it wasn’t long before their canvas shelter was shredded by the screaming wind. They finished up huddled behind the cases. It was a long night. In the morning when the wind eased so that they could actually stand up, Fred Jacka noticed something that they had failed to appreciate before about the effect of wind on their camp site. All the stones that were partly buried in the sand had very clean-cut faces, abraded by the blasting sand. They were three-sided with sharp edges—corresponding to the three directions of the wind. So Stuart Campbell didn’t need any more convincing that it wasn’t a suitable site for us to build a station.
34
Back at Atlas Cove, the Walrus amphibian plane tethered on the beach was completely wrecked after its one successful flight. It had survived 150 kilometre per hour gales in its operational life, but the hurricane had converted it into a sad mess of twisted spars, floats and fuselage. It had not completely outlived its usefulness, however. Fred Jacka and his co-physicist Jo Jelbart found it a treasure trove of fittings and spare parts
H
E A R D
I
S L A N D
for their experimental cosmic ray work during the year. Faced with the task of telling the Naval Board that ‘THE SPECIES IS NOW the amphibian was no more (it was also the last Walrus EXTINCT.’ WRECKED WALRUS in RAN service), Dixon returned to his previous theme AIRCRAFT AFTER HEARD of the ‘duck’s egg’ and cabled Melbourne: ‘If egg is ISLAND HURRICANE, 1947. not fertile, species is now extinct’. The penny dropped, (AAD ARCHIVES) and signals began to fly back and forth. ‘Vintage Dixon’, according to John Lavett. THE HEARD ISLAND POST The LST risked two more beachings before the OFFICE, OPEN FOR BUSINESS last of the supplies were lugged up ‘the Burma Road’ DECEMBER 1947. THE to the growing settlement around Admiralty Hut. Heard POSTMASTER IS ANARE Island even turned on a white Christmas. On 26 LEADER STUART CAMPBELL. December 1947 Campbell conducted an official procla(D EASTMAN) mation ceremony to claim Heard Island for Australia. He had been instructed to do this by the Department of External Affairs, but was unsure exactly how to proceed. ‘I looked through books and books and books and a huge volume of External Affairs papers on how to claim land. We put up a flag, and buried a capsule with the proclamation.’ Sailors from the LST built a cairn of rocks and Campbell and Dixon signed the declaration, claiming the island (and the adjacent McDonald Islands) for the Commonwealth of Australia. On 29 December LST 3501 steamed out of Atlas Cove, and blew a ‘cock-a-doodle-doo’ on the siren as her yellow superstructure disappeared around Rogers Head. She was bound for Kerguelen to land fuel supplies for Wyatt Earp on her return from probing the Antarctic coast of George V Land. LST 3501 would then set a course for Melbourne. Campbell elected to stay with the fourteen Heard Island winterers and help them build huts and settle in, until he could be picked up by 35
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Wyatt Earp in late February or early March. There had been no time, during the frenetic unloading activity, to begin to build the prefabricated huts. Admiralty Hut was too small to accommodate everyone and was used to shelter from the elements and have a cup of tea or coffee. Army tents were pitched among the tussocks and hummocks nearby, competing with the elephant seals which used the area as a wallow. The prospect of being rolled on by three tonnes of bull elephant seal was frightening and also likely, as they came in from the sea at night. Johnny Abbottsmith recalls lying in bed hearing the huge creatures coming towards the tents, making ‘galumphing’ noises as their great bodies compressed the wet sand and tussocks: They got cranky because we were on their spot. We were worried because if one came through the tent he’d squash the lot of us to death. So we tried to shoo the big bull elephant seals away, but they wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and kept coming on. We wondered how the hell we could stop them. We tried firesticks, but they weren’t worried about those, they’d never seen fire, and didn’t know what it was. You couldn’t get near them because when they reared up they would stand eight feet tall [2.4 metres], leaning back on their tails. And then they’d lunge at you. If you were caught, they’d crush you into the sand.
The senior radio supervisor, Louis E Macey (‘Lem’), and one of his operators, Alan Campbell-Drury, got together and contrived an electric prod which proved the most effective deterrent. The first radio broadcasts to be sent from Heard Island were unofficial. Campbell-Drury had bought a war disposals Marconi transceiver, Type A, Mark III for £10 [$20]. It was built into a suitcase, transmitted Morse code only, and operated on very low power—four watts. I set it up in one of our tents, among the elephant seals, got the battery from the Doc’s motor bike—because we had no power on at that stage—and I called Australia and got an answer. I think I can rightly say I’m the first radio ham to work from Heard Island.
36
This channel of communications did not escape the notice of journalist Arthur Scholes. One night Alan Campbell-Drury heard Scholes tapping away on the Morse key of the little Marconi, and was able to ‘read’ his key clicks as he sent his message. He realised Scholes was sending an unofficial story to a Sydney newspaper about the success of the Heard Island landing: ‘I said: “Cut it out Arthur. I’ll lose my licence!”’ No scientific work could begin at Heard until huts had been constructed, concrete slabs poured for the diesel generators and radio masts
H
erected. Building materials were scarce in post-war Australia and a mixed collection of prefabricated huts had been obtained. Four US Signal Corps huts with heaters, light fittings and shelves had been brought to the island. Each hut had fourteen plywood sides, held together by nuts and bolts.21 Some of the other huts had been designed for the tropics and needed to be insulated and lined. By New Year’s Eve the ‘met’ and radio hut was finished, and celebrations were held inside. Several nights later, most members of the party were enjoying the warmth and comfort of the new hut in the middle of a rain storm, when there was a knock at the door. This was as unlikely as a car horn or telephone bell, and Campbell-Drury said they did a quick head count:
E A R D
I
S L A N D
HUT ERECTION AT ATLAS COVE. THE 14-SIDED US SIGNAL CORPS HUTS WERE A WELCOME CHANGE FROM THE TENTS PITCHED IN THE TUSSOCKS AMONG ELEPHANT SEALS.
(A CAMPBELL-DRURY) Well, we opened the door, and there stood Captain Dixon from LST 3501! We couldn’t believe our eyes. He was soaking wet, and said, ‘Quick, let me in and give me some dry clothes. I’ve fallen arse over head out of the boat.’
Dixon later recalled saying that when Macey’s pale and anxious face peered out of the hut door, he said: ‘Don’t worry, the ship’s sunk, but we’re all saved’. Then, ‘Group Captain Campbell forgot his toothbrush, and we’ve brought it back’. Stuart Campbell was in fact still sleeping in one of the tents among the tussocks and elephant seals. He thought Macey was pulling his leg when he was told Captain Dixon was there to see him. But at Kerguelen Dixon had received a radio message that Wyatt Earp (which was to pick up Campbell on its return from exploring the coast of George V Land) had been forced to go back to Melbourne. That meant that Campbell, the leader of ANARE, might be marooned on Heard Island for a whole year unless special arrangements were made to pick him up. As there
37
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
HEARD ISLAND 1948. BACK ROW FROM LEFT: R DOVERS, J LAMBETH, A SCHOLES, J JELBART, F JACKA (OBSCURED), L MACEY. FRONT ROW FROM LEFT: A GILCHRIST , N JONES, A CAMPBELL-DRURY, A CARROLL, K YORK, AUB GOTLEY, J ABBOTTSMITH, G COMPTON (IN BEANIE). (AAD ARCHIVES)
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
was a great deal of organising to be done in Melbourne for the fledgling ANARE, Dixon had been ordered back to Heard Island to get Campbell and return him to HQ. Before leaving Heard, Campbell officially handed over to Aub Gotley, the senior meteorologist, and on 4 January 1948 LST 3501 again headed away from Atlas Cove—but she was still not finally away. Lem Macey had lent his one and only set of long woollen combination underwear to the sodden captain. Macey asked Dixon to return them before the ship sailed, but he forgot. Campbell-Drury radioed the ship, on Macey’s urging, that Dixon had absconded with his underpants. Dixon responded: ‘Terribly sorry, we’ll bring them back to you.’ The LST was some miles out to sea, but she turned about and came back in. The combinations were attached to a buoy, and thrown over the side. Lem and I both sat patiently on the beach at Atlas Cove for an hour waiting for them to drift in. When we went back up to the radio shack, Macey pulled them out of the box and said: ‘Look at that. You’d think he’d have cleaned them first—look at the skid marks in them!’ That was the final straw for Macey.
The fourteen Heard Island expeditioners were finally on their own.
38
THREE
MACQUARIE ISLAND AND PUSHING SOUTH
Macquarie Island is ‘wet cold’. The wind hardly ever stops. There’s generally fog too. You don’t often see the plateau top exposed, and with the wind comes driving rain—very much like the weather you get in a Melbourne winter. When Melbourne has wild south-easters blowing one minute, then heavy showers of rain I call them ‘Macquarie Island days’. The wind is so strong it blows the clouds aside and the sun breaks through—and then there’s another rain squall. Phil Law
L
ST 3501, battered and holed during the Heard Island landings, went into dry dock for repairs at Williamstown on its return to Melbourne on 18 January 1948. It was ready to transport the 13-man Macquarie Island party and 400 tonnes of supplies (including sheep and goats) from Melbourne on 28 February. There was not time to fix everything. Some holes remained in the ballast tanks, and those game enough could lift covers on the floor of the tank deck and gaze directly down into the green depths of the Southern Ocean. The LST called in to Hobart briefly, then set course for Macquarie Island on 3 March. In November and December at Atlas Cove, Heard Island, rigid floating pontoons and LCVP craft had been unable to cope with the demands of unloading cargo, so the LST, in addition to its complement of barges and pontoons, carried two DUKWs (an army code for World War II vintage amphibians), which were essentially 21¼2 -tonne trucks, encased in steel hulls, which could carry cargo directly from ship to shore. Their presence on the LST was due to the persistence of Captain Laurie Stooke.
39
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
S
ituated to the south-east of Australia, approximately halfway to the Antarctic continent, Macquarie Island is so permanently shrouded in mist and rain that it remains ‘the least adequately mapped part of Australia’.1 The small, elongated island, permanently battered by the prevailing westerly winds, is just north of the Antarctic Convergence, and therefore free of pack ice. Snow falls at any time of the year but at sea level seldom lasts on the ground for more than a few hours, or a week up on the plateau. While Heard Island to the west is distinguished by an active volcano nearly 3000 metres high, Macquarie is a long, low-lying island 34 kilometres long, up to 5.5 kilometres wide and no more than 433 metres at its highest point, Mt Hamilton. Much of the island is a plateau, 250–350 metres above sea level. The geology of Macquarie is as fascinating as the dramatic heights of Heard. It is a slice of the oceanic crust elevated above sea level in almost pristine condition, an exposed fragment of the Macquarie Ridge complex which runs south from New Zealand towards the Balleny Islands. Its ice-free shores and proximity to Antarctica make it a haven for wildlife, with a profusion of breeding colonies of seals, penguins, and other sea birds. Australia’s European settlers were quick to realise that seals and other marine life on nearby offshore islands were valuable commodities and from the 1790s seals were killed for fur and oil. As nearby resources were worked out,
merchants were forced further afield. On 11 July 1810, Perseverance under Frederick Hasselburg was taking a sealing gang south to Campbell Island when he discovered another island which he called after Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Hasselburg’s landing led to the ➤
40
M
A C Q U A R I E
I
S L A N D
island’s exploitation. Its beaches and rocky shores were thick with seals, and it was obviously a potential commercial goldmine.2 Hasselburg left a sealing gang on the island and returned to Sydney. He tried to keep his discovery a secret, but news leaked out and soon six ships left for Macquarie Island.3 This was the beginning of several years of intensive slaughter when up to 100 000 fur seals were clubbed to death indiscriminately in a season. But the kill dropped dramatically, and by 1815 the harvest was only about 5000.4 The sealers then turned their attention to killing elephant seals for their copious blubber, which was boiled down to produce oil. When the Russian explorer von Bellingshausen visited Macquarie Island in 1820 he found two gangs of sealers working there. They lived in huts lined with sealskins and grass, used blubber for lighting and ate sea birds and penguins, eggs, the flippers of young elephant seals and wild cabbage—an effective remedy for scurvy. Bellingshausen noted there were wild dogs and cats on the island.5 Many visiting groups left exotic specimens on Macquarie until it was declared a sanctuary in the 1930s. The list includes ducks, fowls, geese and wekas, goats, sheep and rabbits. They were destined for the pot. Dogs, cats, rats and mice arrived by ship. The wekas (flightless birds native to Stewart Island, New Zealand) did particularly well, as did the rabbits. They soon outbred the sealers’ ability to eat them. The dogs ran wild for a while, but died out. Unclaimed in the early years of exploration, in 1825 Macquarie Island was included in the jurisdiction of Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania) when it became a separate colony from New South Wales. But for decades the Tasmanian
A N D
P U S H I N G
S O U T H
Government made no attempt to assert its authority there.6 Sealing gangs continued to kill elephant seals, as their numbers waxed and waned, until as late as 1919. When they ran out of seals, they herded the penguins into the digesters and boiled them for their oil. In 1915 Sir Douglas Mawson—among others—was pressing for Macquarie Island to be declared a sanctuary, and in 1919 the Tasmanian Government refused to renew any sealing leases. Macquarie Island was left to the seals and penguins.7 In 1929 Mawson led the BANZAR expeditions to Antarctica, and in December 1930 visited his old base on Macquarie Island built during his 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition. He found the hut in fairly good condition and the wireless masts still there. His party explored and studied the wildlife, and decided that there had been a marked increase in numbers since they were last there. In 1933, Mawson’s original suggestion bore fruit, and the Tasmanian Government declared Macquarie Island a wildlife sanctuary.8 As well as being a haven for wildlife Macquarie Island is a geological curiosity. It represents a piece of the ocean floor that has been pushed to the surface of the Southern Ocean by tectonic plate action—in this case the Pacific plate folding down under the Australian plate. The area is unstable and strong earthquakes occur regularly—sometimes causing rock and mud slides along the cliffs that circle the coast. Geological studies of Macquarie are continuing to the present day. The movement on the island is complex, with various sections moving relative to each other—making it the best place on earth to examine the sea floor above sea level.
41
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Stooke had been at the Puckapunyal army camp when he read newspaper reports of the difficulties experienced unloading cargo at Heard Island:
SOME OF THE 1948 MACQUARIE ISLAND PARTY ON THE WHARF AT HOBART, 3 MARCH. FROM TOP LEFT: N LAIRD, Y VALETTE (FRENCH OBSERVER), C DU TOIT, W MONKHOUSE, A MARTIN (OIC), G MOTTERSHEAD, DR R BENNETT, R KENNY. FROM BOTTOM LEFT: L SPEEDY, J IVANAC (GEOLOGIST RETURNED ON LST), R CHADDER, G MAJOR, C SCOBLE. (COURTESY HOBART MERCURY)
42
I contacted a senior officer at army headquarters and suggested that maybe there was a role for us in this business. He put it to various people at HQ, but then the bureaucracy bought in, of course, and I was reprimanded for having the temerity to suggest that we could tell the navy how to do anything. Anyhow, through perseverance and contacts behind the scenes, it was agreed that the army would provide two DUKWs to go down to Macquarie Island.
This link with the Australian Army provided amphibious vehicles for ANARE operations from 1948 until 1994. On the morning of 7 March 1948 Lieutenant Commander Dixon navigated LST 3501 into the relatively sheltered waters of Buckles Bay on the north-eastern end of the low hills of Macquarie. In contrast to the Heard Island voyage, it had been a quick, comparatively calm passage. As the ship dropped anchor the mist lifted and bright sunshine highlighted the green slopes of Wireless Hill and the plateau, where Mawson’s wintering party had erected aerials in 1911. It was immediately clear that it would not be possible to beach the LST. The shoreline was guarded by rocks above and below the water, meshed with great strands of kelp, and this barrier extended 150 metres out from the beach. Before leaving Australia it had been decided that the Macquarie Island station would be located somewhere on the low isthmus joining the northern end of the main island to Wireless Hill. One of the LCVPs was launched to take a reconnaissance party to shore.9 Staying outside the kelp, the crew of the LCVP took soundings as they moved parallel with the main beach, but there was no sign of a suitable
M
A C Q U A R I E
I
S L A N D
A N D
P U S H I N G
S O U T H
channel until they came to Garden Bay, a small bay between Camp and Wireless Hills. Here the water was calmer and the party, including OIC Alan Martin, was able to make a landing. (Having been to Heard Island, John Lavett from LST 3501 was determined to secure his moment in history. As the LCVP hit the beach he jumped over the side to be first ashore.) They were greeted by elephant seals and penguins. The only sign A LONG-BOAT BATTLES of past human habitation was the derelict hut which BUCKLES BAY SURF DURING had housed Mawson’s 1911 party and those manning UNLOADING OPERATIONS TO the meteorological station until 1915. Martin’s party AND FROM THE LST 3501 AT also looked at an old sealers’ camp in the lee of the MACQUARIE ISLAND, Razorback at the southern end of the isthmus, but bogs MARCH 1948. and elephant seal wallows made the transport of equip(S CAMPBELL) ment down there impractical.10 It was decided to establish the new camp on the site of Mawson’s old AAE hut, straight up the beach from Garden Bay, where channels between the rocks offered the least obstructions to landing craft. Then came the tricky job of actually launching the DUKW from the tank deck of the LST. With good reason Stooke attempted this on his own: You’ve got to come out backwards with a DUKW because, if you drive straight out, the wheels are floating so you get no steerage. The back of the vehicle is still on the boat, so you have no steerage from your rudder—you would just be at the mercy of the seas.
With the bow doors of the LST open, and the ramp lowered, there was another problem. Even in a gentle swell, the bow door was moving up and down two to three metres: So I had to sit there and get the rhythm, because you don’t get any second chances. Once you commit yourself to go, you’ve got to keep going. If you dropped the wheels off the ramp as it was rising, it would be a disaster—it would just lift the bows of the DUKW up, and you’d just spear straight to the bottom.
43
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
With the DUKW safely launched, Stooke drove it alongside the LST. The DUKW had been loaded with tents, survival gear, and rations—essential if the wind swung around to the east, at which point the LST would have to up anchor and leave within minutes or run the risk of being blown on the rocks. The sudden departure of the LST was to become an unwelcome and regular feature of the first Macquarie Island unloading operation in Buckles Bay. Mawson’s old hut, apart from not having a roof, was in fair condition. When the remains of the collapsed roof were cleared away, a case of metal polish and boxes of canned tea, pickles and sauce were found, including a cheese too ‘high’ to sample. On a shelf stood a rusty tin of tapioca, with the contents in perfect condition. (This was later sent to Lady Mawson, wife of the AAE’s leader.)11 MACQUARIE ISLAND OIC ALAN MARTIN SEEMS Fairly soon a temporary tarpaulin provided a roof and tents were pitched ready for use at any time. Laurie REMARKABLY RELAXED IN THE Stooke recalled that the first meal in the hut, after seal COMPANY OF A TRUCULENT and bird dung had been shovelled out, was a stew of LEOPARD SEAL, 1948. M & V (army rations, meat and vegetables) plus half (N LAIRD) a bottle of rum tipped in by French chef Carl (Charlie) Du Toit to give extra flavour. Serious unloading began the next day, 8 March, using DUKWs (which could carry loads up to five tonnes) and LCVPs towing pontoons. Stooke had located a better route to the shore for the DUKWs which could carry stores straight to the camp site, but the LCVPs could not reach the beach. A buoy was laid 200 metres from the shore, and a wire rope, kept taut, ran to an anchorage point on the beach. The LCVPs towed pontoons and other craft to the buoy where they were linked up to the wire running ashore. They were then hauled ashore by the D4 bulldozer when it was landed.12 Charlie Scoble, who had driven the bulldozer ashore, noted a certain 44 cheerful chaos in his diary.
M
A C Q U A R I E
I
S L A N D
A N D
P U S H I N G
S O U T H
11 March. The first sheep and goats came ashore & wandered round enjoying the grass & getting in the way. Snowy [the dog] nearly went mad & wanted to round them up all the time. . .We drifted off to sleep as ‘Rocky’ John read Ulysses’ Odyssey. 13 March. Sea roaring in Hasselborough Bay, mountains wreathed in mist, goats baaing, sea elephants fighting, & the flap of the tent in the wind.13
Although Stooke had located a better run in through the partially submerged rocks and kelp in Buckles Bay for the DUKWs, it was not without its hazards: I found a track through the rocks in which the DUKW could manoeuvre, protected on each side by virtually a wall of rock. Once you got into this crevice you had to curve around a bit, but you could get in. Unfortunately, right at the end of it, there was one [rock]. You wouldn’t believe it, but we chopped two propeller shafts on that same rock. The DUKW would be lifted up by the surge and dumped right on it.
Some craft were lost. One LCVP, disabled by kelp around its prop, was waiting for a tow when a sudden squall drove on to the rocks both the LCVP and the pontoon it was towing and they were completely wrecked. When on 21 March an LCVP began to sink, LST’s bosun, Alf Hayter, had to scramble on to a rock just out of the water. Jack Cunningham edged a DUKW towards him and shouted for him to jump aboard. Hayter, a dyed-in-the-wool navy man, considered DUKWs an abomination—neither boats nor trucks. He told Cunningham in lurid language what he could do with his DUKW. ‘I’d sooner die than get on that so-and-so thing!’ Cunningham brought the DUKW back out to the LST and unloaded the stores that had been on their way to the camp. Not only was the weather worsening, but it was getting dark. A searchlight was rigged on the LST to illuminate the figure of Hayter, stuck on the rock, and turning the chilly air blue with a magnificent stream of invective. Laurie Stooke said: Jack went back, and in a display of beautiful seamanship, put his DUKW right in there amongst the rocks, so that Alf just had to step off. He’d changed his mind about being rescued by us after being there for about an hour. But Alf wouldn’t have a bar of DUKWs. He loved his barges, although he was losing them more quickly than they could be replaced. The rock is now known, of course, as Hayter Rock.
45
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
On land, the road from the beach to the camp site became churned up into a river of grey mud into which men sank to their knees. Constant delays were caused by either the bulldozer or the DUKWs getting bogged in the soft peaty soil, and having to pull one another out. It was hard, gruelling work, carried out in constant rain and gusts of biting wind. Peter King, a radio operator, recalled one night when a sudden wind change marooned a large party on shore: There were forty of us altogether, including the naval crew, and the cook had to make a meal for us. He had a big copper that he boiled water in [fired] with bits of timber and stuff, and then he heated up cans of food on little tins filled with sand with metho poured in. And he fed forty of us that one night, just at the drop of a hat. It was fantastic. We had about four tents and we had to sardine all these blokes in.
It was decided to dismantle the old AAE hut, as it was in a prime sheltered spot. The new fourteen-sided prefabricated huts were supposed to be put up in two hours, but in fact it took much longer. The second hut, ‘Chippy’s Church’, was built by the ship’s carpenters from scrap material. (Chippy’s Church is still in use as a hydroponics hut growing fresh vegetables.) On 20 March the LST returned to Buckles Bay and an eager watch was kept for Wyatt Earp, due to arrive that day after the unsuccessful push to reach the Antarctic mainland. She was sighted at noon, and Geoff Mottershead and Gersh Major climbed Camp Hill with an Aldis lamp to signal her.
W
46
yatt Earp had been commissioned at Port Adelaide on 17 November 1947 in the presence of the Governor of South Australia, Sir Willoughby Norrie, Sir Douglas Mawson, and other dignitaries. Her master was Commander Karl Oom RAN, who had experienced Antarctic waters on Mawson’s BANZARE voyages. The refurbished herring trawler slid stern first into the water, surged back across the Torrens and smashed her spoon-shaped stern into the side of a tramp steamer moored directly opposite. It was an unfortunate start. The fact that a small wooden sail-assisted ship was being sent down to the Antarctic on a voyage of national exploration was an indication of the shortage of suitable vessels in the post-war period. Wyatt Earp had been used by the American millionaire explorer Lincoln Ellsworth as a support ship in his attempts to be the first to fly across the Antarctic continent from 1933 to 1939. After succeeding in this ambition, Ellsworth gave Wyatt Earp to his friend and co-adventurer Sir Hubert Wilkins, who sold her to the Australian Government for £4400 [$8800]—with the
M
A C Q U A R I E
I
S L A N D
A N D
support of Sir Douglas Mawson. Although a wooden vessel, she was stoutly timbered and able to cope, to a modest degree, with the pressures of pack ice. Roundbottomed, like all ships designed for polar ice navigation, Wyatt Earp was reputed to be able to roll violently ‘on wet grass’. Defying superstition, Wyatt Earp sailed on 13 December 1947 and battled through what seemed like one continuous storm all the way to Port Phillip. Able Seaman Norm Tame recalled that Phil Law, ANARE’s new chief scientist, was very seasick:
P U S H I N G
S O U T H
SHARING TERRITORY WITH THE LOCALS. BABY ELEPHANT SEALS AROUND THE RADIO AND METEOROLOGICAL HUTS,
MACQUARIE ISLAND 1948. (N LAIRD)
ISTHMUS,
WYATT EARP AFTER RECOMMISSIONING FOR
ANTARCTIC SERVICE, 1947. On one occasion he was flaked out in a coiled rope, (AAD ARCHIVES) and you could see the marks in his face like the pattern of the rope. We carted him inside with one on each arm and one of us on each leg, and he said he didn’t remember anything about it. He was really out to it, and he was as green as a cabbage leaf.
In Melbourne, navy dock workers were busy for several days making repairs. A Vought-Sikorsky VS-310 Kingfisher float plane was mounted on the deck and the final members of the ship’s company came on board. Captain Karl Oom was so concerned about Law’s chronic seasickness that he recommended he not be allowed to go on the expedition—which would have cut off his Antarctic career there and then. But Stuart Campbell supported Law, and he was allowed to continue.14 Wyatt Earp got away on Friday 19 December 1947, but outside the Heads went smack into a Force 10 easterly storm and suffered a heavy bashing. Almost everyone on board was seasick. All this not even a day’s sailing from Melbourne, and far away from the expected fury of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic waters.
47
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Captain Oom sheltered in the lee of Flinders Island, but the next day the ship’s gyrocompass failed and it was back to the ministrations of shipwrights and engineers when they put in to Hobart on 22 December. They still hoped to get away before Christmas, but as they left the wharf on Christmas Eve to swing the compasses before final departure, salt water was found emulsifying with the engine lubricating oil. HMAS WYATT EARP Wyatt Earp again left for Antarctica at 1310 hours MOORED AT ICE EDGE TO GET on Friday 26 December. An hour later they stopped SNOW FOR DRINKING WATER. to replace a faulty engine valve and eight hours later (P R WHITE) ran into a Force 9 south-westerly gale and hove to in the lee of Eddystone Rock. By 30 December the engines had to be stopped to repair a fuel pump. In addition, the engine revolutions had to be reduced because the gland where the tail shaft passes through the hull astern was running hot. A large rectangle of heavy canvas was nailed over the hull just above the waterline—a tricky operation at sea—to reduce the amount of water getting into the starboard cabins and the radio room. On 1 January the engines were stopped again. The new diesel engines had sunk on their beds, causing the propeller shaft to bend. Chief Engineer Freddie Irwin had loosened the tail gland to relieve the distortion, but water leaked into the bilges and soon rose above the deck in the engine room. That afternoon Captain Oom was ordered by the Naval Board to return to Melbourne. Wyatt Earp was by then well on the way to Antarctica and had reached the Antarctic Convergence. Despite the obvious good sense of the recall, the ship’s company was disappointed and wanted to continue, but by 7 January Wyatt Earp was back in dry dock at Williamstown. It was two weeks before the ship returned to Nelson Pier, Williamstown. It was now very late in the season, and the voyage plans were amended yet again. The Executive Planning Committee recommended that Wyatt Earp go to that part of the Australian Antarctic Territory closest to Australia, and examine the coastline of George V Land. 48
M
A C Q U A R I E
I
S L A N D
A N D
P U S H I N G
S O U T H
ANARE Leader Stuart Campbell (who had returned from Heard Island early on LST 3501 after his option of being picked up by Wyatt Earp seemed doubtful) decided to sail south with the expedition. Phil Law asked for an assurance that he and his geomagnetician colleague Ted McCarthy could land at Commonwealth Bay to make observations of the earth’s magnetic field, but Campbell opposed the A LANDING ATTEMPT AT THE idea of putting scientists on shore in case Wyatt Earp BALLENY ISLANDS. FROM could not get back to pick them up. Although Law’s LEFT, SEAMAN W WALLACE, request was supported by Mawson and Davis, the matter SEAMAN NORM TAME, PHIL was left unresolved. LAW AND AN UNIDENTIFIED The expedition finally got away from Williamstown CREWMAN. on Saturday 7 February 1948. On Wednesday 18 February, (COURTESY P LAW) the first icebergs were sighted, always a significant moment on an Antarctic voyage. Even Stuart Campbell, who was somewhat blase about icebergs following his BANZARE experiences with Mawson, noted in his diary: About 0900 I found everyone on deck getting their first thrill out of the sight of an Antarctic iceberg. And though I’ve seen lots before I must confess that I, too, get a thrill out of that first sign of the Antarctic. They were all around us, at least six of them. Huge flat slabs of gleaming white ice with vertical sides rising 150 feet sheer out of the sea.15
As Wyatt Earp cruised along the fringe of the pack ice zone it became clear to Law that the captain had no intention of pushing into the pack ice itself. Law: The captain tried charging one of the smaller floes to test the ship. I had thought we might crack it and go through, but the ship had neither the weight nor the power and merely bounced off. As an ice-breaker this ship was a gnat.16
On Sunday 22 February Wyatt Earp steamed in the vicinity of the Mertz Glacier hoping to find clear water, but without success. By 24
49
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
February they were near the Ninnis Glacier Tongue, but conditions were ideal for a ‘freeze up’ and Captain Oom was determined to stay clear. There was to be no landing at Mawson’s old base at Commonwealth Bay, and by 27 February Wyatt Earp had turned away from the coast towards the Balleny Islands, where a brief and extremely hazardous landing was attempted on a rocky shore on 29 February. Campbell, Law and THE VOUGHT-SIKORSKY Seaman Wallace were ashore for only a few minutes VS-310 KINGFISHER FLOAT before jumping back on board the ship’s whaler, which PLANE WAS FAR TOO BIG AND was being buffeted by a rolling surf and was already CUMBERSOME FOR THE TINY half swamped. The expedition managed, however, to WYATT EARP, AND ONLY FLEW carry out an accurate running survey of the coasts of TWICE (ON ONE DAY) IN the Balleny Islands (except for Sturge Island which ANTARCTIC WATERS. was surrounded by heavy pack ice). ( J WATTS) For the next two weeks Wyatt Earp headed west towards Commonwealth Bay again, but hopes of a landing continued to fade. On 13 March they managed to fly the Kingfisher float plane for the first and only time on the voyage. The procedures to put it together, winch it over the side and fly it were simply too cumbersome to be practical. RAAF pilot Flying Officer Robin Gray managed two short test flights. Despite the many difficulties of keeping the complex cosmic ray equipment in operation, Law and McCarthy felt they had achieved good results, but Law was angry about the lack of interest shown in scientific work. By Tuesday 16 March any thought of making a landing on the continent was abandoned and Wyatt Earp headed for Macquarie Island. Southern Ocean gales enabled the little wooden ship to attempt new records for severe rolling and when engine trouble stopped her for four hours, the crew trailed a sea anchor and hoisted the fore trysail to try to stabilise their wildly lurching ship. Then a new surprise—a following wind and great swells astern caused Wyatt Earp to achieve an all-time record speed of just on ten knots. 50
M
A C Q U A R I E
I
S L A N D
A N D
Early on the morning of Saturday 20 March the watch sighted the Bishop and Clerk Islands, south of Macquarie, and by 1230 Wyatt Earp had anchored in Buckles Bay, dwarfed by the great bulk of LST 3501. Displaying an appropriate sense of occasion, the LST signalled: ‘THE WYATT EARP I PRESUME’. Wyatt Earp might have been dwarfed by the size of LST 3501, but the final triumph was hers. Because Commander Oom outranked Lieutenant Commander Dixon, the LST had to dip its ensign and defer to the smaller vessel. Laurie Stooke described what happened:
P U S H I N G
S O U T H
CAPTAIN LAURIE STOOKE DUKW THROUGH
EASES HIS
THE ROCKS AND KELP OF
GARDEN BAY, MARCH 1948. (S CAMPBELL)
When they came into sight, the LST crew had to dress ship—stand to on the deck. Commander Oom sailed by and they saluted him. He then anchored some distance away, and because George Dixon was the junior officer, he had to pay the official visit to Wyatt Earp. Here’s this thing which looked like a raft compared with the LST—but tradition, that’s what it’s all about.
Stuart Campbell was ‘most satisfied’ with the general progress made on the island in his absence, and at dusk the next afternoon, the last load went ashore from the LST. Charlie Scoble noted in his diary: ‘Party with Campbell’s lot (on the LST), singing bawdy songs and drinking hard’. A southerly swell kept the LST from its last planned job, carrying reserve supplies and fuel to an emergency base at Lusitania Bay. On the morning of 25 March the wintering party of thirteen went aboard the LST for a last hot bath and a beer in the wardroom and she sailed at 3 pm, signalling as she went: GOOD LUCK TO YOU, SEE YOU AT THE Y & J [Young and Jacksons Hotel]. ANARE’s first two sub-Antarctic stations had been established on Heard and Macquarie Islands without loss of life or serious injury, but the hoped-for establishment of a permanent Australian station on the mainland of Antarctica remained a practical impossibility until a suitable ship could be found.
51
FOUR
THE
FIRST
O P E R AT I O N A L Y E A R
A
s the 27 expeditioners on Heard and Macquarie Islands assembled their prefabricated huts and prepared for the winter of ANARE’s first operational year, they had little time for scientific work. Radio masts had to be erected before any meteorological results could be Morse coded back to Australia, and buildings constructed in which to inflate the balloons to carry aloft radiosonde equipment which would measure temperature and pressure in the upper atmosphere. The cosmic ray scientists had to have a hut (to assemble their elaborate measuring equipment) and a reliable power supply. In reality the men on both stations were concentrating on building shelter, and not spending much time thinking why they were there. According to Phil Law, it was occupation first and science second: There’s no doubt that everyone interested in Antarctica in those days was in it because of the territorial acquisitions, the value of possible minerals, the whaling industry, the fishing rights—all the commercial interests of colonialism. And that was accentuated, of course, by the fact that seven nations had claims in the Antarctic [hence] all this fuss about whether other people would recognise them or not. The scientific work was literally put in as a bit of softening of that hard approach. It was to convince people you were there for good purposes as well as grabbing territory.
52
Each island team had a scratch selection of huts to erect, the best and toughest of which were fourteen-sided American buildings. By contrast, the Australian huts, designed for the RAAF in New Guinea, were difficult to put up. The masonite and hardwood sections were not insu-
T
H E
F I R S T
O P E R A T I O N A L
Y E A R
lated and the wall panels were fitted with opening flaps at the top and bottom so that ‘hot tropic nights would be cooled by the soothing breezes’.1 The scientists pitched in as labourers and builders. Cosmic rays from deep space bombarded Heard Island unrecorded while Fred Jacka and his fellow physicist Jo Jelbart heated water to stop concrete mixes (for the diesel generator pads) from freezing. Jacka was also an enthusiastic competitor in ANARE’s first recorded beard-growing competition: We were using a dreadful thing called a blubber stove, which we fed with seal blubber and any bits of wood and other combustibles we could find. I opened a little door in the front to see how things were going and there was a mighty blast of flame that practically enveloped my whole head, and dealt with my beard very effectively.
After the living quarters were finished, Jelbart and Jacka built their own laboratory. Huts were separated so that a fire would not wipe out the entire station. All structures were guyed with wire cables against Heard Island’s tremendous winds. The radio aerials represented the biggest challenge. Four 20-metre-high sections were to be erected in rhombic pattern for the transmitting aerials. They were designed to withstand a wind of 200 kilometres per hour. Rock under the camp site was so hard it blunted crowbars and picks; blasting with gelignite was also ineffective. Lem Macey had a brainwave and suggested 44-gallon [200.2 litre] drums filled with stones and gravel as anchorages above the ground. Arthur Scholes said they tried to bash in the tops of the oil drums with picks, but after two weeks of cacophonous labour only a few drums were without tops. Bob Dovers tried blowing the tops off with cortex explosive with great success and the mast was hauled into position using the tractor. The rigidity of the Kelly and Lewis mast and its supports was soon tested by a 100 kilometres per hour wind. As the wind built to gale force, the mast and its wire stays reverberated with great booming sounds, like sustained notes on a giant organ. After a time the Heard Island men could accurately judge wind strength by the pitch of the notes from the aerial.2 Similar building was going on at the settlement at Macquarie Island. Thirty sheep and some goats were let loose. Peter King, radio operator, said the smooth-haired Saanen goats from Queensland were unimpressed by Macquarie’s cold, windy, rain-drenched climate and clustered around a fire used to heat hot water kettles, burning their hides in the process. The Border Leicester sheep, more at home in their new surroundings, moved off to graze on the tussocky grass. Charlie Scoble noted the birth of the first lamb in his diary on 24 May.3 To combat the wet cold, the expeditioners were issued with clothing originally designed for British submariners—oiled cloth with a thick blue
53
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
linen lining. Camouflaged British Army windproof parkas and trousers and wool-lined, knee length flying boots as well as tan leather army boots completed their ensemble. The Macquarie party also had to adapt the FROM THE TOP OF THE RADIO RAAF tropical huts to the conditions by securing the MAST, SUMMER 1948. ventilation flaps and insulating them against the cold. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY) Later ANARE policy ensured that every expeditioner had some private space, even if it was just a ALAN CAMPBELL-DRURY (TOP curtained-off cubicle within a communal hut, with a BUNK) AND AUB GOTLEY bunk, desk and a few shelves. But in the first year there SHARE HEADPHONES TO ENJOY were only two sleeping huts for the thirteen Macquarie THE SHORTWAVE RADIO men. PROGRAM ‘HOT JUICE’ FROM As the expeditioners settled into their living and MOZAMBIQUE. NOTE THE working routines in both sub-Antarctic camps, ANARE PENGUIN EGG ON TOP OF THE rituals that were to endure were already being created. COCOA TIN. Saturday night was ‘ding’ (party) night, the time to (A CAMPBELL-DRURY) relax and have a few drinks to mark the end of the working week and let off steam. ‘Ding’ was RAAF slang for a party and it has persisted in the ANARE vocabulary. At Macquarie Charlie Scoble noted in his diary on 7 May: THE HEARD ISLAND ‘HILTON’ PHOTOGRAPHED
The ding party getting more & more furious. They were starting a game of table tennis when Ken [Hines] switched [the power] off. . .they were furious. . .There was a free for all for a while, followed by a pillow fight, a letting down of beds & so on. Peace about 1.30.4
54
Both Macquarie and Heard settlements had a piano, radiogram and records and a selection of feature films and a projector. Cigarettes, sweets, toffees and chewing gum were available for issue to each man and a
T
H E
F I R S T
O P E R A T I O N A L
Y E A R
limited amount of spirits and liqueurs. The Heard Island party had a piano, but after ‘Lem’ Macey spent about four hours unpacking it and getting it into the rec room, Johnny Abbottsmith remembers him asking an important question: ‘“Who can play?’’ Dead silence. “Can’t anyone do anything?’’ Dead silence.’ As it happened, Campbell-Drury was a classical organist, but he showed little interest in the piano, and ‘didn’t play it much’. NORM JONES COOKING Scholes reported that drinks were available before MORNING PORRIDGE ON THE the evening meal and on party nights, but half the EIGHT-BURNER KEROSENE party were non-drinkers and the grog ration began to PRESSURE STOVE, HEARD accumulate. Eventually it was just put out in case anyone ISLAND, 1948. wanted it. Occasionally an individual would spend an (A CAMPBELL-DRURY) evening getting quietly and slowly drunk—remaining in the recreation room with everyone else, but drinking alone. Johnny Abbottsmith said that everyone did this at least once, even those who weren’t interested in alcohol. ‘It was a way of letting off a bit of tension.’ But like the Macquarie crew, they often ‘let off steam’ on Saturday nights with a few grogs. Food supplies in the pre-refrigeration era were ample, but basic. The sheep and goats taken to Macquarie were expertly dismembered and served by French chef Carl ‘Charlie’ Du Toit, who spared the party the obligatory bully beef and tinned food whenever he could by using local resources. Rabbits and the flightless wekas, thoughtfully provided by the sealers in the previous century, were often on the menu and Du Toit even ran to the occasional Chinese meal. The men also ate penguin breasts, skuas and elephant seal liver. Fresh meat taken to Heard and kept in snowdrifts near the camp was buried in a small crevasse in the nearby Baudissen Glacier by Doc Gilchrist. But the sub-Antarctic environment was not cold enough. Fred Jacka reported that ‘only a month after the ship had left we noticed a brown stain developing on the glacier. That was the end of the fresh meat.’ 55
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Compared with the Gallic sophistication of Carl Du Toit on Macquarie, Norm Jones was a fairly basic Aussie cook who dished up tinned rations on Heard Island to a group of mostly ex-servicemen who had been eating similar tucker for the past six years. Tinned stew was tinned stew, whether it was curried or buried under a pie crust. The most frequently eaten local food on Heard was penguin and elephant seal. ‘Penguin was more popular’, wrote Gilchrist, ‘as elephant seal was rather coarse, but both were delightful. The chops taken from an eight week old sea elephant pup were lthough elephant seals were easy as delicious as anything I have ever enough to shoot through the brain, tasted.’5 The station log recorded meals penguins presented a more elusive of braised penguin, penguin steaks target. Fred Jacka decided to cook penguin ‘better than rump steak’, elephant seal breasts on one of his Sunday cooking days, brain fried in breadcrumbs, ‘very tasty’, and asked OIC Aub Gotley for a revolver: and elephant seal liver and kidney.6 I went to a nearby gentoo penguin rookery In summer Jo Jelbart caught fish and sat there for a little while till the penwhich were enjoyed, but fishing was difficult in winter and by spring everyguins sort of settled down, carefully aimed one was too busy to fish. Birds were and fired, but no penguin fell over. I really also eaten. Roast skua was ‘not unlike found it an extremely difficult thing to hit duck’, and petrels were edible ‘apart a penguin in the head. There was no point from the fishy flavour’, but it took a in shooting them through the body—they’d good number of birds to feed fourteen just squawk and walk away. men, so they were an occasional treat.7 It was a pretty awful, brutal business, but I finished up by grabbing them and Norm Jones was not keen on cooking sawing their heads off with a carving the local wildlife and those who could knife. If you have a decent, large, sharp not bear to eat it kept to tinned food. knife you can saw through the neck and Those expeditioners who wanted to experiment did so on Sundays, the kill them fairly quickly. cook’s day off. Abottsmith said that penguin breasts were not too bad. ‘They were quite big, like a half-pound steak—black meat—but it was good eating.’ The locally plentiful Kerguelen cabbage, which Gilchrist was keen for the men to eat as a vegetable supplement, was a useful source of vitamin C. It had a very strong flavour and was not popular, but the men were cooperative about eating a spoonful occasionally. Gilchrist ate penguin eggs raw and said they were delicious, but other people preferred them made into omelettes. The eggs had a peculiar feature—the whites would not set when cooked, even when Norm Jones fried one for twenty minutes.8 56
A
T
H E
F I R S T
O P E R A T I O N A L
Y E A R
In general the weekly fare was predictable. Alan Campbell-Drury: Norm used to get so heartily tired of standing there at the servery in the little kitchen, having thirteen men come up to him, one after the other, every night of the week, saying, ‘What’s on for tea tonight, Norm?’ Norm used to reply, ‘Well, tonight we’ve got shit with sugar on—what do you think?’ One Sunday night Bob Dovers was the cook. And he must have anticipated Norm, who said to Bob, ‘What’s on for tea tonight, Bob?’ And Bob said, ‘Shit with sugar on, Norm,’ and he handed him a plateful of seal shit with sugar on! And Norm was taken aback a little bit, I don’t mind telling you. That phrase was never used again.
At both Heard and Macquarie Islands the meteorologist was appointed officer-in-charge. There were no formal selection procedures for such a position at that stage. Stuart Campbell had intended to appoint Bob Dovers as OIC at Heard, but George Smith had noticed, during preparations in the store and packing for the voyages, that ‘the blokes were not going to be happy under Dovers’. Phil Law would later appoint Dovers OIC of the first wintering party on the Antarctic continent at Mawson, but that was six years away. Law: ‘So Campbell delayed making a definite appointment, went down on the ship and apparently sensed enough of it so that during the erection of the Heard Island station—while Campbell was there—he nominated Aub Gotley as OIC.’ The ‘met’ men and radio operators tended to outnumber any other group in those early days because there had to be enough of them to make observations round the clock. On both Heard and Macquarie there were two weather observers and a meteorologist, a radio supervisor and two operators. The parties on both islands seem to have survived any major personal upsets despite bunking and living close together. On Heard, communal harmony was ruffled in November after Doc Gilchrist decided to investigate a sealer’s grave in nearby South West Bay to see if he could establish the cause of death. He lashed a kerosene tin to his back at the camp, causing Norm Jones (a big but rather nervous man) to express anxiety and opposition to the prospect of any human remains returning to base. Gilchrist said he thought he might find out a little bit about diseases on Heard Island: So I sneaked out one fine Sunday morning about 6 am with a shovel and excavated the skeleton. And I’d got the skull and most of the thorax exposed when I was interrupted by three men who had decided after
57
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
breakfast to take a stroll over to South West Bay. They were absolutely furious with me for having disturbed this sealer.
ALAN GILCHRIST INVESTIGATING A SEALER’S GRAVE,
SOUTH WEST BAY, HEARD ISLAND, NOVEMBER 1948. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
Gilchrist thought he had discovered why the sealer had died—as a result of a depressed fracture of the temple bone on one side of his skull. Eyewitness accounts of what happened next differ. Campbell-Drury says that OIC Aub Gotley objected when Gilchrist began putting some of the bones and the skull into his kerosene tin for later examination. Gilchrist says that no bones, other than the skull—and that only temporarily—were lifted from the grave. Campbell-Drury: This was when things flared up, because Gotley got the kerosene tin and emptied all the bones back into the grave. The doctor came up out of the grave and punched Aub Gotley on the nose—and Gotley decided to suspend the doctor [from duty] at once.
Gilchrist says he has no memory of being suspended, and agrees that ‘an altercation did occur and an intense dispute did arise as a result of me having done the forensic investigation, but I’m not prepared to give any details’. Suspension or no, Gilchrist obligingly stitched up a gash in Alan Campbell-Drury’s leg shortly afterwards. There is no mention of suspension in the station log where Gotley wrote on 24 November, ‘Organised expedition to South West Bay where we noticed a grave. Found male skeleton, buried at least 10 years. All was replaced and covered.’9 But personal relations had been badly strained. Fred Jacka, one of the youngest of the party, became the peacemaker:
58
I somehow managed to persuade both of them to come over to the cosmic ray lab to have a quiet talk. They drank a cup of coffee I brewed on the spot and talked civilly to each other and to me. Then, when things had simmered down a little, I introduced a little alcohol into the proceedings. Somewhere near midnight they were patting each other on the back. We were all pretty weary by then. I had a bit of difficulty getting these two guys safely down the snow bank and into the door of the living hut.
T
H E
F I R S T
O P E R A T I O N A L
Y E A R
On both island stations there was an eagerness to explore and there was much basic work to be done. Bob Dovers was a surveyor, and ‘Swampy’ Compton was his assistant. On the basis of one astrofix, Dovers discovered that by his calculations Heard Island was 60 miles [100 kilometres] away from the position shown in the one atlas at the camp. Dovers, Compton and the geologist Jim Lambeth began climbGLACIER TRAVEL, HEARD ing the nearby peaks and started a comprehensive ISLAND STYLE. survey and geological examination of the island. At (A CAMPBELL-DRURY) the end of the year they produced the first accurate map of Heard. Lambeth concluded that Heard Island was not continental, but oceanic (an active volcano like Hawaii built up from the ocean floor) and had never been part of Australia.10 The field work was dangerous. The tent was too small, and the three men were plagued by wet sleeping bags and inadequate field equipment. On one field party to the western face of Mt Olsen in April it got so cold that Dovers’ theodolite froze. They built an igloo to supplement their meagre tent, but a sudden thaw collapsed it. Some of the most risky travel was by sea in a three-metre dinghy (named ANARE) that had been left with the Heard party. It was powered by a capricious outboard motor and a small auxiliary sail. Jim Lambeth suggested to Abbottsmith that they forget about the emergency survival equipment complete with tents and rations that weighed them down in the bow. Abbottsmith: ‘If we get swamped we’ll be alive for two minutes and dead in five’, he said, ‘so what’s the use of all that?’ I said, ‘Well if that’s the case, chuck it out.’ So we got rid of all our emergency crates and it used to be a little lighter in the boat.
One of the jobs with the dinghy was to take soundings in Atlas Cove and its approaches to make entry safer. On one such outing Abbottsmith watched wide-eyed while a huge white whale swam slowly under their
59
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
cockleshell craft. On another occasion, Lambeth said, ‘Look behind you quickly, Johnny’: There was a sea leopard—oh, six feet out of the water—with his mouth open, coming towards us. He could’ve swallowed that outboard motor and spat out the bits. He just kept on coming at us. I always used to carry a revolver in my belt, loaded and ready. I fired a couple of quick shots into him, into his mouth, and I must have hit him in the back of the spine—a fluky shot—and he just keeled over back in the water. When we got to shore this leopard was just a mass of foam where the others came in to get a piece of him. I reckon that was one of the closest shaves we had.
There was no biologist on the 1948 Heard Island party, and Doc Gilchrist agreed to do what he could: When we arrived in December it was obvious that this island was the breeding ground for millions of penguins and sea elephants and several species of petrels [but] no provision had been made to study them. I had no idea of what was scientifically important, so we kept a biology log. We just wrote down the day the first gentoo penguins arrived to make their nests, the day the first eggs appeared, when the sea elephants arrived to start breeding, when the first pups appeared and the location of the albatross rookeries. We had a lot of fun exploring the cliffs to define the location of the very, very beautiful black and brown light-mantled sooty albatrosses. The biology log was of real assistance to the [later] biologists when they arrived.
60
Gilchrist, a doctor in charge of a group of healthy, fit men, was delighted to turn his medical and research skills to biology. He was particularly proud of his identification of Mawsonotrema eudyptala—the liver fluke in the gentoo penguin—and noting the presence of snow petrels, previously unreported on Heard Island. Some individuals found the isolated wintering experience more difficult to cope with than their fellow expeditioners. Norm Jones was intimidated by Heard Island, and never went more than 500 metres from the huts the whole year he was there. He did his job, but was often under stress. However his vulnerability did not prevent the kind of cruel practical jokes that were to be the hallmark of ANARE service for the next 50 years. Alan Campbell-Drury said that at Christmas the station had a telegram from Melbourne asking if the party would mind staying till March 1949 because of problems with shipping. There was no choice whatever of course, and everyone was relaxed about it—except Norm Jones. Campbell-Drury:
T
H E
F I R S T
O P E R A T I O N A L
Y E A R
Lem Macey made something in the radio shack—a stick of wood about four feet long [1.21 metres], with a cross piece, to which he was attaching little lights, one red, one green and one white. He said, ‘Norm Jones is in bed. I want you to go right over there in the dark, amongst the sea elephant mounds, over in the direction of the entrance of Atlas Cove. I’ll light this thing up and you go and tell Norm Jones there’s a ship in the bay, coming into Atlas Cove.’ This is exactly what I did. Norm Jones couldn’t get out of bed quickly enough. We stood outside the sleeping hut and, sure enough, it just looked for all the world like a ship coming into Atlas Cove. Then all of a sudden Macey walked out of the darkness—and Jones nearly killed him. He never ever forgave Macey or myself for that effort. But it was fun.
On Macquarie Island the year was reasonably tranquil in personal terms, although chef Carl Du Toit was at times temperamental. Scoble was late for lunch one day and there was no hot food left: Carl reckoned I should have come and got it. Told him that last time I did I was told to sit down and be waited on. He got wild and brandished a sharpening iron and told me if I went on like that, he’d cut my throat.11
Scoble ignored Du Toit and dined on bread and currant jam. Doc Gilchrist had only a few occasions on which to practise his medical skills on Heard Island. He filled some teeth when hard sweets broke fillings, and removed a papilloma from Gotley’s foot using a special instrument made by Jacka. Towards the end of the year Gilchrist had his surgery in good shape and when one man asked to be circumcised, the doctor was persuaded to perform the operation with the versatile cosray scientist Fred Jacka as anaesthetist. A significant first for ANARE field medicine, although by no means the last. (In later years ANARE medical officers performed many circumcisions while in Antarctica. Expeditioners who had been considering the operation took advantage of their period of enforced sexual abstinence to have the procedure performed.) As soon as radio masts were erected on both Macquarie and Heard, regular weather data was passed on to Sydney. Some reports went to Marion Island and on to South Africa. Reports from Australia’s sub-Antarctic stations filled a valuable gap in assessing weather fronts moving up from Antarctica. Four balloons were released a day, the first at 4 am. They were filled with hydrogen, generated in long cylinders from a mixture of ferro-silicon, caustic soda and water, and gave information about wind speed and direction. Some of the balloons carried a radiosonde to transmit information on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind speeds in the upper atmosphere.
61
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Sometimes the work of the Heard weather men was not taken seriously by their colleagues. Swampy Compton decided to boost one day’s rainfall by peeing in the rain gauge. The artificially boosted results were radioed to Sydney and had to be corrected later by the unimpressed weather observers. Cosmic rays were to be measured not only on Heard and Macquarie Islands but by Phil Law on Wyatt Earp on its 1948 voyage to the Antarctic coastline. The equipment was bulky and complicated to operate. It also involved the use of a photographic darkroom to develop the film on which the cosmic ray intensity had been captured. Fred Jacka:
A SPECTACULAR LENTICULAR (LENS-SHAPED) CLOUD FORMS IN THE LEE OF BIG BEN, HEARD ISLAND, 1948. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
We were basically recording the variations of the cosmic ray intensity with a number of different systems of Geiger counter telescopes and a device called an ionisation chamber, for measuring different components of the cosmic ray intensity. The cosmic rays come dominantly from outer space, from the galaxy and beyond. A small component comes from the sun. At that time very, very little was known about these cosmic rays except that, as the name implies, they were thought to come from somewhere beyond the solar system.
62
On Macquarie Island Leigh Speedy and Ken Hines were complementing the work of Fred Jacka and Jo Jelbart, but had problems with the cosray measuring equipment. They were also plagued by an erratic power supply, but achieved some worthwhile results. Jacka, on Heard, became so scientifically interested in Antarctic auroras, which fascinated
T
H E
F I R S T
O P E R A T I O N A L
Y E A R
all the expeditioners, that he changed direction and devoted the remainder of his scientific career to upper atmosphere physics: The study of the aurora gives us information about the structure and the dynamics of the upper atmosphere, the atmosphere above the levels that usually interest meteorologists. And it enables one to get a better understanding of the interaction between the outer fringes of the earth’s magnetic field and the so-called solar wind, the outflowing plasma from the sun. These studies have relevance to the whole field of so-called space research, and possible relevance also in the field of meteorology. They have also very considerable importance in radio communications, both by high-frequency—involving reflection from the ionosphere—and by UHF and direct satellite communication.
Expeditioners on both Heard and Macquarie Islands had trouble with power supply in 1948. Although there were three second-hand army Lister 15-kVA diesel generators provided for each island, mechanical problems meant that electric power sometimes had to be rationed. On Heard, Johnny Abbottsmith earned the ire of his OIC and the scientists by restricting generating time, but had it not been for Abbottsmith’s ingenuity all those diesel generators might have ground to a halt. The storage of diesel fuel in 44-gallon [200 litre] drums in the open caused condensation and rust inside. Rust particles came through the filters into the injectors, causing mayhem with the starting and general running of the Listers. After talking with the scientists (who provided a small jeweller’s lathe), Abbottsmith decided to try the sensitive and difficult job of regrinding the plungers in the barrels of the injectors. But we were stuck for a grinding paste. One of the boys said, ‘John, what about trying toothpaste?’ I watered it down a bit and that overcame the injector trouble. But I had to keep half a dozen injectors ready, because as soon as one started to dribble out I had to replace it and clean the old one up. That’s how we kept the diesels going. I believe the Macquarie boys blew their diesels up completely.
There was a tragic reason for the Macquarie Island power crisis. On 4 July diesel engineer Charles Scoble (a keen outdoors man) went for a skiing excursion up on the plateau with one of the cosmic ray physicists, Ken Hines. Scoble, a big heavy man, skied over a frozen lake and broke through the ice. When Hines went to help he fell through too, and got back to shore by using his stock to crash a path through the ice and rest on it. But Scoble disappeared. Hines later wrote: We were close enough to talk to one another and Charlie was of the opinion that we had no chance of getting out and could not retain our
63
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
BURIAL The day we found him was a memory Of all the cold stones of the earth, A reminder of discovery And of adventure, and of the history Of men in the endless searching. We crunched up the side of the mountain With a fog that always touched our sides. Where he lay, spigots of moss were Encased in ice, and around as though For the occasion golden Azorella Formed bright wreaths. Mottershead bowed his fierce face The monkish cowl of his wind cheater Giving him an aspect out of character. He put his strong arms to the spade And turned reluctant sods Where none had turned before, while Bennett and Kenny laced his shroud. When all was done we returned him From whence he came; In a quiet and level voice Speedy Read the Service for the Dead, Then offered up a simple prayer As clean as the cool grass about, And some of us unaccustomed to raw tombs And the words of God, Hung our heads in that wild place And felt the shuddering sea below.
hold on the ice much longer. We knew that the nearest human beings were several miles away and separated from us by a thousand foot [304.8 metre] climb, and it was no use shouting for help. . . .I frequently relaxed my grip on the ice and rested by treading water very slowly, whereas Charlie, perhaps unable to swim, seemed never to relax his hold, but had to waste energy in his efforts to cling to the ice when too tired to make further progress. He became exhausted before covering half the distance to the bank and shortly afterwards disappeared below the surface of the ice. I finally reached the bank and after lying on the ice at the edge until I could walk, somehow stumbled across the plateau, down the cliff and back to the camp.12
Scoble’s body was recovered the next spring and buried beside the lake. He was the first expeditioner to die in the service of ANARE and his death shocked the small party. Many of them were ex-servicemen and that, Peter King believes, helped them to adjust: ‘We just coped with it. It’s the same in the army. You lose mates fighting wars, and carry on. You have to.’ (Previously unpublished poem by Norman Scoble had a wife, Marjorie, and Laird, fellow expeditioner and photographer 13 two small daughters. Excerpts from his on Macquarie Island, 1948.) diary reflect a hard worker who was enjoying life on Macquarie. On 2 June he recorded his daughter Heather’s second birthday—‘we have a birthday cake’. On 30 June ‘telegram from Marjorie & Mother gave away about my birthday unfortunately’.14 Four days later he died. After his death the Federal Government gave £1100 [$2200] compensation to his wife and daughters, provided they took no further action 64 against the Commonwealth.15
T
H E
F I R S T
O P E R A T I O N A L
Y E A R
After Scoble’s death the situation with Macquarie’s Lister diesels worsened. Two of the three generators broke down and the emergency Lister was unreliable. Gersh Major, one of the radio operators, took over as engineer and did what he could. In Melbourne, Stuart Campbell approached the RAAF to fly down a replacement diesel mechanic, Frank Keating. Macquarie CHARLES SCOBLE’S LONELY Island could be reached by air—just. The only aircraft GRAVE ON THE MACQUARIE capable of making the flight was a Catalina which would ISLAND PLATEAU BESIDE THE have to carry fuel for the return journey of 3750 kiloLAKE WHERE HE DROWNED, metres. The amphibious Catalina could use a conventional LATER NAMED SCOBLE LAKE. airstrip from Cambridge Airport, near Hobart, but would (F ILIFF) have to land on and take off from the choppy waters of Buckles Bay at Macquarie. Because of the prevailing swell off the island there were doubts that the heavily laden amphibian would be able to take off at all. As luck would have it the RAAF was testing JATO ( Jet Assisted Take Off) units at Point Cook. It was decided to fit four units on Catalina A24 -104, each giving 1000 pounds of thrust for twelve seconds. The flight crew, commanded by Squadron Leader Robin Gray, and captained by Flight Lieutenant A E Delahunty, went to Point Cook for JATO experience. (Robin Gray had flown for ANARE earlier that year. On 13 March he flew the Sikorsky Kingfisher amphibian carried on Wyatt Earp on two brief test flights off the coast of George V Land.) Flight Engineer Jack Vercoe reported that the rockets gave the stately Catalina a performance comparable to a Sabre jet for a memorable twelve seconds. ‘Unfortunately this only endured to about 500 feet when the old girl returned to her true performance of about 90 knots. End of exhilaration!’16 The flight to Macquarie Island had to be made in the middle of winter, in the most unfavourable conditions imaginable. Campbell (a former wartime Catalina pilot) decided to go along for the ride, and the aircraft flew to Cambridge Airport, Hobart, on 22 July to wait for suitable weather conditions. 65
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
The first attempt was made on 25 July, but the aircraft was forced to return because of thick, low cloud and poor visibility. After another false start, Campbell returned to Melbourne and was not on board the successful flight which left Tasmania on 4 August at 5.13 am. It was a long, hard haul south, fighting the prevailing westerlies which made navigation ‘even more difficult if that were possible’. Flight Engineer Jack Vercoe said that the fuel range did not allow much time to find ‘this miserable speck in the Antarctic Ocean’. When they sighted Macquarie Island, Flight Lieutenant Delahunty ordered all crew not actually involved in the landing to adopt crash positions. The sea conditions were so bad that the commander of the flight, Squadron Leader Gray, made it clear that the pilot did not have to land and gave him the option of returning to Australia. Jack Vercoe: The captain elected to land. This he did in a most professional manner (at 12.50 pm). We taxied very close to a sandy beach where, with the aid of two anchors and running engines, we managed to hold the aircraft into the wind whilst we unloaded Gray and the engineer into the waiting boat. Survival time in the sea at that particular time of the year was estimated at two minutes.17
66
The Catalina’s two anchors failed to hold against the prevailing wind and the courageous decision was made to allow the aircraft to drift three kilometres out to sea. Vercoe said they then taxied back to shore on one engine: ‘This procedure was followed, using alternate engines, until Gray came aboard bringing with him first day covers of the first airmail to Macquarie Island.’18 Vercoe said that Gray’s insistence on going ashore to get the first day covers franked cost them three hours, and it was almost dark when he boarded the aircraft for the return journey. The westerly winds had increased in that time, preventing any chance of a return direct to Hobart. The four JATO rockets catapulted the Catalina into the air with startling efficiency and the aircraft made for the Royal New Zealand Air Force base at Wigram, near Christchurch, New Zealand. Doubtless the Catalina’s crew were comforted by the thought that the only back-up aircraft available was a Lincoln bomber, standing by on search and rescue readiness at the RAAF base at East Sale. Unable to land on the water, it could only have dropped life rafts and survival gear had the Catalina come down in the Tasman Sea. Frank Keating ‘regenerated’ the Lister diesels, which powered the Macquarie Island station successfully until the 1949 relief party arrived in late March 1949. He was further challenged by a drastic shortage of lubricating oil, which he overcame by using any grease he could find on the station, including tinned butter and elephant seal blubber.19
FIVE
EARLY
DAYS
B
ack in Melbourne the politics of the bureaucracy of ANARE were becoming as turbulent as the waters of Macquarie Island’s windswept Buckles Bay. In April 1948 DEA Secretary John Burton had expressed reservations about the ability of his department to undertake detailed supply work of ANARE and thought that other government departments should contribute, with the Public Service Board being responsible for staff appointments in Melbourne. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research was also reluctant to take overall responsibility for Antarctic activities, although it was prepared to do much of the ‘collation, coordination and distribution of scientific data’.1 On 4 May 1948 an Antarctic Section was set up in the Department of External Affairs, and by 18 May the Antarctic Division was more formally incorporated into the DEA with Stuart Campbell as officer-in-charge. A new ANARE Planning Committee was formed consisting of representatives of the various departments and organisations that were involved with the expeditions’ activities. One of the committee’s first priorities was to recommend that Campbell go overseas to try to find a suitable ice-strengthened ship to replace the wooden Wyatt Earp. He had no success locating a ship and, faced with the prospect of simply running the Heard and Macquarie Island operation, with no immediate prospects of getting to mainland Antarctica, the restless Campbell began to consider other options. Chief scientific officer Phil Law had been overseas on a visit to Japan in connection with his cosmic ray work and when he arrived back in Sydney from Japan on 20 August 1948 his attention was drawn to an
67
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
advertisement for the job of Assistant Officer-in-Charge (Scientific) for the Antarctic Division that had appeared in the Commonwealth Gazette while he was away. With two sub-Antarctic island stations established and the Government committed to a five-year program to maintain them, it was necessary to formalise ANARE’s structure. Law was uneasy about working with Campbell: He would always try and obstruct or oppose and contradict and you had to justify yourself tremendously strongly in order to get anything through. It was the antithesis of my optimistic approach of encouraging people to come up with ideas and do things. So I couldn’t have worked under Campbell personally.2
Law was encouraged to apply for the new position following a conversation with Colin Moodie, Counsellor-in-Charge of Antarctic Affairs in the DEA, who told him Campbell was considering leaving the Antarctic Division to return to his permanent position with the Commonwealth Department of Civil Aviation. Moodie also indicated that the assistant OIC (scientific) would very likely be appointed as acting officer-in-charge when Campbell left. This was splendid news for Law, who had decided that a pivotal role in the Antarctic Division was the career he wanted: I was fascinated, of course, like all adventurers are, with the exploration and discovery aspects of it, and my interest in mountaineering and snow and ice gave me a strong adventure motivation. But as well as that, I was fascinated by the research potential of the islands and Antarctica, so I was deeply interested as a scientist.3
68
What Law did not know was that Campbell was determined that Law would not succeed him. Before he left for Japan, Law had asked Campbell to let him know of any positions becoming vacant with the reorganisation of the division, but Campbell always told him nothing had been decided. In fact, three days after Law had left for Tokyo, Campbell had written to the DEA and advised that Law’s appointment would terminate on 1 August, adding that ‘in view of the pending reorganisation of this Division, it is not proposed to recommend an extension of Mr Law’s appointment’.4 Fortunately for Law, he had allies in the DEA such as Moodie, while John Burton, the DEA Secretary, had reservations about Campbell.5 On 20 August Burton wrote to Campbell on Moodie’s advice, suggesting a panel of three scientists should sit on the selection committee with Campbell to consider the applications for the OIC (scientific) position. Professor Martin from Melbourne University, who had supported Law’s move to the Antarctic Division originally, was one, and all three knew
E
A R L Y
D A Y S
Law well. Campbell objected to having scientists on the panel but Burton insisted, although he compromised by allowing Martin to be replaced. He also insisted that Sir Douglas Mawson (who lived in Adelaide) should be invited on to the selection committee. On 12 October Campbell attempted to skew the job description towards his favoured candidate, Wing Commander H W Berry of the RAAF. Influenced by Berry’s service background, Campbell believed that ANARE needed someone as second in command who could ‘hack it when things got tough’. He did not believe that Law, from a civilian background, had that degree of toughness compared with someone who had seen military action. Berry was older than Law, had no scientific qualifications, but had good technical and administrative experience making him well suited to the new requirements. When Campbell wrote to Mawson inviting him to Melbourne for the interview, he added: ‘Personally, I very much doubt if it would be worth your while coming’. He also told Mawson that he would soon return to the Department of Civil Aviation, that the new appointee would take over his job and that wide general experience and organising ability were more important for the assistant OIC (scientific) position than academic or scientific qualifications. Mawson decided against going to Melbourne, but arranged to see the interview documentation.6 At his interview, Law was ‘staggered’ to find he had been ambushed, and began a spirited campaign to make sure he got the job. He was unimpressed both by Campbell’s ingratiating friendliness to his face and by his apparent disregard for science. In a long letter to Moodie, setting out his distaste for the way Campbell was working against him, he said what Campbell was trying to do was quite obvious: He never at any time gathers together the whole committee. They write their opinions which he then takes around personally to each. . .in turn, coloring, distorting and twisting the facts to suit his plan.7
Law told Moodie he was pleased that Mawson had apparently refused to be talked around by Campbell and was properly concerned at the short shrift being meted out to science. He ended his letter with an offer: Look, if they appoint a ‘pure administrator’, even the Island programmes will degenerate into routine, unimaginative exercises in ‘logistics’. . .and the Antarctic show itself will just never materialize. . .Pick a good reputable scientific bloke for this job and I’ll withdraw my application. But I’ll fight ‘pure administrators’, particularly heavy-handed ex-service administrators who believe in handling a scientific expedition like a military exercise, as long as I have any breath left.8
69
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
STUART ALEXANDER CAIRD CAMPBELL, BENG, FRGS When it became obvious that the establishment of an Australian station on mainland Antarctica was at least several years away, Stuart Campbell quickly lost interest in his job as leader of ANARE. A man of action, when Campbell saw things that needed to be done, he did them, and worried about the bureaucratic proprieties later. But his autocratic style was causing problems with the Department of External Affairs. He was impatient with his superiors, who in turn were more used to senior officers who observed diplomatic niceties. Campbell decided to return to his job with the Department of Civil Aviation and resigned as leader of ANARE on 31 December 1948. Shortly afterwards, DCA sent him to Thailand with the International Civil Aviation Organisation to design Bangkok’s Dom Muang international airport. Interviewed in 1987 in Townsville, Campbell said: I liked Thailand, so then I resigned after another year with DCA, and went back to Thailand for twenty years, running my own business, importing everything from peas and matches, wine, cement, beds—everything. The confirmed bachelor even overcame his shyness. ‘I got married in Thailand to an Australian girl, and we had seven years of it there.’ When he first arrived in Thailand, Campbell wanted to learn the Thai language but could not find any textbooks so he wrote one—The Fundamentals of the Thai Language, published in 1957.9 The man whom Law felt was not particularly sympathetic to science then wrote another book, A Guide to the Hard Corals of
Thai Waters—illustrated with his own underwater photographs and published in 1980.10 He returned to Australia in the late 1970s.
GROUP CAPTAIN STUART CAIRD CAMPBELL, THE FIRST LEADER OF ANARE. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
Years after his ANARE experience Campbell told a friend, Hugh Philp, that he had resigned as leader of ANARE because he felt he could not work with Law, and their personality clash would not be good for ANARE. He also told Philp he had misjudged Law’s calibre, and that, in the end, Law’s appointment was well justified. Stuart Campbell died on 7 March 1988 aged 85.
E
A R L Y
D A Y S
Campbell finally got the selection committee together on 8 November and recommended that the assistant OIC (scientific) ‘not be filled at present’.11 Burton, well aware of what was happening, intervened, advising the Public Service Board that the appointment be proceeded with and that Law was the most suitable applicant. On 13 December Burton finally advised Campbell of the decision to appoint Law. Campbell continued to fight against the decision right up to 21 December when Law was advised his application had been successful. Mawson’s role in this manoeuvring is unclear. Moodie felt that ‘Campbell had him in his pocket to some degree’. He thought Mawson may not have been ‘sure’ about Law. This may have been partly based on the difference in physical size between the two men. Mawson had been—and still was—a big, strong man, and Moodie had the impression he thought the short, slightly built Law was ‘a bit cautious, not intrepid enough’.12 Campbell was not a tall man either, but he projected a tough, macho image, and shared a long association with Mawson. On 29 and 30 December Law went to Canberra for a briefing. By 31 December Campbell had returned to the Department of Civil Aviation and Law had resigned from Melbourne University. On 1 January 1949, Law was appointed Acting Officer-in-Charge of the Antarctic Division, including the responsibilities of leader of ANARE. He had just twenty-one days to prepare for his first voyage as expedition leader.13 In keeping with the kind of formality he felt should be observed when ANARE ships were leaving and arriving in port, Law ordered all the new Heard Island party to be present at a departure ceremony on 21 January 1949. Three were late, and had been drinking. One resented having to present himself at the ceremony, and it was not until Law ‘made an outright order of it that he came to heel’.14 The new ANARE leader was making it clear who was boss right from the start. As LST 3501, now renamed Labuan, headed south for Heard, Law discovered that the bigger ship made little difference to his chronic seasickness and he experienced for himself the extraordinary behaviour of the LST in the Southern Ocean: It was a unique vessel in a storm. An LST is about 300 feet [91.4 metres] long, and all the works are at the back. It has blunt bows, so as you hit a wave it’s like bashing into it with a brick wall. There’d be this tremendous crash like a thousand kerosene tins being bashed. Then the whole of the front part of the ship would bump up and down like a springboard, and as it flapped waves would come back through the steel decking.
On Heard, waiting for Labuan had become unbearable, and there was much conjecture in the Heard Island rec room who would be the
71
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
first to see the relief ship. Campbell-Drury wrote in his diary on 5 February: After tea, I strolled over to Corinth Head with Macey and took the Aldis lamp with which to exchange words of welcome with the ship as she first hove into view. We learnt by radio that it had first put into Spit Bay, to establish a food dump, and was now bound for this end of the island. As I stood watching out to sea, suddenly, almost magically, through the slight mist, the form of Labuan almost indistinguishable at first, grew, as it were, and became a solid thing. It was all too difficult to realise—the first ship we had seen in fourteen long months. I flashed the words of welcome to her captain, Lieutenant Commander Dixon: ‘Welcome, George. This is Heard Island. Please don’t miss us.’
After the flurry of greetings and delivery of mail, Law—mindful of Heard Island’s tempestuous climate—was keen to begin the changeover. He could not believe his luck—a high barometer and calm weather enabled unloading to start at 4.30 am the next day, and with the advantage of the DUKW’s capacity to take loads from the ship directly to the camp, the changeover was completed in record time. This lesson was not lost on Law, who made it a rule to capitalise fully on every skerrick of fine weather that the Antarctic could provide when unloading stores, or exploring new territory—even if it meant working around the clock. Fred Jacka was impressed with the way Law handled the whole unloading operation: It was just amazing to see them lower these things [DUKWs] over the side and people climbed into them and they just drove over and landed on shore. It was like the Messiah coming. He [Law] was in control of the situation. He came there with a definite idea of what he wanted to get done, and it was done expeditiously.
The dramatic nature of Heard Island, with its towering volcano, glaciers, ice cliffs and savage winds, had a curious psychological effect on some people. One of the three biologists assigned to Heard for 1949 found it so unnerving after one day that he decided he could not cope. He went to Phil Law:
72
He said, ‘Phil, I’m sorry, I can’t stay here, I want to go back to Australia’. He knew he would have to face the contempt of all the other ocker Australians that were there. Thank God he did, because the average bloke would have been too proud to admit that he was frightened, and he would have had a terrible year down there. I thought he showed great moral courage.
E
After calling briefly at the Kerguelen Islands, Labuan returned to Melbourne on 26 February to prepare to relieve the Macquarie Island first wintering party. Trevor Heath, the Secretary of the Antarctic Division, and Law’s deputy, was the voyage leader on the Labuan on this occasion, and the changeover was completed by 14 April. Costs of the first year’s Antarctic operations had exceeded the original estimate of £150 000 [$300 000] and were in excess of £215 000 [$430 000] with £327 000 [$654 000] being allocated for the second year.15 Law had inherited a dog’s breakfast of bureaucratic procedures: The finances on the scientific side were run by CSIR. . .all purchasing was done through the RAAF system, except for victuals which were purchased by the navy. What I did was cut through all those strings and set up our own supply department in the new Antarctic Division.
A R L Y
D A Y S
A RARE BEARDLESS PHIL LAW, THEN ANARE’S SENIOR
PHOTOGRAPH OF
SCIENTIFIC OFFICER AT
VICTORIA BARRACKS, MELBOURNE, 1947. (COURTESY P LAW)
The main objectives of the newly formed division were to develop the scientific work at Heard and Macquarie Islands, looking towards the eventual establishment of a station on the Antarctic continent.16 Law threw himself into the administration of the division, which consisted then of an administrative officer, two typists and a storeman. He was aware of the importance of an efficient home-based organisation, but he wanted it to be as unlike a public service department as possible. He was later to complain that ‘the thing you never get credit for is the administration’. His desire for independence immediately irritated public servants while he campaigned for the Antarctic Division to have distinctively painted premises and its own letterhead. His wife Nel designed an emblem depicting a map of the Antarctic surrounded by a border of Antarctic flora and fauna which was later used on all stationery, official reports and publications, despite continuing DEA disapproval. The fibro-cement premises at Albert Park Barracks had the standard drab olive-green and brown public service interior. Law battled with Department of Works officers to get the offices painted with white woodwork and pastel coloured walls. Later he was amused to see Department
73
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
of Works officers proudly showing visitors ‘the new look that they had introduced’.17 He continued to ignore official requests to stop using his maverick notepaper. The need for the Antarctic Division to control its own purchasing was paramount. Ordering supplies through the Department of Air could mean a delay of eight weeks for a particular piece of equipment. Had it not been for the continuing ingenuity and unconventional approach of storeman George Smith, the expeditions could not have been equipped in time for sailing: You’ve got to beat the system. . .If the boat is sailing tomorrow and you need [something] first thing tomorrow morning, it’s necessary to have contact with people in the right places who are prepared to turn around and put their necks out a little bit and give you the stuff on the basis that you will honour your promise and get the paperwork through in due course. I left after many years with none of them looking for my blood.
Law had complete confidence in Smith’s ability to manage the all-important business of supply: He had a memory like an elephant, he could remember every article he’d packed in a case and what the case numbers were, and he didn’t ever forget to put anything on the ship. He ran the Tottenham Store with an iron hand. He’d make the blokes work, and stand over them—belt them into action. He’d sort out the weedy ones, stimulate the slow ones and annihilate the lazy ones. He had a tremendous role out at Tottenham Store.
Faced with a motley collection of World War II cold-weather clothing gleaned from the British Navy and other services, George formed the idiosyncratic notion that if any of this clothing actually fitted the expeditioner concerned, ‘he must be deformed’. His methods of dealing with complaints endured into the 1960s, according to Des Lugg who was recruited as a medical officer: George, standing behind the counter, would throw you an immense array of clothing and suggest you tried it on. And as a newcomer, you’d come back and say: ‘Well, this doesn’t fit. This is too short, or too long.’ And George would invariably say, ‘You’re pathological, you bastard!’
74
It became standard procedure for selected expeditioners to work at the Tottenham Store to help prepare the stores for the coming year. This also saved money. According to Smith:
E
A R L Y
D A Y S
Everything was done as cheaply as possible. There was no money whatsoever. I can remember the days when we built our own huts; we estimated, including the carpenter’s wages, we were building prefabricated huts for about £350 [$700] each. We were using the doctor as chief assistant to the carpenter for weeks and weeks on end. To get anywhere you broke every rule in the book as far as getting on with the job. You had to. You just couldn’t run with that system because you had only weeks to do a job, not months or years. The money wasn’t there, so we learnt to live with the little we got.
Work in the store made it clear that the specialists, scientists, ‘met’ men and even the doctor were expected to pitch in where necessary down south to assist with essential practical tasks like building huts, digging latrines or helping the diesel mechanic and, of course, the allimportant cook. Although scientific work was acknowledged as a priority (and an important element of establishing national sovereignty over the Australian Antarctic Territory),18 Law had problems developing programs over and above the obviously useful meteorological data being gained and transmitted from the sub-Antarctic stations: Scott, even in his earliest, first expedition, did a tremendous amount of scientific work. . .it helped them get better public support and general acclaim, publicity and money. In our case, I had the greatest difficulty in selling the scientific side of things. There were many people who just thought putting a hut down there with some men was occupation [enough] and that was all you needed to do for your claims. But I had to keep pointing out that the Argentinians and Chileans and British were competing in the Falkland Islands Dependencies area of the Antarctic Peninsula. The British were doing meteorology and one or two other things and the Argentinians and Chileans were not doing nearly as elaborate programs and their prestige and the sort of pay-off, in terms of territorial occupation, were substantially lower than that of the British for this reason. So I had to keep saying, ‘If we don’t do scientific work, our position in the pecking order just won’t be good enough.’
From the time he became acting officer-in-charge of ANARE in 1949 Law had his sights set on gaining a foothold on the Antarctic continent itself. He knew this would have to wait until an ice-strengthened ship was either built or chartered, but he was content to continue projects of scientific research on Heard and Macquarie Islands while the Antarctic Division was built up and consolidated. Sir Douglas Mawson, who remained
75
T
76
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
on the Executive Planning Committee (EPC), was also keen for Australia to establish a continental station. Mawson was generally supportive of Law’s plans, but he was not always predictable. During the EPC meeting of 3 June 1949, the veteran Antarctic explorer threatened the continuing existence of ANARE and the sub-Antarctic program. It was the first time Law had chaired an EPC meeting. Sir Douglas asked the chairman whether it was the Government’s intention to pursue the present Antarctic research indefinitely. He felt there should be some limit to the activities of ANARE unless it could be made to pay for itself. Perhaps before more money was allocated for scientific exploration in the Antarctic, a critical analysis should be made in order to discover if the money ‘might be more usefully expended elsewhere’.19 Law deflected this attack on the sub-Antarctic program by saying that the question of continuity had not yet arisen in his various discussions with the DEA in Canberra. The Government was already committed to an island program of at least five years, and had set up a permanent Antarctic Division in Melbourne for this purpose and to prosecute plans for establishing a base on the Antarctic continent. But Sir Douglas persisted, saying he wanted to make it clear that when he had first suggested an Antarctic expedition to the Government he had not contemplated the present large expenditure, but had considered that part of the cost should be met by proceeds from associated commercial undertakings such as whaling. Whaling expeditions could finance an Antarctic program and, in addition, ‘their ships could take with them aircraft capable of surveying large areas in the interior’. Failing attention to the commercial side, it would, in his opinion, ‘be too expensive to maintain base camps indefinitely’.20 Law, from the chair, turned this sally aside by saying that in his view recommendations for a whaling industry lay outside the functions of the Executive Planning Committee. Dr F W G White of the CSIR weighed in at this point and reminded the committee that, at their last meeting, members had requested direction from the Government as to its future policy on the exploration and development of the Antarctic. The resolution made the point that if, for political or other reasons, the Government wanted to embark on a long-range, extensive program of Antarctic development, the committee could draw up such a program but ‘does not consider that this scientific work alone could justify the despatch of a major expedition’. Had any reply to this resolution been obtained from the DEA? Law said it had not, but ‘the department had been given all possible information and must be presumed to realise the position’. In his opinion
E
A R L Y
D A Y S
the question of the period of operation of ANARE was a matter for his department but that in any case ‘further consideration of this matter should be postponed until near the end of the five-year period to which the Expedition was committed’.21 It had been a tough first meeting of the EPC for the new chairman, but it demonstrated Law’s determination to make sure the committee operated only as an advisory body, while he ran the Antarctic Division and called the shots. The committee’s comment that scientific work could not justify a major expedition was an acknowledgment of the territorial imperative driving Australian Government Antarctic policy at the time. Ever since the beginning of his Antarctic career Law had believed that the future of a continuing Australian Antarctic program lay in carrying out a vigorous program of scientific research: In a number of speeches I had to hammer the point that governments don’t operate by taking money from you and putting it into something else. If they cut it out of one thing, they just cut it—it doesn’t go anywhere else. I used to say to the scientific community in Australia: ‘You ought to be jolly glad that we’re spending this money, because that’s money being spent on science that otherwise would not be spent’.
In June 1950, conscious of the importance of public support for the ANARE program, Law wanted to brief two journalists on Australia’s proposed plans for Antarctica. As public service rules dictated, he applied for permission from the DEA to do so. But there had been a change of government in 1949 to a Liberal–Country Party coalition. Alan Watt had replaced Burton as secretary of the DEA and Richard Casey was the minister. Charles Kevin was made assistant secretary (administration), with responsibility for the running of the Antarctic Division. Even Watt admitted that Kevin’s position was a ‘thankless post’ and concluded that ‘no one in this position ever achieves fame or glory. . .’ Although Law had no problems with Watt, who seemed reasonably well disposed towards the Antarctic Division, he had most of his dealings with Kevin and their relations were at best cool—mutual animosity only lightly masked by the stilted, impersonal language used in their memoranda.22 Kevin knocked back Law’s request to brief the two journalists on future ANARE plans.
O
n 20 July 1950, Law received a message from Jim McCarthy, OIC at Heard Island, that the medical officer, Serge Udovikoff, had diagnosed himself as having appendicitis. Udovikoff had had an eventful year. First he broke his ankle skiing, put it in plaster himself and spent three weeks in bed.23 Then followed a violent episode of food
77
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
poisoning. Udovikoff was one of the ‘refugee doctors’, medical practitioners from Europe who were not registered with the State Licensing Boards but who, through a special arrangement, were allowed to practise in Antarctica. (Many of these doctors with European qualifications also worked in Papua New Guinea after the war.) With no other expeditioner capable of performing an appendicitis operation, Udovikoff’s plight was serious. Law requested assistance from the Royal Australian Navy who refused point blank. It was the middle of winter, ‘they had no suitable ship and they couldn’t spare one anyway’. He then arranged for an SOS to be sent to all ships within a certain distance of Heard Island asking if they could divert to the island. The story was front page news all over Australia and by 21 July it was reported that a passenger steamer, Port Phillip, travelling from Australia to London, had answered the call and was heading towards Heard Island. Despite this development, Law was horrified when he heard that Udovikoff was planning to operate on himself: I was of course in touch with the Medical Adviser at Royal Melbourne Hospital. Our strong advice. . .was, ‘Certainly don’t try that. Use every conservative method you have and hope the thing will go away. . .you’ll kill yourself if you try to operate on yourself.’
Expeditioner Peter Wayman noted in his diary on 23 July that Udovikoff was marking his stomach and reading medical books, and had fresh symptoms all the time. On 26 July a home remedy for relieving the symptoms of appendicitis was received by radio: mix 1 teaspoon coffee grounds with l dessertspoon of castor oil in half a pint [0.3 litre] of warm water and drink every four hours.24 Ignoring advice to concentrate on palliative methods, Udovikoff got ready to operate on himself. Phil Law: He prepared everything down there—the boys helped rig up everything—to the point I believe of actually lying on the operating table and beginning to have them shave his pubic area and then he lost his nerve and decided not to.*
78
* On 30 April 1961 a Russian doctor, L I Rogozov, successfully removed his own appendix in Antarctica, at Novolazarevskaya Station on the coast of Queen Maud Land.25 With self-diagnosed signs of possible perforation of his appendix and localised peritonitis and no help possible, Rogozov decided the only solution was to operate on himself. He prepared local anaesthetic and instructed a meteorologist in the use of surgical retractors while another expeditioner held a mirror so Rogozov could view what he could not otherwise see. The resourceful doctor was back on duty within two weeks.
E
A R L Y
D A Y S
Rescue by ship was looking more and more unlikely. The captain of Port Phillip radioed that he could not continue the dash to Heard Island in dangerous weather conditions—the passengers were all complaining, the furniture was getting broken, and the grand piano had broken loose.26 Another ship, Perthshire, responded to the call with two doctors on board standing by ‘day and night to broadcast detailed directions to the expedition should Dr Udovikoff decide to remove his own appendix’.27 The press was in a high state of hyperbole. On 22 July the Sunday Telegraph headlined: DOCTOR WITH KNIFE POISED, STOPS OWN OPERATION.28 Meanwhile the biologists Peter Young and Les Gibbney were practising removing appendixes from seals. OIC McCarthy thought that Young was capable of doing the operation with a bit of advice from a Melbourne surgeon, but Udovikoff did not choose that option.29 Gales raging in the Southern Ocean forced Perthshire also to give up attempts to reach Heard Island. Law was having such a hectic time that his wife Nel shifted all his clothes and personal gear out to the lounge room at his Canterbury home, and he lived beside the phone for two weeks snatching catnaps as the Udovikoff affair gained momentum.30 Eventually the navy decided to help, and on 27 July it was reported that HMAS Australia would be sent ‘on her 3200 mile [5120 kilometres] mercy dash to Heard Island’ with two doctors aboard.31 Law had been contacted two days before by the navy and told to arrange cold-weather clothing for the entire ship’s company: We descended on Myers, and Buckley and Nunn’s, and London Stores. We bought all their long johns and their woollen singlets. . .and tried to get everything done in a period of 36 hours.
Meanwhile on Heard Island things were less hectic. Peter Wayman wrote in his diary that Udovikoff was still reading medical books, ‘but unfortunately he read the wrong one and developed symptoms of childbirth’. By 27 July there were signs that Udovikoff’s condition was easing and, three days later, Jim McCarthy was relaxed enough about the situation to go on a short mountaineering expedition.32 The press was still in a frenzy of excitement. ‘A thin white line of hope for a man in danger was cut through the Southern Ocean today as HMAS Australia sped towards Heard Island’ was typical of the coverage even though the big cruiser was making heavy weather of the Southern Ocean gales.33 On 2 August Heard Island reported one of the year’s worst blizzards with wind gusts reaching 160 kilometres per hour. But by 7 August the seas were calm enough for the Australian flagship to take Udovikoff on board for the return journey. The Canberra Times of 11 August reported
79
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
that HMAS Australia was speeding to Fremantle. No immediate operation was necessary. The doctor, a thin grey-eyed man, ‘clenched his teeth as he was helped to the ship’s surgery, but said he felt fairly strong and had little pain’. Law said the voyage back was very rough: They were struck by an immense wave that stove in about six frames on the side of the ship. By the time they got back to Fremantle the conservative measures taken by the doctor had proved effective.
The arrival in Fremantle was a public relations disaster, with Udovikoff walking ashore unaided. Law thought the least that could have been done was carry him off on a stretcher: There was an uproar by ignorant people and the media, querying whether he had ever been sick. This was during the cold war with Russia and some even went so far as to suggest that Udovikoff was a Russian agent and he’d deliberately designed this illness so he could divert Australia’s main flagship away from Australia! It was a tremendous drama. But I might just say Udovikoff was [later] qualified for medical service and he had a long and quite distinguished career as a medico in Western Australia.
80
One immediate outcome of the Udovikoff crisis was that the Minister for External Affairs, Richard Casey, made it clear to Law that the navy would not be available in the future to attempt this kind of rescue (HMAS Australia had sustained expensive structural damage). He also told Law that no doctor could go to an Australian Antarctic station in future without his appendix being prophylactically removed. The British Medical Association, however, considered it was unethical to operate on a person to remove a healthy appendix. Law solved this problem by simply ignoring the BMA’s concerns, but it did add to the problems of finding doctors for Antarctic service, because ‘not everyone is prepared to walk “cold’’ into a surgery and have his appendix out just to get a job in the Antarctic’. The Udovikoff affair underlined the pressing need for Australia to have its own Antarctic ship. Labuan was not available for the emergency dash to Heard Island to bring back Dr Udovikoff and whether she could have managed the journey in winter is doubtful. Law had hoped to mount an expedition to the Antarctic continent in the summer of 1951–52, but the prospect of chartering an overseas ship was complicated by the outbreak of the Korean War and the uncertain international situation. Law urged the Executive Planning Committee to discuss the practicality of a plan already drawn up by the Antarctic Division to design and build an Antarctic ship in Australia. The committee
E
A R L Y
D A Y S
resolved to recommend to the Government that a ship be chartered in 1951 and that a sub-committee be appointed to prepare detailed specifications for the new vessel.34 Cabinet agreed and on 13 July 1950 decided ‘that an expedition should be sent to the Antarctic to establish a permanent station in the Australian sector’ and ‘that a new ship should be built for this purpose’. Costs of the ship were estimated to be in the region of £700 000 [$1.4 million] to £800 000 [$1.6 million].35 For two years from December 1950, a sub-committee including Law, Sir Douglas Mawson, Captain J K Davis and Commander Peter Peak RAN met and worked painstakingly with the chief naval architect from the Australian Shipbuilding Board, Claude Barker.36 The general requirements for the proposed ship were that it be capable of breaking three-foot-thick sheet-ice [91.4 centimetres], carry 50 passengers and 50 crew, and have a helicopter deck and space for an aircraft, amphibious vehicles, laboratories, oceanographic winches and other equipment. Specifications for this Antarctic ship were actually completed ‘right down to the furniture and the crockery’. The vessel was never built. Australia would not have its own Antarctic ship until the launch of the Newcastle-built Aurora Australis in 1989.
81
SIX
TESTING
TIMES
I
n February 1951 the whole sub-Antarctic program was thrown into chaos by the breakdown and removal from service of HMAS Labuan on her way back to Fremantle while relieving the 1950 Heard Island party and landing the 1951 expeditioners and their supplies. This was something Phil Law had feared from the time of his first Southern Ocean voyage on Labuan in 1949: There’s no doubt that the Naval Board in Australia had great misgivings about sending an LST to Heard Island. They argued about it for a long while and finally agreed reluctantly to send an LST because there was just nothing else. The thing that will always amuse me is that, having argued for so long and worried so much about the chance of survival of the LST. . .when it returned successfully from Heard Island everyone threw their caps in the air and said: ‘Hooray, we made it. Good old LST. A wonderful job.’
The voyage to Heard had been rough, with Labuan performing her usual remarkable twisting and corkscrewing motion through heavy seas that Law estimated were twelve metres high. On the night of 28 January it was blowing up to hurricane force, ‘60 mph [96 kilometres per hour] with gusts up to 90 mph [144 kilometres per hour], a pitch black night with mountainous seas’. It was so bad that Law thought he would check on how the ANARE men were faring in the cabins on either side of ‘this great flapping foredeck’:
82
They were all sitting up very worried, and they said, ‘Phil, the crew’s all gone.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ They said, ‘Well, there’s no one next
T
E S T I N G
T I M E S
door.’ So I went to the crew’s quarters and sure enough there was no crew there. . .So I went back aft and there in the mess decks were all the crew with their knapsacks packed with all their personal belongings. I said, ‘What goes on?’ They said, ‘Well, if this ship is going to break in half, we’re going to be in the half that’s got the works in it!’
The steering gear failed before they got to Heard Island and while there the ship ran short of drinking water after cracks in the hull polluted the fresh water with salt. The captain, Lieutenant Commander I Cartwright, JO JELBART (LEFT) AND insisted on taking Labuan to neighbouring Kerguelen ‘SHORTY’ CARROLL WITH A Island to replenish the fresh water stocks before the HAUL OF ANTARCTIC COD, Heard resupply was completed. They got back to the HEARD ISLAND 1948. island on 13 February and completed the resupply, to JELBART DIED IN AN ACCIDENT Law’s great relief. The first day out on the return journey WHILE ON THE NORWEGIANthe steering gear failed again, but one of the crew BRITISH-SWEDISH ANTARCTIC devised an impromptu gadget with belts and pulleys EXPEDITION IN 1951. from a refrigeration electric motor to maintain steer(A CAMPBELL-DRURY) age. Law said later that the ingenious young engine artificer was later court martialled for drilling holes in the deck without the approval of the Naval Board. On Wednesday 21 February Labuan wallowed without power for eight hours in mid-ocean while engine repairs were attempted. Law was also told that a crack (by no means the first in the LST’s Antarctic history) had opened up right across the steel foredeck—a reminder that LSTs had broken apart in the Atlantic during World War II—and sea water had entered the fresh water tanks and the condenser tubes. During this dismal time Law was shocked to get a radio report that the physicist Jo Jelbart (who had been one of the original Heard Island party in 1948) had been killed while working as an Australian observer with the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition. Jelbart and two other men had driven over the ice cliffs in thick fog into the sea near the base camp of Maudheim in a Weasel over-snow vehicle. This was a double blow for Law. Apart from his personal friendship with the bright young physicist, Law had been grooming Jelbart to succeed him if ever he left the Division.1 83
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
I
n 1948 when Phil Law returned from the voyage of Wyatt Earp with his newly-grown beard, he believed himself to be one of only three men in Melbourne to sport one, and it excited comment wherever he went. In 1951, little had changed: The breakdown of Labuan and her diversion to Fremantle meant that men of the returning Heard Island party were in a strange city, far from home, with no money. I had radioed from the ship to Canberra requesting that the Public Service Inspector’s office in Fremantle be authorised to pay the men a fortnight’s salary upon their arrival. So, as soon as we berthed, I gathered the men and we all trooped along to the PSI’s office. We entered the building and I found the office. Saying, ‘Wait here till I check’, I left the men in the corridor and went in to speak to the girl at the reception counter. Behind
84
her was a large room with numerous typists working in an ‘open plan’ layout—about twenty in all. I asked the girl was the money for the Heard Island men available. After she had enquired and answered ‘Yes’, I went to the door and said, ‘All right men, come in.’ Into the space before the reception counter trooped eighteen men, almost all wearing beards. The beards were all types, sizes and colours, and some men with long, black, luxuriant growths looked very fearsome indeed. Every typist stopped work and there was a deathly, wide-eyed hush. After a few moments of shocked silence, there erupted a few giggles and a murmur of excited conversation; then the heads bent again over the typewriters and work resumed. I never again was to see beards have such an impact.2
On Tuesday 27 February a tug finally reached Labuan, but she was finished. After some weeks undergoing repairs in Fremantle she limped back to Melbourne for further work, and then to Sydney where she was tied up. She never put to sea again. The 1950 Macquarie Island party was following these events with more than average interest, because the men were effectively marooned, with no suitable vessel available to relieve them despite Law’s efforts to contact every organisation controlling shipping around the Australian coastline. They had a difficult year in many ways. There was friction over the management style of OIC Dick Cohen, which caused four members of the party to write to Phil Law complaining about his behaviour.3 The letters were able to be delivered because of a visit to Macquarie Island in September 1950 by a New Zealand naval frigate, St Austel Bay. This caused the unexpected departure of the cook, Norman Figg, who arrived on the beach at Garden Cove with his kitbag just before the frigate was due to sail. Weather observer Reg Frost said:
T
E S T I N G
T I M E S
‘Where are you going Norm?’ ‘I’m going home’ said the cook, all done up in his best clothes. And he did! We couldn’t stop him, providing the captain of St Austel Bay was prepared to take him.
Figg had injured his leg playing a particularly robust form of Macquarie Island football—a melange of rugby and Australian Rules ‘with no written rules’, played on the soft fine sand of the isthmus. That became the official reason for his ‘repatriation’, but the reality was he just decided to quit, having received some disturbing news from home. Fred Doutch, the assistant cook/storeman, took over culinary duties for three months until the British oceanographic research ship Discovery II dropped in a replacement chef.4 Another member of the party became so depressed during the year that he used to sit on top of Camp Hill near the station and shoot any seals ‘that put their heads up’ with a .303 rifle. The rest of the men thought it best not to interfere. According to weather observer Trevior Boyd, one of the enduring station slogans was, ‘Every bastard down here is mad except me’. Dissatisfaction with the OIC reached the point where a palace coup was actually planned. Biologist Bill Taylor: We had a series of informal meetings, and we were going to have a new King, Eric Shipp [the other biologist]. Nobody disagreed, but there were two or three who wouldn’t vote in favour of it, so we decided that unless we were all unanimous, we wouldn’t do it. But [the OIC] got a big scare and behaved himself a bit better after that.
All these group tensions were overtaken by the illness of meteorologist John Windsor, who developed severe symptoms of appendicitis in December 1950. Windsor was not keen to have an operation on the island. The doctor, Kostos Kalnenas, was a Displaced Person with European qualifications (like Serge Udovikoff) not recognised by Australian medical authorities. Kalnenas was an ear, nose and throat doctor without much general surgical experience.5 Windsor knew that the surgical instruments were in poor shape, as Bill Taylor recalled, ‘because [when we arrived] Kostos made the mistake of showing us the state of some of the instruments. They were all rusty, which Windsor didn’t like one bit.’ According to Taylor, Windsor delayed reporting his symptoms because he had heard a French polar ship, Commandant Charcot, was due to sail past Macquarie Island, and could call in to pick him up. When it got fairly close to Macquarie he reported sick and wanted the ship to come in. But the doctor said, ‘You have no time. You have delayed reporting it, and it’s obviously burst.’ And he still would not agree to an
85
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
operation. It wasn’t until there was an exchange of cables and he was told that the ship wouldn’t be coming—because he would be dead by the time the ship got there—that he agreed to an operation.
Kalnenas operated on 2 January 1951, but it was too late. Windsor’s appendix had ruptured, and the incision revealed ‘one big pussy mess’. There was little Kalnenas could do other than clean up the infected area, put in a drain and administer antibiotics. Windsor died on 5 January and his widow agreed to her husband’s burial on Macquarie Island.6 To compound these traumatic events, Cyril Park, the diesel mechanic, also developed symptoms of appendicitis. Bill Taylor: Cyril was a real tough mechanic, a good guy. Everybody liked old Cyril. But for some reason he started to get the same vomiting and pains. . .it was a combination of gall bladder and appendix symptoms.
86
By this time the French polar vessel Commandant Charcot that Windsor had hoped would rescue him was close enough to Macquarie to be diverted to pick up Park, who was evacuated on 12 February. The 1950 Macquarie Island party was depending on Phil Law to find a suitable ship for them. The rumour mill had it that a ship would actually have to be built to relieve the island, and that could take twelve months. But a more conventional solution was at hand. The Australian Shipping Board finally offered ANARE River Fitzroy, a 9000-tonne ship used for transporting iron ore for BHP, then about to load iron ore at Whyalla. It was far from suitable, but at least it was a ship, and Law accepted it gratefully. The Shipping Board offered the seamen’s union £1 a day [$2], and the union responded with a ‘take it or leave it’ offer of £2/10/0 [$5] a day. Law took it.7 This was the first time ANARE had worked with a merchant crew, rather than the navy. Fortunately the army was able to provide two DUKWs to replace the beaten-up vehicles that were still on Labuan . The landing of stores from River Fitzroy was organised by Dick Thompson, ANARE’s new supply officer. Thompson was an ex-navy man with wide experience, a good organiser and widely respected by those who worked with him. It was 1 May before River Fitzroy cleared Hobart for Macquarie Island, arriving in Buckles Bay on Friday 4 May. By then it was late in the season, dark each day at 4.30 pm and unloading from the ship was illuminated by floodlights. Beacons were also lit on the beach to guide the DUKWs in. Gales and snow storms interrupted the unloading, and pontoons and a disabled DUKW were blown out to sea and had to be rescued. On 13 May River Fitzroy sailed down the coast of the narrow island to Lusitania Bay to land emergency supplies for a hut there. One of the two DUKWs
T
E S T I N G
T I M E S
was stranded on rocks just off the beach where it was pounded by a heavy swell and had to be abandoned. Law, Thompson and the landing party were rescued by a whale boat from River Fitzroy after a cold and uncomfortable night in a small shelter hut. Eleven men trying to sleep in a hut only 2.4 by 2.6 metres reminded Law of ‘sea elephants in a wallow’.8 Despite the odds, however, the 1950 party had been relieved—even though it seemed at one stage that they THE 9000-TONNE IRON-ORE might have to sit down to their second mid-winter CARRIER RIVER FITZROY, dinner in 1951. But the problem of finding a suitable SHOWN LEAVING MELBOURNE ship to support ANARE activities remained. IN APRIL 1951, WAS THE ONLY After the Udovikoff evacuation from Heard Island VESSEL AVAILABLE TO GO TO in 1950, and John Windsor’s death early in 1951, MACQUARIE ISLAND AFTER Antarctic Division staff in Melbourne were alarmed to THE COLLAPSE OF LABUAN. hear from Heard Island in October about another (COURTESY P LAW) medical emergency. Jack Starr, the cook on Heard Island, had been diagnosed with acute appendicitis. There were no ships available for a rescue, so after an exchange of cables with the division and the consultant surgeon of Royal Melbourne Hospital an urgent operation was recommended. The medical officer on Heard Island was Dr Otto Rec who, like Udovikoff and Kalnenas, had European qualifications not recognised in Australia. He was a physician and had never performed an appendicectomy. Law’s insistence that certain expedition members from each wintering party had three weeks’ training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital as a theatre assistant and anaesthetist was about to be put to the test again. The radio supervisor on Heard Island, Nils Lied, noted in his diary: Dr Rec wanted the following assistants: biologist Ken Brown as assistant surgeon to help him underbind the tissues and arteries etc; myself to hold Jack’s guts open while he and Ken did the digging; biologist Max Downes to be in charge of instruments; OIC Frank Hannan to be the anaesthetist, and Kevin Johnson, radio operator, to be general ‘sister’ to fetch and carry.9
87
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Photographs taken at the time show a professional-looking gowned and masked operating team gathered round an operating table in the galebuffeted recreation hut. The table was hastily knocked up by radio operator Dave Cheffins from scrap timber and a masonite desk top. The whole area had been scrubbed with lysol. Nils Lied:
DR OTTO REC (CENTRE) AND HIS ANARE THEATRE ASSISTANTS OPERATING ON
JACK STARR FOR APPENDIHEARD ISLAND, 1951. (R DINGLE)
CITIS,
It took us all hours and hours to get scrubbed up. . .at first we used sandsoap, then ordinary soap, then when seemingly all the skin had been thoroughly removed from hands and arms, we held our hands in pure alcohol for ten minutes. This was, of course, considered a terrible waste by several of the party.10
The cook, by general ANARE consensus then and now, is the indispensable person on a wintering station. Rec began the operation with the words of diesel mechanic Peter Lawson ringing in his ears: ‘If you kill the bloody cook, they’ll kill you!’ Starr was brought in, putting on a bold front. He told his masked and gowned colleagues that their appearances were much improved. Lied:
88
We made a mask from gauze and we had ether. We kicked him off with Pentothal, and he got very drowsy. Somebody said, ‘Where are you Jack?’ And he said, slurring, ‘Sydney Cricket Ground’. I said, ‘Oh he’s all right’ so we slapped the mask on him. Even so, it took an hour to get him under because. . .he had such a bushy beard that oxygen got through the beard and mixed with the ether. But we got him under in the finish. We tried several times, but every time Doc touched his belly with a knife, he’d draw his knees up. Anyway we finally got into him, and Doc said, ‘I cannot find the bloody thing!’ We had all Jack’s entrails spread over his stomach and finally we found the appendix, and that was not in the best of condition.11
T
E S T I N G
T I M E S
The discovery of the elusive appendix triggered a muffled cheer from the operating team and the anxious spectators. Lied said the job was finished just in time: The last stitching was as fast as possible, and soon after the last stitch was in and a dressing clapped on his belly, Jack came out of the anaesthetic and said ‘Shit’!—which may well have been appropriate under the circumstances.12
Radio contact with Melbourne was lost during the operation and it was some hours before Cheffins could get a message through to the Antarctic SHE WAS SMALL, BUT SHE Division (relayed through Scandinavia on an amateur DID THE JOB. TOTTAN IN band) to a relieved Phillip Law that the operation had ATLAS COVE 1952. been successfully completed. Starr made a slow recov(P LAW) ery, but managed to return to duty. At the end of 1951 the absence of a suitable ship to recover the Heard and Macquarie parties and replace them with the 1952 winterers was still the most urgent practical problem confronting the Antarctic Division. It was thought a motor ship, Kabarli, would be available for charter from the Government of Western Australia, but the offer was withdrawn ‘at the last moment’.13 The charter of vessels from overseas was ruled out as too expensive. Law pinned his hopes on a Norwegian sealer, MV Tottan , used by the French to resupply their station on Adélie Land. There were some difficulties to be overcome. Tottan was scheduled to take the French expeditioners back to Europe and its owner-master, Captain Engebretsen, was returning to Norway to take part in that season’s sealing operations off Newfoundland. Law sent administrative officer Jerry Donovan to Adelaide to sound out Captain Engebretsen on his way south, and asked Westralian Farmers Transport Ltd in London to act as agents for the Antarctic Division and open negotiations in Norway. After prolonged negotiations between London and Oslo, a charter was arranged to relieve both Heard and Macquarie Islands within Law’s budget estimate of £50 000 [$100 000]. There were no objections by the French, because they found it cheaper to fly their expeditioners home rather than continue their charter.14 Tottan was a small vessel of 500 tonnes, not ice-strengthened but—although about the same size as the wooden-hulled Wyatt Earp—at 89
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
least with a steel hull. She was not big enough to carry army DUKWs, and alternative methods of getting cargo ashore at Heard and Macquarie islands had to be worked out. Supply officer Dick Thompson and scientific officer Lem Macey chose inflatable pontoons. They were US wartime stock, they came in 10 2 metre sections, had timber decking on top of them, and were originally used as a quick method of bridging rivers. Thompson: Lem Macey and I became the masters of pontoon technology. . .these big inflatable pontoons proved to be a lifesaver for the Antarctic Division for a long, long time. We cut our teeth on Tottan because we didn’t have the navy any more. Before [on the Labuan] there were sailors to do things. Tottan had a small crew, and they would handle the cargo in the hold, we’d load it on to the pontoon, the ship’s motor boat would tow us in—we had no more than four people on a pontoon—and then when we got on to the beach all our troops would unload it.
Tottan sailed for Heard Island on 9 February 1952 under the command of Captain L Frederiksen. Law rated her on a par with Wyatt Earp for comfort, which was not a ringing endorsement. Peter Lancaster Brown, a Heard Island expeditioner, wrote that Melbourne harbour regulations forbade the dumping of foodstuff into the river and a week’s accumulation of galley scraps lay rotting on the burning hot steel decks: Little imagination is required to visualise the scene, and with the putrid odours percolating through from the old, leaking blubber tanks in the ship’s hold, it was only too easy to realise that we were in for no luxury cruise.15
Law described the seventeen-day voyage to Heard Island as ‘not enjoyable’, with most of the ANARE men being sick all the time. A pen containing twelve sheep was stove in by a heavy sea and the bedraggled beasts were moved on to one wing of the bridge—courtesy of the captain—for the rest of the voyage.16 The new pontoons proved effective in moving cargo and, anxious to take advantage of calm weather on the evening of 27 February, Law decided to throw 44-gallon drums [200 litres] of fuel overboard to float ashore.
90
After the first twenty-five drums had been put over I noticed that they were floating alongside the ship and not moving towards the shore, so I stopped the unloading and work ceased. Soon afterwards the wind went around to the south-west and most of these twenty-five drums were
T
E S T I N G
T I M E S
not seen again. They will probably turn up on one of the adjacent beaches.17
The next morning the experiment was tried again and ‘drums now put overboard floated ashore rapidly and were dragged by the men above high-water mark’. The unloading and changeover was completed by 2 March and Law was extremely impressed with the cooperation ANARE had from RUBBER PONTOONS CARRY the master Captain Frederiksen and the crew of CARGO ASHORE FROM Tottan. TOTTAN, MACQUARIE Before leaving Heard, Law gave his permission for ISLAND 1952. the crew to do some sealing as a bonus for their good (P LAW) work. A score of bull elephant seals were lying up on the rocks near Wharf Point, near the camp. All of them were youngsters not more than four or five years old but, even so, they were over three metres long and each weighed about a tonne. Peter Brown described the scene: Armed with long flensing knives and rifles, the Norwegians approached the dozing seals that lay shoulder to shoulder in a wallow of stinking ooze and rotting faeces. . .An old sealer called Thorsen picked up a length of driftwood. Whacking the unfortunate beasts about the head, he tried to separate them to give the men more room for flensing. With thunderous, raucous bellows, the victims arched their bodies as they scattered to avoid the rain of blows. Some tried to lollop back into the sea to escape their tormentor, but a snap shot by the riflemen quickly ended their flight. It was horrible to witness the great seals die. The huge masses of flesh quivered in the death agonies and spouted plumes of bright red blood. As life became extinct their eyes glazed over—turning green and expressionless.18
The dead seals were quickly flensed and within half an hour the strips of white blubber were deposited into Tottan’s rusting blubber tanks. Law was impressed by the operation and its commercial possibilities and noted in his voyage report:
91
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
As a result of discussions on board this sealing ship and (later) at Kerguelen, together with observations of these men at work, I am convinced that the time is ripe to commence sealing operations at our Islands.19
92
Within five days of her return to Melbourne on 10 March Tottan was on her way to Macquarie Island where the technique of unloading cargo on inflatable pontoons was to be put to its toughest test. With the beach at Buckles Bay guarded by rocks and kelp, and a surf to contend with as well, the pontoons could not be towed straight to shore as they had been at Heard Island. Instead a buoy was anchored just beyond the breaker line, near a narrow strip of open water about twelve metres wide and leading into the beach between the rocks and kelp. The pontoons were towed to this buoy by the ship’s motor boat and then were hauled from the buoy to the shore by a continuous line running from the buoy to the beach—a method devised and rigged by the ingenious duo, Macey and Thompson. Law later wrote that only the flexible pontoons could have operated in the heavy surf in Buckles Bay. Tottan left for Melbourne on 9 April. It had taken two weeks wrestling with cargo, cold, surf and gale-force winds to complete the changeover. Back in Melbourne, a smooth rhythm of annual expedition administration was now operating, tied irrevocably to the shipping schedule that took men and supplies to the sub-Antarctic islands. In 1951 Law requested that his title ‘officer-in-charge’ be changed to ‘director’. He was not confirmed in his job, however, until 27 March 1952, more than three years after he had taken up the acting position. On 11 June 1952 the Antarctic Division moved from its Victoria Barracks location to 187 Collins St, Melbourne. From a complement of four in 1949 when Law first took over, there were now eighteen permanent staff including Law, director; Jeremiah (Jerri) Donovan, administrative officer; Fred Jacka, physicist (in charge of a small staff of scientists); Dick Thompson, supply officer; George Smith, storeman at Tottenham; Alan Campbell-Drury, photographic officer; Mynwe (Mrs Mac) McDonald, cables officer; a librarian and other support staff. The Antarctic Division’s planning system was set out in a monthly time line beginning in April when Law returned from overseeing the last changeover voyage of the summer season. Plans, forward estimates of costings and budgets were prepared for the next expedition. Staff positions were created and approvals sought. Ordering of overseas supplies began in May and vehicles, aircraft, radios and general equipment were overhauled or purchased. Advertising for expeditioners for the following year began in June and the budget was prepared and presented
T
E S T I N G
T I M E S
to Treasury. In July Law travelled to State capital cities to interview expeditioners who had applied to go south. In the latter half of the calendar year the island stations ordered food and equipment for the resupply. The all-important operations manuals were written or updated during September and ship itineraries and passenger lists finalised. The selected expeditioners began training in October. Trial erection of new huts was an important element and the men began packing stores under the ‘guided democracy’ of George Smith in the Tottenham store. This work went on through November and into December when the first ship sailed. In the first few years of island operations there was little training for expeditioners. Two men went to the Royal Melbourne Hospital to learn basic anaesthetic and nursing techniques to help the doctor in an emergency, and the cook was checked out and further trained if necessary in the all-important art of baking bread. The doctor also did a quick (but essential) course in basic dentistry at the Dental Hospital. After Dick Thompson joined the division in 1950 he suggested to Law that a properly designed training program be set up for all expeditions, to enable them to handle better the extreme conditions in Antarctica. It became the practice for all expeditioners to attend a week-long program at the University of Melbourne in November. There they had lectures on the aims and ideals of the expedition, survival and first aid, hygiene, fire precautions and the use of fire extinguishers, Antarctic clothing, how to travel by tractor and dog sled (when the Antarctic stations were established), films of life at a station, photographic techniques, supply problems, reordering, stores procedures, administration and how to deal with morale problems. An expedition member was selected as station photographer, trained by Alan Campbell-Drury, and issued with cameras and film to undertake moving as well as still photography during the year. While every photographer was credited, the film exposed remained the property of the Antarctic Division and the release of any publicity material was controlled by the director. The dangers of Antarctic (and sub-Antarctic) life were many and a trap for the unwary. Getting there involved a potentially dangerous voyage fraught with cyclones, pack ice, submerged rocks and unknown coasts. Loading and unloading stores under risky conditions could and did cause injuries to those taking part. Those who ventured away from the stations faced risk of exposure, frostbite, snow-blindness, slipping on ice and breaking a limb, white-outs, being lost in a blizzard, falling into crevasses or being killed or injured by aircraft, vehicles or machinery. On station there could be fire, carbon monoxide poisoning (an insidious danger in huts warmed by burning fossil fuels) or industrial accidents.
93
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
Weather observers manufacturing hydrogen for balloon launches were vulnerable to explosions. These dangers were no less potent on the sub-Antarctic islands than on the yet-to-be-attained Antarctic continent. Heard Island, with its 2745 metre volcano Big Ben, generated a full range of polar conditions. Savage blizzards, glaciers, snow and ice posed grave risks for those undertaking pioneering field work. Those who broke established rules or took unacceptable risks through inexperience could pay a terrible price. In April 1952 radio operators Jim Carr and Peter Brown set out to walk from the station at Atlas Cove to conduct a seal count at Saddle Point along the coast—only about ten kilometres as the metaphorical crow flew, but considerably longer in practice because of the steep slopes and glaciers of Heard Island. When they came to a feature sometimes called the Baudissen Glacier (later renamed the Little Challenger Glacier) it looked easier to walk along the beach in front of its ice cliffs, instead of climbing over. Carr: These glaciers have ice walls at the shore, 150 feet [45.7 metres] or so high, and then a beach as wide as the average lounge room, twelve or fifteen feet [around 4 metres]. So we thought we’d take a risk because it would be quicker.20
94
Brown agreed that the short cut would save ‘hours of back-breaking toil’, and they began to walk across. Brown wrote: ‘I felt uneasy—like a kind of foreboding. The sand strip was terribly narrow and forced us to walk directly under the vertical ice wall looming menacingly above. . .’21 Carrying packs weighing over 30 kilograms, the two men began running and fast walking along the front of the glacier. Halfway across they went down to their knees in soft wet sand. In Carr’s words: ‘As though there were some malignant force guiding it all. . .a wave leapt up in the air and ran straight in. Now that water’s very cold, and it just engulfed us.’22 Driven back against the ice cliff, the two men drove their ice axes in and held on as the next wave surged over them. ‘This is the end’, thought Brown. But the waves held back, and they scrambled to safety, ‘lucky to be alive’. On 26 May, impatient to get away from base camp for an excursion, dog handler Alastair ‘Jock’ Forbes, radio operator Dick Hoseason and weather observer Laurie Atkinson decided to walk to Saddle Point to conduct another seal count, over the same route Carr and Brown had pioneered. The three men had not done a great deal of field work, and Brown and two companions walked with them for part of the way. After seeing them over the worst of the Baudissen Glacier, Brown and his party decided to turn back. Brown recalled saying to Forbes:
T
E S T I N G
T I M E S
‘Don’t be tempted to cross beneath the ice cliffs—no matter how easy it looks.’ Forbes said he understood and gave me a look which made me feel rather pompous.23
Next morning Brown was about to enter the mess hut for morning tea when the door burst open and medical officer Jeff Faulkner rushed out ‘with his face as white as a sheet’: ‘Lorry’s back!’ was all he could utter. ‘Lorry’s back. . .Dick’s dead for certain!’ I dashed into the kitchen where Teyssier and Ingall were supporting Lorry Atkinson on a chair. He was almost unconscious; his hands puffed and white—utterly lifeless. His eyes were bloodshot, and his bare dishevelled head dripping wet like the rest of his body. Teyssier was trying to pour some hot soup down his throat, and the scalding liquid burnt his lips—jarring him back into consciousness. He looked at us vaguely and said, ‘I’m damned sorry. . .I’m damned sorry. . .Dick’s drowned under the Little Challenger Glacier. . .Jock set off last night. . .to cross the Baudissen. . .Haven’t you seen him’? Then he lapsed into incoherency.24
Despite being warned, the three men had tried to take the short cut under the ice cliff, and been overwhelmed by the surf. Like Carr and Brown earlier, they had managed to hold on to the ice cliff with their ice axes, but a second wave caught Forbes off balance. When he recovered, Atkinson described what happened: Hoseason and I grabbed hold of him [Forbes] and held on until the water receded. . .then we threw away our packs and ice-axes and ran for it—trying to reach the safety of the next moraine before any more rollers broke. . .But another one smashed clean over our heads. We held on to each other, but poor Hoseason was dragged away by the undertow—we were powerless to stop him. He shouted to us to save him, then I saw him disappear and we didn’t see him again. . . Forbes and I managed to hold on, then we dashed towards the moraine. Our clothes were soon frozen solid; I was terribly cold and frightened. We couldn’t believe that Hoseason had really ‘bought it’ and we expected him to show up at any moment. Everything was lost when we threw away our packs. Hoseason carried the emergency chocolate inside his windproof.25
Atkinson collapsed and Forbes started over the Baudissen Glacier to get help. Atkinson came to and dozed through the night. He decided
95
T
H E
B E G I N N I N G
DIGGING ALASTAIR FORBES’ GRAVE AT ATLAS COVE, HEARD ISLAND, 1952. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
1 9 4 7 – 1 9 5 3
to return along the beach, risking the waves, knowing that he had no strength to climb over the glaciers. Forbes’s body was recovered from the Baudissen Glacier on 28 May but Hoseason’s remains were not found until spring. Forbes was buried near the station on 31 May. OIC Les Gibbney noted in his log that there was no prayer book ‘so we are forced to make up a burial service. Perriman did this’.26 The twelve remaining Heard Island expeditioners gathered in the mess-room for a prayer, and then carried the coffin to the prepared burial mound. Brown:
As we paid our last respects, the wind screamed through wireless masts, and two sledge dogs broke out into a mournful chorus, accentuating the scene of utter desolation. There could never have been a more fitting ‘Last Post’.27
96
E S TA B L I S H M E N T A N D E X P L O R AT I O N
1954–1966
SEVEN
BREAKING
THE ICE
B
y 1953 there was still no Australian presence on continental Antarctica and the lack of a suitable ice-strengthened ship remained an insuperable obstacle to ANARE’s main aims in the Antarctic. During the summer of 1949–50, Phil Law gained valuable Antarctic experience when he travelled as an Australian observer on the Norwegian British Swedish Expedition (NBSE) to Queen Maud Land on a 700-tonne diesel-powered ship Norsel, sailing from Cape Town. Norsel had only fair icebreaking capacity but managed to deliver the wintering party to the Maudheim base through the pack ice. Law was particularly impressed by the use of Auster aircraft carried on board to assist navigation through the ice, and carry out general reconnaissance and mapping work, using floats and skis. And he always had his future plans in mind: They had to leave one of their major huts behind, and I persuaded them to sell it to me so I could put it in store [and] if we ever went to Antarctica we would have a major hut. [Also] I got them to promise that they’d sell me the two Austers.
As well, he acquired first-hand experience of the stores and equipment needed and an understanding of the conditions to expect when setting up a base in Antarctica. From Cape Town he travelled on to Europe to visit people and institutions involved with polar work. He was particularly interested in a warm cotton windproof cloth called ‘Ventile’ manufactured in England, ideal for polar tents and clothing. From the French polar explorer Paul-Emile Victor he learned about the availability of Weasels, the over-snow tracked vehicles he had seen used on the NBS
99
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
expedition, and investigated dog and cargo sledges used by the Norwegians. He also visited shipbuilders MAWSON STATION ON in Glasgow, studied plans of ships, and wrote specifiMAWSON COAST cations for Australia’s requirements. Buoyed by the whole experience, he wrote to his wife Nel, ‘I am more and more certain that the thing to do is to BUILD A NEW SHIP! And I think I can sell the idea to the Govt!’1 Law’s advocacy was effective. On 13 July 1950 Cabinet decided that in order to establish and maintain a permanent Antarctic station, ‘a new ship should be built for this purpose’.2 But the availability of icegoing vessel Kista Dan, just built by Danish shipping firm J Lauritzen Lines, put the Australian project on indefinite hold. Law was alerted to the existence of Kista Dan by Westralian Farmers Transport Ltd, the Antarctic Division’s shipping agents in London who had previously arranged the 100 charter of the Norwegian sealer Tottan.
B
W
hy was a company called Westralian Farmers Transport in London assisting the Antarctic Division in Melbourne in the chartering of Antarctic ships from Denmark? Westralian Farmers Transport (Wesfarmers) was one of the few companies that represented Australian interests on the Baltic Exchange in London—essentially the centre of world shipping. It has handled the Antarctic Division’s foreign charters for almost half a century. Westralian Farmers began in the 1920s, in the depression years when farmers realised they would do better as a cooperative. John O’Rourke was managing director of Westralian Farmers Transport from 1960 to 1987: John Thompson was the general manager of Westralian Farmers from the late twenties through to 1957. In the early days there wasn’t a great deal known about shipping in Australia. We relied on England for everything—the mother country—and companies such as the P&O ran regular shipping lines here, and you had to dance to their tune. They had the ships, we had the produce; we had no ships, they had the bulk of the
R E A K I N G
T H E
I C E
market. And there was a time when the farmers were suffering dreadfully. John Thompson went to the overseas shipping representatives and said: ‘Look, unless you do something to stabilise wool and wheat freight rates, we’re going to have to do something for ourselves’. They looked at him rather benignly and said, ‘Well, precisely what did you have in mind?’ So he said, ‘We’d have to charter ships of our own’. And, of course, they all thought this was rather a joke—an Australian farming cooperative chartering ships. What would they know about shipping? But that’s precisely what he did when they wouldn’t listen to him. One of his first ventures was with refrigerated ships. He went out and chartered three Swedish refrigerated ships to carry the Western Australian apple crop to Europe. The ships were superb; they were new, they were fast, they were well-controlled. So Wesfarmers got its fruit to market quicker, cheaper, and got the best of the market. This was an enormous shock for the established shipping lines out here and they really sat up and started to take notice of this little company, Westralian Farmers Transport.
Kista Dan was built for voyages between Denmark and Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere summer. Despite the Australian ship on the drawing board, Law could see advantages in chartering a good new ice ship with an experienced ice captain and crew. He was also relieved he would not have to work in Antarctic conditions with an Australian crew who were likely to want to work to rule, whereas he knew a foreign crew would labour round the clock, if necessary, to take full advantage of short periods of good weather. (He had experienced problems with an Australian crew on the ship River Fitzroy at Macquarie Island in 1951.) Law went to the Government about Kista Dan:
101
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
I said, ‘Look, I can get Kista Dan. We can now go down and set up an Antarctic base on the continent, I can arrange it so it won’t cost you much, we’ll only put ten men ashore. . .and if you like I’ll close down Heard Island Station so that the money can be applied to the Antarctic continent. Further, I’m prepared to pick up the radio sets and the diesel engines and the tractor and various things from Heard Island, and one or two of the huts. . .so it really won’t cost you much at all and then we’ll get a foothold on the Antarctic.’
102
Law had little difficulty in carrying the Executive Planning Committee—and Sir Douglas Mawson—with him in abandoning plans to build an Australian ship, and deciding to get down to Antarctica quickly with the chartered Kista Dan.3 The sweetener for the Government was to trade off the station at Heard Island for the first continental base—saving an estimated £40 000 [$80 000]. Keeping both sub-Antarctic stations open and getting to the continent would have cost an extra £100 000 [$200 000].4 There was opposition from the Meteorological Branch who argued that the whole system of weather forecasting in Australia’s southern States had been profoundly influenced by the results from Heard Island.5 The reports from Macquarie Island, to the east, were of more benefit to New Zealand than to Australia. This objection was not significant and Law’s Antarctic plans were enthusiastically embraced by the Minister for External Affairs, Richard Casey. During 1951 Casey had succeeded Percy Spender as Minister. Antarctica was, according to Casey’s biographer W J Hudson, one of his lifelong interests. He was involved with Antarctic work when he was stationed in London during the late 1920s as Australian political liaison officer when Mawson’s BANZARE voyages were being planned. In 1937, when he was Australian Treasurer, Casey was chairman of a polar committee that recommended to the Imperial Conference in London that the dominions cooperate in setting up one or more permanent meteorological stations in the Antarctic. 6 A qualified pilot, he keenly supported Law’s use of aircraft in the Antarctic and because he had an office in Melbourne, Law saw him on a regular basis.7 On 21 March 1953 it was announced in the press that the Government had decided to send an expedition to the Antarctic continent during the next summer to set up a scientific research station in the Australian Antarctic Territory.8 Casey outlined the plans and ended: ‘Today the Antarctic is a challenge—which cannot be ignored—to Australian courage and imagination, and the proposed expedition shows that we will grasp our opportunity.’9
B
R E A K I N G
T H E
I C E
The Government’s plans were also endorsed by the leader of the Opposition, Dr H V Evatt, who said ‘this territory is of great strategic importance in the confused state of the world today’.10 ‘Such unanimity of political opinion’, the Antarctic historian Robert Swan commented, ‘boded well for the future of Australian Antarctic activity’.11 The Cabinet submission of 6 February 1953 pointed out: ‘It would demonstrate that Australian statements during the last five years concerning our intentions in Antarctica were not hollow boasts. . .’, and concluded: ‘Australia would be in a good position to build up the station to a full-scale scientific observatory in time to participate in the International Polar Year 1956–57.’12 There was some argument in the Executive Planning Committee of ANARE about where the new station should be. Sir Douglas Mawson had a nostalgic attachment to King George V Land and the region around Cape Freshfield, near the site of the base he occupied during the 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition. There was unfinished exploration work to be done there and he believed this location, near the Magnetic Pole, would be interesting to the physicists. Law argued in favour of Mac. Robertson Land, to the west. Mawson’s BANZARE voyage had sighted Mac. Robertson Land and Kemp Land from the sea and landings had been made at the Scullin Monolith, Proclamation Island and Cape Bruce. The Norwegians had been active in the region, and the United States had conducted aerial mapping during ‘Operation Highjump’ in the summer of 1946–47: If Australia’s claim to its Antarctic territory were to stand up, the original reconnaissances of Mawson’s BANZAR Expedition would have to be consolidated. Sightings of Mac. Robertson Land from the sea had shown interesting mountain ranges inland, contrasting with the featureless ice plateau of George V Land, while comparatively close was Prydz Bay and the fascinating ice-free rock of the Vestfold Hills. . . . I and my fellow physicists of the ANARE. . .considered that the Auroral Zone (an annular belt of maximum auroral display surrounding the Magnetic Pole at a radial distance of roughly 221¼2 degrees) was a more interesting phenomenon than the Magnetic Pole itself, and this zone intersected the coast of Mac. Robertson Land.13
Once the Planning Committee decided on Mac. Robertson Land, Sir Douglas Mawson supported the collective decision. Law managed to get sets of the ‘Operation Highjump’ photographs of the coast of Mac. Robertson Land through the Australian Embassy in Washington, and with the aid of a magnifying glass was able to observe possible sites for an Australian base: ‘Mawson would often come to my home in Melbourne
103
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
and we’d have dinner together. One of my wife’s keenest remembrances of Mawson is he and I kneeling down on the floor in our flat in South Yarra peering at photographs and maps of Antarctica on the floor.’ Outcrops of rock were of particular interest, because if an Antarctic station were built on ice, it would inevitably be pushed out to sea and float away on an iceberg. From the American aerial photographs Law picked out a little outcrop of rock in the shape of a horseshoe on the coast of Mac. Robertson Land which looked as though THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF THE it might be a natural harbour, if the water proved to COAST OF MAC. ROBERTSON be deep enough. It was decided to make that the first LAND, TAKEN BY THE US choice for a landing. NAVY DURING OPERATION Kista Dan arrived in Melbourne from Europe on HIGHJUMP IN THE SUMMER OF Friday 11 December 1953. Law watched her berth at 1946–47, WAS INVALUABLE IN No. 3 North Wharf just south of Spencer St Railway HELPING TO LOCATE THE SITE Station. He was impressed with the look of her, mindful OF MAWSON STATION. of the polar ships he had been used to like Wyatt Earp HORSESHOE HARBOUR CAN and Tottan. Built in 1952 in Lauritzen’s shipyards at BE SEEN IN THE ROCKY Aalborg, Denmark, Kista Dan was 65 metres long and OUTCROP IN THE TOP THIRD 11.2 metres broad with a gross tonnage of 1250 tonnes. OF THIS PHOTOGRAPH. Her diesel engines produced a maximum of 1560 (US NAVY) horsepower. She was strengthened for navigation in ice to the standard of Finnish Ice Class 1A, had a range of 14 500 nautical miles, and accommodation for 24 passengers—twelve of whom were in the forecastle. For cargo the ship had two large holds and a heavy lift derrick and the larger hold could accommodate one of the two Auster aircraft. Kista Dan had already been to the Antarctic and the Weddell Sea the previ104
B
R E A K I N G
T H E
I C E
ous summer (making a feature film starring Alan Ladd called Hell Below Zero) and Law was anxious to meet the captain, Hans Christian Petersen: He was a large man, with a round face and blue eyes. He laughed easily and was a good raconteur. We were to find that he was an immensely competent person. He was highly intelligent and prided himself on his technical ability. He had come up the hard way and had seized every possible opportunity to learn how to operate and repair the equipment with which he had to deal—engines, winches, motor boats, radios, echo sounders, gyro compasses and so on.14
He and Law were both strong-willed people, and were about to test each other’s authority—Law as the voyage leader, and Petersen as the ship’s master. The complex details of a ship’s charter were new territory for Law and the Antarctic Division: I rapidly became familiar with the intricacies of chartering ships, in which meticulous attention to detail and the instincts of a bush lawyer were required. I conducted long negotiations with Knud Lauritzen, the head of J Lauritzen Lines, through our agents, Westralian Farmers Transport Ltd, in London. Up to three or four months would be involved each time a new charter was arranged, that being every year at first and, later, every two or three years. We stood in a weak bargaining position, for the Lauritzen ships were the only ones in the world that really suited our purposes, and Lauritzens knew it. Nevertheless, by hard argument we were able to wring from the company a number of important concessions. I gained the impression that Knud Lauritzen thoroughly enjoyed the negotiations, treating them like a kind of chess game, which added savour to an otherwise pretty routine set of operations.15
Mindful of the appalling food he had endured with the Norwegians on Norsel during the NBS Expedition, Law included a clause specifying that the Australians would not only supply their own food on board, but their own cook. His other main aim, which he endeavoured to spell out in an additional clause to the charter, was ‘to have a ship and captain completely under my control’.16 This was wishful thinking. Kista Dan was to resupply Macquarie Island before heading to Heard Island and then the coast of Mac. Robertson Land on the western side of the AAT. The Macquarie cargo included 24 Border Leicester sheep, and the army amphibious DUKWs—now back in action with a ship large enough to carry them. This operation was completed efficiently in three weeks during December 1953. After some hectic loading of supplies in Melbourne, Kista Dan sailed for the Antarctic on 4 January 1954—four
105
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
days earlier than planned—farewelled by Minister for External Affairs Richard Casey, Mrs Casey and an enthusiastic crowd of 300, including press, radio reporters and photographers. The Point Lonsdale lighthouse flashed a good luck message as they headed out through the Rip.17 Nine Australians had been selected to pioneer the first Australian Antarctic station. The OIC was Robert Dovers, a surveyor who had been a member of the first Heard Island party in 1948, had spent six months on Macquarie Island and a further twelve THE HISTORIC 1954 months in Adélie Land as an observer with the third DEPARTURE FROM French Antarctic Expedition. Lem Macey, the Division’s MELBOURNE. FROM LEFT: technical officer, had been a member of the same PHIL LAW, MRS CASEY, Heard and Macquarie parties. John Russell, an engiRICHARD CASEY (MINISTER neer, had also been on both sub-Antarctic stations. FOR EXTERNAL AFFAIRS), Robert Dingle, a weather observer, had been on Heard DICK THOMPSON (BACK TO Island, and William Storer, a radio operator, had been CAMERA), LEM MACEY, on Macquarie Island. Robert Summers, the medical FLIGHT LIEUTENANT DOUG officer, was a University Ski Club member; Bruce Stinear, LECKIE, FLIGHT SERGEANT a geologist, had experience in the New Zealand Alps; RAY SEAVER. Jeff Gleadell, the cook, born at South Georgia, had (A CAMPBELL-DRURY) accompanied Sir Hubert Wilkins’ expedition to Graham Land; and William Harvey, a carpenter, was from Scotland. The tenth member of the party, a French observer and dog handler, Georges Schwartz, would join Kista Dan at the Kerguelen Islands. Schwartz was an experienced polar traveller with experience in Greenland and Adélie Land.18 The rendezvous at Kerguelen was necessary for another reason. There was simply too much cargo for Kista Dan to carry. After the Heard Island resupply, the ship would load water, petrol and diesel fuel taken to Kerguelen earlier by the French. A second French observer, André Migot, would also join Kista Dan for the round trip to write a book on the expedition. As well as stores and food for a possible two years’ stay on the continent, Kista Dan also had on board the two Auster aircraft (with skis and floats) and the prefabricated wooden hut obtained from the NBSE, other prefabricated huts, three over-snow Weasel vehicles, and 30 huskies picked up from Heard Island. The RAAF had taken responsibility for the operation 106
B
R E A K I N G
T H E
I C E
of the Auster aircraft and provided two pilots and two mechanics. They were under the command of the prinKISTA DAN HEADING SOUTH cipal pilot, Flight Lieutenant Douglas Leckie. The IN ROUGH SEAS, 1954. aircraft and the RAAF personnel were to return to (COURTESY P LAW) Australia on Kista Dan at the end of the summer. As Kista Dan headed south, Law knew that he had guaranteed funding for only one year, but was optimistic: ‘I hoped that, with a toehold on the Antarctic continent, I could persuade the government to expand the bridgehead in 1955, and gradually build up a full program of research.’19 With such a small party and a new station to establish, Law was aware that building and establishing the station would take priority. There would not be much time for science in the first year: The scientific work was limited to survey and cartography, geology, meteorology and biology. It was not possible to include programs of observatory work in geomagnetism, seismology and cosmic rays similar to those at our island stations, although Stinear was briefed to carry out spot observations on the earth’s magnetic field and gravity at points visited by field parties.20
Kista Dan reached Heard Island on 9 January and, despite the usually atrocious local weather, managed to change over the 1953 and 1954 parties, unload stores and take on board thirty vociferously quarrelling
107
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
huskies—all in three days. Unfortunately the weather broke before a Caterpillar tractor could be loaded and it was left behind. Shortly before midnight on Friday 22 January the French lit beacons to guide Kista Dan into their station at Port aux Français, Kerguelen Islands. There, over the next five days, also in foul weather, the hospitable French assisted in the loading of fuel, water, and a third Weasel. Law wrote in his voyage report: Not only did the French bring all our supplies, including fuel, freight free from France, but they completely disrupted their normal routine of work at Kerguelen to provide men and equipment to load these supplies and water into the Kista Dan even though this involved working on a Sunday. No charge was made for any of these services. Finally, as our aviation fuel was of the wrong octane value, the French gave us eight 44-gallon [200.2 litres] drums of 100 octane aviation spirit. I cannot speak too highly of their friendliness, cooperation and generosity.21
It was a good start, and typical of the unique international fraternity in Antarctica to be experienced in the decades ahead. On 27 January 1954 Kista Dan turned her specially strengthened steel bows towards an unknown destination on the coast of Mac. Robertson Land. The first ice—a small bergy bit—was sighted on 30 January, followed by icebergs and Antarctic petrels. A sense of excitement was palpable. The French observer André Migot was even a little disappointed that they had arrived at latitude 64° south so soon: If we kept up the same speed we should be in sight of Mac. Robertson Land the next day and ready to land. . .I had been looking forward so much to the prospect of steaming through the pack ice, to the splendid scenery, to the difficulty and excitement of it all, and to the adventure of a polar expedition that I should be cheated if we arrived too quickly and met no obstacles on the way.22
108
The expression ‘A-Factor’ (the Antarctic Factor—meaning unexpected difficulties or disasters) had not then been coined, but M. Migot was about to experience it. That evening they encountered scattered pack ice which became gradually more thick. Already it was clear that Kista Dan was a vast improvement on ships like the wooden Wyatt Earp, which Law once said had the icebreaking capabilities ‘of a gnat’. Cameras clicked as the ANARE men delighted in their first experience of steaming through pack ice, although the more experienced Law cautioned them not to waste too much film as better opportunities lay ahead. André Migot joined in the general delight of the new ship’s performance:
B
The Kista Dan’s bow was specially shaped in a gentle curve just above the water. When she hit small floes or lumps of iceberg she merely brushed them aside without trouble, but when she came upon a more solid mass of ice, she slid up on to it like a sledge. When the ice was thin she broke it with her own weight, but when it was too thick the ship was jammed in the ice and could go no further. So she went astern and charged the ice again, gradually driving a sort of furrow across the floe, until finally it gave way and broke in pieces, letting the ship subside heavily into her natural element.23
R E A K I N G
T H E
I C E
THE ABILITY TO OPERATE AUSTER AIRCRAFT ON FLOATS FROM KISTA DAN WAS CRITICAL TO THE SUCCESS OF
1954 ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. (AAD ARCHIVES)
THE
The next morning, 2 February, Captain Petersen called to Law from Kista Dan’s protected crow’s nest control platform above the bridge that he could see some islands ahead. Law joined him, and immediately recognised the Henderson, Masson, David and Casey Ranges he had studied in the ‘Operation Highjump’ photographs in Melbourne. By 0745 he could see ‘the cream slopes of the Antarctic plateau’. A long line of grounded icebergs was a spectacular feature, flanking a deeper channel that led towards the coast—later familiar to visitors to Mawson Station as Iceberg Alley. At midday the ship entered a long open lead and Law suggested to Captain Petersen that the Auster seaplane carried on deck be used for reconnaissance: He was most reluctant to comply. I think he probably would have preferred to find his way in without aerial assistance, but I insisted and he finally agreed. (Later the captain became an enthusiastic supporter of aerial reconnaissance as an aid to ship navigation.)24
The Auster carried on the deck could be quickly lowered over the side. With Law as his passenger pilot Doug Leckie climbed to 1000 metres. There, Law’s earlier optimism about reaching the coast was tempered
109
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
by the reality of what he saw. Only about three nautical miles of open water lay ahead. Then an unbroken stretch of winter ‘fast’ ice continued for some sixteen miles [25.6 kilometres] to the shore. As they approached the coast Law noted that the horseshoe rock formation he had been aiming for seemed ideal for the proposed station—if the ship could get in. After a flight lasting 1 hour and 35 minutes, with Law furiously photographing, sketching and note taking, they returned to the ship for a safe landing on the water. Before the end of that day Law asked the captain to experiment by breaking some of the unbroken fast ice he had seen from the air: The captain tried charging it with the ship and found he would break through it for a distance of about half a ship’s length on each charge, and this gave me some comfort. Although it would be a slow business, we would eventually break through to the coast.25
On the morning of 3 February ice-breaking began in earnest, and Kista Dan began to forge a narrow channel towards the coast. As the ship progressed, Law described a remarkable sight he was not to see again in the rest of his Antarctic experience, as hundreds of Adélie penguins approached over the ice, and dived into the channel made by the ship: We were later to discover that the fast ice had remained unbroken much later in the season than usual, and that instead of being able to feed in open water close to their island rookeries, the penguins were forced to march about 16 miles [25.6 km] to reach the sea. Back at their rookeries their chicks were starving to death. . . The open wake gave the penguins close access to food and the churning up of the ice and water by the propeller had provided planktonic material for them to eat. Whatever the reason myriads of the creatures were porpoising in the wake of the ship. The limited area of water was entirely black and boiling with them. . . Their method of leaving the water was itself intriguing. With a last powerful sweep of their flippers they would propel themselves out of the water and land on their feet, vertical, on the ice. They were popping out like champagne corks, in scores, along the edge of the channel.26
110
Had the ice broken out, as it normally did, in late January (the conventional wisdom is around Australia Day, 26 January), Kista Dan could have sailed straight in to what would be known as Horseshoe Harbour. In 1954 the ‘A-Factor’ was well in evidence. As Kista Dan was now well and truly in the fast ice, Law asked the RAAF crew to fit skis to Auster 201 and pilot Ray Seaver flew Bob Dovers in to have a look at the coast. The Auster ‘behaved splendidly’ on skis.27
B
R E A K I N G
T H E
I C E
On 4 February Leckie flew Dovers in to Horseshoe Harbour for the first landing on the polished blue sea ice. They broke a tail wheel in the process. On the next flight, Captain Petersen squeezed his bulk into the cockpit of the Auster to inspect the ice ahead. He estimated it would take him a week to break in, and he had the fuel to do it.28 Law conferred with Dick Thompson and Dovers about the best way to use that time. They agreed to push on with the program of aerial mapping of the coast and nearby mountains, but to unload stores onto the ice to cargo sledges and use Weasels No. 1 and No. 3 to transport them to Horseshoe Harbour over the fast ice. They would also establish a shore party and begin erecting the first hut. The huskies would be camped on the ice, as they were bored with life on deck. The next day Law flew in for his first landing at Horseshoe Harbour to inspect the proposed site for the station from the ground: We landed just outside Horseshoe Harbour, on this polished blue sea ice, and there was an iceberg about half a mile [0.8 kilometres] ahead, in the line of direction of our landing. We didn’t take much notice because we [thought we’d] stop in a couple of hundred yards [182 metres]. But skis on polished blue ice had practically no friction at all and we went careering on and on. We were showing no signs of slowing down and this iceberg was looming closer and closer. When we were about a hundred yards [91 metres] off it, Leckie put the plane into what he called ‘a ground loop’. He just spun it and it went forward in a series of spinning circles. And the friction of the skis side on was much greater than the friction when they’re pointing straight ahead. We finished up about thirty [27.3 metres] or forty yards [36.4 metres] off the vertical face of this iceberg!
The Auster was also used to direct the ground party, led by Dovers, to the best route over the ice. He was accompanied by Macey, Russell, Schwartz and Harvey. Some of the cracks in the ice were so wide they had to be bridged with timbers carried for the purpose. Schwartz was supposed to have taken the 30 huskies with the shore party, but for some reason had not done so. When Law asked Captain Petersen to take them on board again there was a heated altercation: He complained about the time wasted unloading which prevented him going ahead, although I had discussed the whole plan with him the night before. . .As he had just succeeded in jamming the ship, wasting an hour and necessitating work alongside with crowbars as well as winching on ice anchors in order to free her, his bad temper was understandable. He said he was not going to unload and load things again, but when I
111
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
reminded him sharply that it was my place to decide when and where cargo was to be unloaded he calmed down. He had on a number of occasions used obstructive tactics, but I had refused to be provoked and this was the first time our relations had deteriorated into a verbal exchange.29
The second aircraft, Auster 200, was brought out of the hold and assembled for its first flight that afternoon but, with no space for it on board ship, Seaver and Leckie flew in tandem to THE EMERGENCY CAMP ON an offshore island near Horseshoe Harbour where it DOVERS’ ISLAND, MARCH was tied down on the ice. Auster 201 was hoisted back 1954, WITH LEM MACEY IN on Kista Dan. On the 2300 radio schedule with Dovers, FOREGROUND. Law was dismayed to hear that No. 1 Weasel had broken (P LAW) through the ice about half a mile from its destination, but fortunately had floated. Dovers asked for a 2-tonne chain block to be flown to him to help salvage the half-floating Weasel.30 The next day, 6 February, the weather deteriorated and flying was out of the question. Dovers radioed that he had hauled up his caravans on to an island ‘a mile north of the horseshoe’ and that men and vehicles were safe. No. 1 Weasel had now frozen into the sea and was secure. By nightfall it was blowing a 60-knot blizzard. Law was mindful of Auster 200, unattended and tied down on the sea ice. French observer André Migot’s earlier fears that he would feel cheated of a polar adventure if they got to their destination too quickly were now assuaged. Early on the morning of 7 February Law was wakened by a sailor who said: ‘The ice is breaking up’. The storm had caused the fast ice to move: Ahead on the port side cracks were appearing in the fast ice, running out as far as the eye could see. A report like a shotgun would be followed by the appearance of a great crack. . .The ship began to shudder as the pressure built up around her. The question in our minds was, ‘What will break first, the ice or the ship’s hull’? I peered over the side and was somewhat reassured to see slabs of ice cracking, sliding up the steel hull and collapsing back in great heaps of jagged pieces.31
112
Even at that stage, Law saw possible benefits from the ice break-up. If they could sail straight into Horseshoe Harbour it would even balance the probable loss of the Weasels. At 0700 the Captain requested all
B
R E A K I N G
T H E
I C E
expeditioners on deck as he was worried about the safety of the ship. Law: The shuddering of the ship increased, as did the noises of groaning, creaking and grating accompanying the movements of the ice. At this stage the ice cracking against the sides of the ship had piled up so high that pieces were falling over the bulwarks onto the foredeck. The ship was slowly rising and listing as the pressure forced ice down under her keel. Pressure ridges of rafted ice ran out for hundreds of yards to starboard from our bows and to port from our stern.32
At 0800 the movement suddenly ceased, and one of the major hazards to an Antarctic ship, sideways pressure by moving ice, had been overcome. ‘Thank God for a KISTA DAN LISTING HEAVILY welded steel ship with close frames and thick plates’, DUE TO THE PRESSURE OF THE commented Law. They were effectively stranded, PACK ICE FOLLOWING A however, until the ship could be extricated. How long VIOLENT STORM NEAR THE this would take was unknown; it could be a week. Law COAST OF MAC. ROBERTSON hoped the islands off Horseshoe Harbour would hold LAND, FEBRUARY 1954. the fast ice in place long enough to rescue the Dovers (J BROOKS) party and Auster 200. At 1600 hours a faint Morse message came through from Dovers to say that they and the Auster were safe. Fine weather the next day enabled Leckie to fly to the island where the field party had taken refuge, and bring back Dovers to give his report. Dovers told Law he thought the winds at Horseshoe Harbour would be too strong for a permanent camp and was pessimistic about even being able to erect the six huts brought from Australia. He suggested instead that he haul all the stores on to his island, stay there for a year with a couple of huts and explore the coast the following year to find a better site for a permanent station. Law: Then there was an interesting psychological problem. The morale was very low—this storm really knocked the stuffing out of these boys who were camped on that island and they were very timid and worried. I just had to bulldoze them through and say, ‘No, I’m going to get ashore at
113
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
KISTA DAN IN HORSESHOE HARBOUR, THE ONLY NATURAL HARBOUR ON
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Horseshoe Harbour. That’s the spot, and we’ll bend every effort to do it. There’s no use being on an island. We want to get onto the continent so we can go inland. If you’re on an island all through the summer months you’ve got water around you and you can’t get ashore.’ I said I would not agree to the island proposal under any circumstances and asked him to move everything at the earliest opportunity to Horseshoe Harbour. He agreed to do this after he had rescued Weasel No. 3.
THE ENTIRE COAST OF
It took two days to dig out Kista Dan from the rafted slabs of ice that had nearly crushed her. A combination of crowbars, shovels and dynamite—exploded as a last resort under the ship’s hull—finally broke her free. Good weather and clear sunlight lifted the morale of those who had been stuck on the off-shore island, and both No. 1 and No. 3 Weasels and their sledges and caravans made it across the sea ice to Horseshoe Harbour, where work was begun on erecting the first hut at the selected site. Late on Thursday 11 February Kista Dan nosed her way between the encircling arms of the ‘horseshoe’, into the harbour still covered with fast ice. This was a critical moment. It was thought there might be a reef across the entrance that would stop a ship getting in. The depth was an adequate 15 metres. Inside the harbour the bottom fell away to a surprising 90 metres. The Auster aircraft had been invaluable in charting a course through the islands that masked the entrance to the harbour. Law felt the expedition had much to be thankful for:
GREATER ANTARCTICA, FEBRUARY 1954. (P LAW)
114
Captain Petersen had done a splendid job of ice navigation and had managed to extricate the ship from its desperate situation in the pressure ice. Doug Leckie and the RAAF Flight had provided us with invaluable reconnaissances, without which the whole approach exercise would have been more difficult and time consuming.33
EIGHT
EARLY
E X P L O R AT I O N
K
ista Dan had arrived in the only natural harbour on the whole coastline of Greater Antarctica. In later years visiting ships would lay out mooring lines directly to the encircling West Arm of the ‘horseshoe’—tying at first to large rocks, later to bollards sunk into the solid rock, thereby being able to ride out the most severe Antarctic blizzards and cyclones. Phil Law later described it as ‘one of the best sites for 4000 miles’ [6400 km]: Not only is there this lovely enclosed harbour where a ship can just run cables out fore and aft to the shore and hold itself, but it’s an amphitheatre. The arms of the horseshoe are elevated, then it comes around like the curve of a horseshoe—saucer shaped—sloping up to a high ridge at the back. In this hollow we built the station so it got semiprotection from the ridge at the back. . .and it was on hard polished rock, no sand, no earth, just hard granitic type rock, polished by glacier action thousands of millions of years ago. And there was good access [to the interior]. The permanent ice cap started just behind the station. [When] you got onto that you’d go straight inland with a lot of crevassing for the first ten miles because of the rising slope, but once you were ten or fifteen miles in, the crevasses stopped and away you went. It was a perfect choice for a station.
Behind Horseshoe Harbour the peaks of the Framnes Mountains broke clear of the ice cap, thrusting through like the backs of great dinosaurs, curving down towards the coast. No one was admiring the view early on the morning of Friday 12 February 1954. Law was woken by Dick Thompson at 0415 with the
115
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
unwelcome news that the two Auster aircraft secured on the top of No. 2 hatch were apparently damaged beyond repair. Overnight the wind had built up to over 70 knots and, with Kista Dan broadside to the wind, the aircraft were exposed to its full fury. This had not been the case when Law retired to his cabin the previous evening: The captain didn’t want to leave the ship pointing into the wind [towards the land]. He wanted to turn the ship and face out the other way because he was frightened that the ice might freeze up and he’d like to be pointing out towards the entrance so that he could get out—rather than have to back and turn. That worried me because I would have preferred him to just stay where he was. He’d got into a very good position. I didn’t think the ice would cause trouble for the next month. Anyway he charged around a bit and broke up the fast ice in the harbour and then he tried to turn his bows to face out, and he only managed to get it half way around and had to give up. And that left us with two aircraft on board. . .with the wind blowing side on and under the wing of the aircraft, so overnight both were very severely damaged. And it was all because the captain wouldn’t leave the ship the way I wanted him to leave it. So I was furious.
Relations between voyage leader Law and Captain Petersen had been patchy at best. Now they were icy. Both men had reason to regret the loss of the aircraft. For Law it meant the end of hoped-for coastal exploration and photographic surveys. Petersen, now a convert to aerial reconnaissance, was worried about navigating his way back to the open sea once the new station had been established. The wind had picked up Auster 201 and dumped it on Auster 200. At first sight it seemed both aircraft were damaged beyond repair. All starboard mainplanes, stabilisers and rudders were damaged. Flight engineer Frank Morgan inspected the situation and said ‘Well, that’s it’. Law glumly recorded in his diary: ‘Fridays are not our lucky days’, cancelled all activity and went to his cabin to sleep until 11 am.1 When he woke Law had a flash of inspiration, and asked the RAAF team whether they thought they could cannibalise the two Austers and make one serviceable aircraft out of the two. This was a tall order. The aircraft were second hand when Law obtained them from the NBS expedition in 1951. Leckie thought it would have been more economical to buy new aircraft, because they were badly rusted and corroded when they came to Australia:
116
I think the Australian Government thought they were getting something on the cheap, and they certainly weren’t because they had to be rehabilitated at Richmond [NSW] and it was a pretty big job.
E
A R L Y
E X P L O R A T I O N
B
ob Dovers’ penchant for breaking through sea ice with Weasels achieved legendary status before Kista Dan left Horseshoe Harbour in 1954. A song, composed at the time by Bill Harvey, and sung to the tune of ‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean’ was enthusiastically performed by expeditioners and crew: Bob Dovers has ditched his new Weasel Bob Dovers has done it again; Three times he has been in the ocean, It’s odds on he’ll be there again! CHORUS Chain blocks, chain blocks, Oh bring back my Weasel to me, to me Chain blocks, chain blocks, Oh bring back my Weasel to me. Bob Dovers he’s crash hot on sea ice, He’s good on the land and the sea. He’s what you might call the new version, Of the good Lord on Lake Galilee.
‘BOB DOVERS HAS DONE IT AGAIN.’ RESCUING FRENCH WEASEL WHICH BROKE THROUGH
THE
THE SEA ICE DURING UNLOADING OPERATIONS IN
HORSESHOE HARBOUR, FEBRUARY 1954. (P LAW)
(Chain blocks are portable winches used for field emergencies. This song, and variations, has been popular at ANARE reunions ever since.)2
Fortunately Frank Morgan was the man who had made the Austers airworthy at Richmond and he and his RAAF colleague Sergeant Ken Duffell began to reassess the wreckage to see what could be done. Meanwhile, some progress towards unloading was made when Dovers came out and took the huskies ashore, although on his second trip from the ship to shore at about 2300 hours he broke through the ice again with his Weasel—but again it floated. As he was alone at the time Law made a rule that no Weasel was to run after 2000 hours.3 Before retiring that evening, Law sent off telegrams to Minister for External Affairs Casey, HRH Queen Elizabeth (still on tour in Australia) and Sir Douglas Mawson announcing their arrival at Horseshoe Harbour.4 Law’s relations with Captain Petersen soured again the next day when he asked that Kista Dan be positioned so there was good strong ice beside the holds to support Weasels and sledges for unloading, but his relations with the officers and crew were ‘never anything but excellent’. First
117
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Officer Mikkelsen offered his crew to help with the unloading from the ship to the ice, an offer which was gratefully accepted.5 RAW MATERIALS TO BUILD MAWSON STATION OVER THE The ship’s derricks unloaded cargo onto sledges which were pulled to shore by Weasels Nos 1 and 2. SEA ICE IN HORSESHOE Weasel No. 3 (the only vehicle with rubber tracks, HARBOUR, FEBRUARY 1954. picked up from the French at Kerguelen) manoeu(P LAW) vred the loads over the jumbled ice and tide cracks that separated the fast ice from the shore. The Ferguson UNLOADING STORES AT tractor was useful in transporting loads over bare rock. MAWSON STATION SITE, Kista Dan had to be moved from time to time to stronger FEBRUARY 1954. DONATED ice, as the unloading weakened it. MAC. ROBERTSON The ice conditions in 1954 were unusual. Horseshoe CHOCOLATES SUSTAINED SIR Harbour is generally free of ice by the end of January DOUGLAS MAWSON’S or early February. Law wrote later, ‘It is interesting to BANZARE VOYAGES note that never again in my subsequent twelve years AS WELL AS ANARE. of operations at Mawson did we have to unload over (P LAW) fast ice’.6 The wind dropped to almost twenty knots by lunchtime on Saturday 13 February, enabling the two mangled Auster aircraft to be lifted on to the fast ice beside Kista Dan where Morgan and Duffell stripped the wings and salvageable fittings from the fuselages. By late afternoon Law decided it was time for the official ceremony to celebrate the commissioning of Australia’s first post-war station on the Antarctic continent. He was unsure just what he was supposed to do or say on such an occasion, but composed a form of words and conducted a ceremony he hoped was appropriate. A flagpole was rigged on one of the barge caravans that served as living quarters while huts were being 118 KISTA DAN UNLOADING THE
E
A R L Y
built, and in the presence of all the ANARE men Law raised the Australian flag and made the following declaration: In the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia I raise this Australian flag on Australian Antarctic Territory; and I name the site of this new ANARE station ‘Mawson’ in honour of the great Australian Antarctic explorer and scientist, Sir Douglas Mawson.
Then they sang the national anthem and gave three hearty cheers. Law wrote that the gathering was duly photographed by all those who had cameras and it then dispersed. The work of clearing the cargo heaps continued until 2230 hours.7 André Migot was moved by the occasion: Everyone was in working clothes, having worked hard and uncomplainingly, with no thought but to get the job done. The glistening ice cliffs around this little corner of the frozen continent lent beauty and splendour to the ceremony.
E X P L O R A T I O N
THE FUSELAGE OF AUSTER 201 TETHERED NEAR HORSESHOE HARBOUR. BACK IN AUSTRALIA IT WAS REBUILT AND EVENTUALLY RETURNED TO
ANTARCTICA TO FLY FOR MANY YEARS. (P LAW)
RAISING THE FLAG AND NAMING MAWSON STATION, 13 FEBRUARY 1954. PHIL LAW IS STANDING AT THE FOOT OF THE FLAGPOLE. (R THOMPSON)
Before the end of that day, the wings of both aircraft and the fuselage of Auster 200 were hoisted back on board into the now free ’tween-decks space of No. 2 hold. The fuselage of 201 was tethered to a large boulder on shore. Law retired to bed that night ‘suffused with an emotion compounded of immense relief and considerable satisfaction’. The job was not finished, but he felt the most difficult part of establishing a permanent Australian Antarctic station had been achieved. There was little time to dwell on that historic occasion. Law and Thompson had the ANARE men up and unloading cargo by 0500 the
119
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
following Sunday morning, which prompted Dovers to complain about the early start, saying that Law would ‘tire out my men’.8 Law would not budge, acting on his firm belief that the Antarctic gave few windows of opportunity with the weather, and when it did the occasions should be exploited to the full. There would be time for rest later. The RAAF team had worked miracles and had actually constructed a composite Auster that looked as though it might fly—but it would not have qualified for an airworthiness certificate in Australia. The left wing had a bracket of struts on it reminiscent of framework used to tie down the roof of an outback bark hut. There were no flaps and no tail fin. The hybrid was now officially Auster 200. Captain Petersen said it should have been called Auster 200.5!9 On 17 February, Leckie flight-tested it on skis, taking off from the fast ice: We just got through by the skin of our teeth. I took a longer run than normal to get it airborne because there were no flaps to give you lift off. You landed much faster naturally because you didn’t have flaps to slow you down on approach, and without a [tail] fin you lost a lot of stability as well, so you required more rudder to get the aerodynamics to work. . .but we were operational, that was the main thing.
The fast ice provided plenty of runway, and over the next five days aerial photography, scintillometer (to check for radioactivity) and reconnaissance flights were made along the coast, east and west of the new Mawson Station. Each sortie became more difficult and exhausting for the RAAF crew because the aircraft had to be pushed physically three kilometres to the take-off point. No more than two flights a day were possible. Flying was intensely uncomfortable. Temperatures of 39°C at 2400 metres caused co-pilot Ray Seaver to suffer from cramps. At Horseshoe Harbour, Mawson Station was taking shape as prefabricated huts were erected. The main living hut, purchased by Law from the NBS expedition in 1951, was in wooden sections to be put up by the expeditioners like a jigsaw puzzle after the Kista Dan left. That proved a daunting and difficult task even with an instruction manual. The works hut, fabricated by the firm of Explastics Ltd in Melbourne, had been designed in consultation with Law, Dovers, Macey and Thompson so it could be erected in one day to avoid the dangers of being blown down by a sudden storm when half built. Law:
120
The process resembled that used by a child in building a house of playing cards. The secret of success was the highly accurate machining of the panels and the boring of the tubes that took the tie rods. Explastics Ltd had done their job well and the pieces fitted together with perfect precision.10
E
A R L Y
One day was spent laying foundations, uncrating panels and setting out the floor. Next day six men completed the hut and it was occupied the same evening. (All furnishings and fittings, including electric wiring and lights, were installed during erection.)11
E X P L O R A T I O N
HYBRID ‘AUSTER 200.5’ ON THE SEA ICE IN HORSESHOE HARBOUR, FEBRUARY 1954. NOTE THE ROUGH
The only limitation on these excellent aluminium FRAMEWORK ON THE UPPER clad, insulated huts was cost. More were to grace the EDGE OF THE LEFT WING AND rocky shores of Horseshoe Harbour in coming years THE ‘FROZEN’ TAIL PLANE. when they could be afforded. (AAD ARCHIVES) The scientific program at Mawson Station got off to a shaky start. Finding the site and establishing the ERECTING THE COMBINED station were obvious priorities, but Law was keen to RADIO, METEOROLOGICAL advance a scientific program as soon as possible. AND OIC’S HUT AT MAWSON, Meteorology was to be the first priority as the station FEBRUARY 1954. was established, with regular weather data radioed back (P LAW) to Australia by three observers. Geophysicist Jim Brooks had been included on Kista Dan as a round tripper, however, and his main task was to make a magnetic survey of the station site. The ‘A-Factor’ was against him. He was a late addition to the expedition and had to rely on the Instrument Section of the Bureau of Mineral Resources to check, pack and dispatch his equipment to the ship. Law was disgusted with the result: First, the tent provided was quite unsuitable for the work concerned, apart from the fact that no supporting poles had been provided! The chronometer they had supplied stopped when placed outside the tent in the cold wind. The magnets were a disgrace—rusted and pitted and correspondingly unbalanced. The magnet box of the magnetometer would not come down cleanly to sit on the two pins that positioned it and Brooks therefore had difficulty in levelling it. The small subsidiary magnet usually supplied to damp the oscillations of the suspended
121
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
magnet system was missing. Finally there was no spare thermometer, and the one supplied read only as low as 0°C!12
122
The two men persevered and obtained readings. Law’s conclusion— that a basic precept for all Antarctic science was to make sure all equipment sent had in fact been tested for environmental conditions and checked in every detail—was to be ruefully endorsed by all field scientists in Antarctica similarly nobbled by the ‘A-Factor’ over the next half century. By Wednesday 17 February unloading was completed and all available hands helped with the building of huts. On 20 February Law was delighted to receive congratulatory cables in response to his reports on their arrival and landing at Mawson Station from Minister for External Affairs Richard Casey, from Brian Roberts, a friend at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, England, and from Mawson’s old captain J K Davis. Law was especially delighted to hear from Davis who had a reputation for meanness. ‘He is a nice old boy—fancy spending a couple of pounds on a long cable!’13 The weather held while building and scientific work continued and by 22 February Law was relaxed enough with progress achieved to declare a half-day holiday. The crew of Kista Dan built crude toboggans for the icy slopes behind the Mawson Station site and one enterprising lad even produced a makeshift ice yacht for runs on the sea ice outside Horseshoe Harbour. Dovers was grateful for the extra meat for the huskies (now staked out on the western side of the station) from seals shot by some of the crew on a hunting expedition. That night a celebratory party was held on Kista Dan. Law made hot, spiced glühwein for the occasion, and played his piano accordion during the festivities. Captain Petersen was concerned about the refreezing of his track in through the fast ice and it was decided to leave at 0530 on Tuesday 23 February. Many photographs were taken as the ice anchors were hauled on board, the engines started and the propeller began to churn. It was an anticlimax—the ship refused to budge and the chilled expeditioners retreated to their new huts. It took until 1115 to break her clear with picks and crowbars. As the siren blew, the 1954 wintering party emerged to wave farewell and Kista Dan slowly began to break her way out towards open water. The next objective was to reach the spectacular Scullin Monolith on the coast of Mac. Robertson Land, some 160 kilometres to the east of Mawson Station. The Scullin and the nearby Murray Monoliths are the only rock outcrops of any significance on the stretch of coast between Mawson Station and Cape Darnley, at the western extremity of Prydz Bay. The Scullin Monolith had been visited by Sir Douglas Mawson in 1931
E
A R L Y
E X P L O R A T I O N
and on 30 January 1937 by the Lars Christensen Expedition from Norway. Neither party had been able to take an astrofix to locate its position accurately, but Christensen had photographed the coast, resulting in the Hansen Atlas which Law and Petersen had used during the approach to Horseshoe Harbour. Law was anxious to pinpoint the correct position of the Scullin Monolith in order to correct errors in the THE FIRST WINTERING PARTY Hansen Atlas, and to position the coastal photograAT MAWSON STATION, 1954. phy taken during the 1954 ANARE voyage. FROM LEFT: G SCHWARTZ On Thursday 25 February Kista Dan anchored (FRENCH OBSERVER), about a kilometre off the massive bulk of the Scullin L MACEY, W HARVEY, Monolith, and a ship’s boat was launched to attempt R DOVERS, W STORER, a landing. Second Mate Bill Pedersen and Dick J GLEADELL, J RUSSELL, Thompson (an ex-navy man) were on board with Phil B STINEAR, R DINGLE, Law, Jim Brooks and Arthur Gwynn. R SUMMERS. Law was very keen to get ashore, but while Law the (P LAW) ANARE director was uncompromising in enforcing safety procedures for his expeditioners, Law the adventurer did not always apply the same standards to himself: It was windy as usual, the sea was rough and at the foot of this great wall of rock there was a surge—waves breaking and smashing onto the rocks. We found a place where there was a sloped rock rising sharply out of the sea but the surge would hit it and sweep up and then suck back again. That looked like the only place one could get ashore but there was no way of getting the boat on to it. So we got up within ten yards [9.14 metres] of this and had a look at it surging back and forth and finally I said, ‘Look I’m going to jump, I reckon I can jump and claw my way up onto that rock and at least say we’ve been ashore. Then I can jump back into the water and swim out to the boat and you can haul me back.’ Dick Thompson, my lieutenant, was very harsh on me. He cursed me and said, ‘You stupid so-and-so, you’ll kill yourself. I won’t allow you to do it—it’s too damn risky.’
123
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Then I cogitated and realised there’s not much point in one man getting ashore if you can’t take your theodolites and instruments ashore and get an astrofix.
Thompson aborted the landing and they returned to the ship where he and Law had a stand-up argument on the deck. Thompson reiterated that there was no way Law could have landed without endangering his own and others’ lives. The next day Kista Dan headed north and then east towards Prydz Bay. Always the keen explorer, Law wanted to survey as much of the coast of Princess Elizabeth Land as possible and make a landing at the ice-free Vestfold Hills. He calculated there were six days in hand before returning to Melbourne within the agreed time for the charter.14 His enthusiasm was not shared by Captain Petersen, who considered his job effectively done and was anxious to turn his bows homeward to avoid any possibility of being caught in pack ice so late in the season. Kista Dan passed over the Fram Bank, which extends out from Cape Darnley, on 26 February. The line of grounded icebergs, detached from the Amery Ice Shelf, is one of the most spectacular sights along the coast of the AAT. Later that day the ship encountered new pack ice, and Law was not surprised to have Captain Petersen tell him at dinner that ‘he was sorry, but he reckoned we had seen the end of Antarctica for this year’. Law deflected Petersen by suggesting they proceed during the night in open water, and then follow the ice edge to see if a landing on the coast of Princess Elizabeth Land was possible. The captain agreed, but when Law went to the bridge at 0630 the next morning, Petersen told him he believed survey work was not included in the charter, and he had cabled his owner for advice on whether the ship was covered by insurance for such work. Although he was still heading south-east, Kista Dan was at half speed. Law wrote: ‘I suspected that he intended to commit the ship as little as possible on a southerly course until he obtained an answer to his cable.’15 Law decided to call Petersen’s bluff and sent his own cable to ANARE’s shipping agents, Westralian Farmers Transport Ltd in London: WESTAUST LONDON.
124
CAPTAIN KISTADAN HAS REFUSED SURVEY MACKENZIE SEA AREA AS REQUESTED BY ME NOT ON GROUNDS OF SAFETY TO SHIP BUT BECAUSE HE STATES CHARTER DOES NOT COVER THIS TYPE OF WORK AND INSURANCE WOULD BE VOID STOP HE HAS CABLED OWNERS FOR INSTRUCTIONS STOP PENDING REPLY
E
A R L Y
E X P L O R A T I O N
MY TIME IS BEING WASTED AT £375 STERLING DAILY STOP AS I SUPPLIED OWNERS BEFORE LEAVING WITH MY ITINERARY STATING MY INTENTION OF PROCEEDING EASTWARD AFTER LANDING WINTER PARTY I TAKE STRONGEST EXCEPTION TO CAPTAIN RAISING THIS QUIBBLE AT THIS STAGE STOP I CONSIDER VESSEL SHOULD BE DECLARED OFF CHARTER FOR PERIOD WASTED AWAITING OWNERS INSTRUCTIONS (Signed) LAW16
It took two days to sort out the disagreement. On Sunday 28 February Law prepared a formal statement for Petersen outlining what he wanted, and ‘summoned’ the captain to his cabin to give it to him. Petersen’s demeanour was conciliatory: He told me he had received during the night a cable from the owners stating that survey work was in line with the charter. I told him I considered he had been stalling yesterday and that I strongly objected to being messed around. He replied that now the insurance was cleared up he would go anywhere I wished. Everything after that was so smooth I could hardly believe it. He turned south and proceeded at good speed and by nightfall we were further south than the latitude of the ranges south of Mawson!17
That same day, following some good leads through the ice but in overcast indifferent weather, Kista Dan moved in towards the Vestfold Hills. The next day, 1 March, the weather was overcast and very cold with new, black ice forming on what had been open water only a few days before. At the end of the day Law was elated to see the brown rock of the Vestfold Hills loom up, and Kista Dan anchored near a group of small rocky islands. It was very cold and Law’s hopes of a quick landing were dashed the following morning by strong winds and bad weather. Conditions improved on Wednesday 3 March. There was no wind but it was overcast, extremely cold and snowing steadily. The shore party set off at 0945, Law dropping Jim Brooks and Fred Elliott on a nearby island (soon to be named Magnetic Island) to take an astrofix and magnetic observations and make notes on the bird population. Law, Thompson, Gwynn and Shaw (and a coxswain John Hansen from the ship) set off towards the mainland, weaving their way through scattered offshore islands and aiming for a small sloping beach. They moored against an area of fast ice joined to the shore and carefully stepped on to the mainland at 1030 hours. Law reflected that there had been only two previous landings in the Vestfold Hills, which comprise about 300 square kilometres
125
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
of ice-free rock on the eastern side of Prydz Bay. The first landing was by the Norwegian Klarius Mikkelsen on 20 February 1935; the second was by the American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth and his Australian adviser, Sir Hubert Wilkins, on 11 January 1939. Ever conscious of making history, Law ordered Thompson ashore with an Australian flag, while he took pictures with a cine camera. Thompson: We struggled ashore, built a cairn out of rocks, planted the flag on its pole while Phil took our picture. Then I took photos of him with the flag, and a cine film of the three of them waving their caps like a trio of scat singers.18
Because overcast conditions had prevented Law from obtaining an astrofix to pinpoint their position precisely, on Thursday 4 March a survey party was put ashore at Magnetic Island. Law and Thompson had to row them there because the boat’s engine had seized. It was decided to attempt a final flight in the patched-up Auster for photographic and scintillometer runs over the Vestfold Hills. Captain Petersen was champing at the bit to be away, but Duffell worked on a jammed starter cartridge for four and a half hours and at 1100 hours the battered Auster was lowered into the water on floats. When it drifted away towards some nearby icebergs before it could be secured, two sailors chased it in a dinghy but could not tow it back against the wind. The ever-resourceful Leckie climbed down from the wing into the cockpit, managed to start the engine, and taxied back to the ship.19 Leckie’s takeoff was almost certainly the most risky of the voyage. A previous effort to take off from floats near the Scullin Monolith had to be aborted when he could not break free from the water. Only too aware that the Auster was without flaps and tail fin, and with ice drifting in to the takeoff area, Law watched from Kista Dan with trepidation: For a long while [Leckie] could not get the aircraft up on the ‘step’ of the floats, and ahead of him we saw a strip of sludge and new ice.20 We called to him over the radio to stop his run, but apparently he felt he was almost airborne and so stuck to it. He finally made it, after a run of 83 seconds, pulling up off the water only a few yards short of the black ice. He told me later he didn’t stop sweating until he was 4000 feet [1219.2 metres] up!21
126
Leckie had pushed his luck to the edge and had actually hit a chunk of floating ice which fortuitously broke his floats clear of the water at the crucial moment. He was the first to see the remarkable lakes and fjords of the Vestfold Hills, later to be the site of Australia’s second mainland
E
A R L Y
E X P L O R A T I O N
establishment, Davis Station: ‘The inland lakes were of a different colour from the ones near the coast. The former were a bright emerald green, the latter were the same colour as the sea, which is nearly black from the air. The emerald green lakes inland were completely ice free. I could see the rocks around these lakes extend about a hundred yards into the water, which was crystal clear.’22 RAISING THE AUSTRALIAN It was the last flight of the voyage. As soon as the FLAG IN THE VESTFOLD hybrid Auster was lifted on board, Captain Petersen HILLS, 3 MARCH 1954. FROM weighed anchor and headed for the open sea. LEFT: PETER SHAW, PHIL LAW Law was a happy man. Although the weather was AND ARTHUR GWYNN. now deteriorating badly, he could reflect on consid(R THOMPSON) erable gains. There had been a landing on the Vestfold Hills, Brooks had fixed the position of Magnetic Island accurately and this fix, allied with Leckie’s photographic runs in the Auster, would help to correct the Hansen Atlas’s depiction of this part of the coast. Rock specimens had been gathered and navigational knowledge had been gained of the approach to ‘this fascinating area’.23 He was not to know that the next day would be the most frightening of his life—and that of every living soul on Kista Dan. They were heading out into a full-blown hurricane. At 0130 on Friday 5 March, Leckie woke Law to tell him that the Auster, lashed down on the deck, had been wrecked: The wind was now blowing at Force 14 (more than 100 knots) and the ship was hove to into the wind and rolling and pitching violently in heavy seas. Doug and I stumbled along the heaving passage and pushed through the door at the end on to the boat deck. It was wild out there. We clung to the handrails as the wind buffeted us and freezing spray lashed our faces. The scream of the wind and the flapping of our parka hoods around our ears made conversation impossible. . .The aircraft certainly was a mess. Gusts of wind under the starboard wing had caused the main strut, connecting the port float to the fuselage, to collapse and the plane
127
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
had lurched over on one side, crumpled and twisted, with the port wing tangled up in the lifeboat davits.24
They climbed up to the bridge to tell the captain. He was having great difficulty holding the ship into the wind. Kista Dan was bow light and stern heavy after having discharged her cargo at Mawson Station. Her bows were riding so high in the water that the helmsman could not hold her into the wind, now blowing at 160 kilometres per hour. Great waves were sending sheets of water and spray over the foredeck and against the bridge windows, and turning into sludge ice. Law asked the chief engineer whether the forward tanks had been ballasted to keep the bows lower in the water. He said they had tried, but the pipes had frozen up. Law: There was little conversation on the darkened bridge. The helmsman’s repetition of the Captain’s steering orders and an occasional comment by the First Mate or myself were the only words spoken. The radar shone green under its hood and the First Mate seldom left it . . . About 0200 hours the Captain lost control of the ship. No combination of rudder and engine revolutions could counteract the force of the wind on the bows, and Kista Dan broached to. Lying over on her port side, she drifted helplessly, pounded by every breaking wave and held in a permanent list by the hurricane.25
That spelt the end for Auster 200, which was blown over the side. The second mate cut the lashings to let the wreckage drift away, carrying with it—to Law’s chagrin—the valuable scintillometer which could not be retrieved. (It was not, however, the end of the Auster contribution to ANARE service. The fuselage of Auster 201, cannibalised to augment Auster 200, was safely stowed in the hold, and was rebuilt to return to the Antarctic to fly in 1955.) The situation was critical. Kista Dan lay on her side held to a permanent list of 30° by the force of the wind and rolling from that point, so that the limits of the rolls were vertical or 10° to starboard, then 60° or 70° to port. Law was aware that the stability of the ship left a lot to be desired. He had noticed on the voyage to Macquarie Island that ‘the ship feels top-heavy’ and tended to ‘hang over’ at the end of a roll. (After she returned to Denmark at the end of this voyage the owners added 70 tonnes to her keel.)26 In his book You Have to be Lucky—Antarctic and Other Adventures, Law wrote: 128
There have been a number of occasions in my life when I have been afraid, but never have I experienced, before or since, terror extending
E
A R L Y
E X P L O R A T I O N
unrelieved over such a long period of time. I don’t think anyone on the ship really expected to survive and, over a period of 12 hours, each large roll seemed likely to be the last.27
With no steerage, Captain Petersen could only use his engines to move ahead or astern with limited effect to try and avoid icebergs and large bergy bits. After Kista Dan sideswiped one iceberg, Doug Leckie joined other volunteers to go on deck to try and throw ice off the ship. Frozen spray on the deck and rigging was making the stricken vessel even more top-heavy and unstable: We had to use crowbars, anything we could to break ice off the decks and the rigging—one of the boys got quite nastily hurt with falling ice off the rigging.
Law said later that neither he nor anyone else on the ship took a photograph during the next twelve hours—and he was the official photographer—because they all thought they were going to die. Doug Leckie shared a cabin with his three RAAF colleagues:
THE HYBRID ‘AUSTER 200.5’ MOUNTED ON THE REAR DECK OF
KISTA DAN. IT WAS LOST
OVERBOARD IN A HURRICANE
VESTFOLD HILLS MARCH 1954. (AAD ARCHIVES)
NEAR THE IN
I remember saying to Ray Seaver and Frank Morgan that it might be an idea to say a quick prayer, because I thought this might be the end. I heard a muffled voice saying, ‘What do you think I’ve been doing for the last two and a half bloody hours’. That was Ken Duffell, my flight engineer.
The ship’s professionals were not immune from raw fear. One engineer was so distressed he had to be given sleeping tablets. His job was cleaning the strainers of ice slush to get cooling water to the engine. He later had a nervous breakdown, could not work for a year, and never went back to sea again.28 Like most of the passengers, Law could do nothing but lie in his bunk most of the time and hope for the best: The most horrible moment of the whole night was when I stood in my cabin, in semi-darkness, leaning against the bulkhead, with my face pressed against the porthole, peering out on the port side over the tormented water. . .Suddenly, struck by a fierce gust of wind and a particularly
129
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
high wave, the ship heeled over until I was lying on my stomach on the bulkhead, practically horizontal, with my nose flattened against the submerged glass of the porthole, gazing down into the green-black depths. There I waited and waited for the recovery that would not come, as successive waves ground the ship further and further down on its side as my terror mounted. . .
130
Law remembers that, when confronting what seemed like certain death, he felt mostly anger and intense resentment. There he was, a successful expedition leader, returning home with a story of accomplishment and a load of important scientific records and photographs. Was all this to be lost? And would anyone ever know what had happened? Captain Petersen, during the twenty-four hours he spent on the bridge, was also resentful at finding himself in this situation. During one of Law’s visits to the bridge, Petersen shouted at him: ‘Have you now got enough?’29 Law later reflected that had the captain not procrastinated for two days on the way to the Vestfold Hills about the charter, they would have been well on their way home by that point.30 Daylight on Friday 5 March brought little relief, except that later in the day Kista Dan drifted into an area of brash ice—pulverised pack ice with the consistency of a thick concrete mix. But giant swells persisted, and remnants of larger ice floes bumped and grated against the ship’s sides ‘with horrible menacing sounds’.31 During the next night the crew managed to free the frozen pipes that had prevented the captain at the beginning of the storm from pumping sea water into his forward tanks, and there was a noticeable improvement in draught and stability. By Saturday morning 6 March the worst was over, normal watches were resumed and the captain at last retired to his bunk after forty hours continuously on the bridge. Kista Dan returned to Melbourne via Heard Island and, after taking on fresh water at Kerguelen Islands without any further major dramas, berthed at North Wharf on the morning of 31 March 1954. Despite the triumph of establishing Australia’s first permanent continental station on the Antarctic continent against considerable odds, the return was oddly anticlimactic in contrast to the hoopla of the departure. One reason was the press preoccupation with the visit of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to Australia. However, one journalist did comment that ‘a handful of Australians have been taking part, almost unnoticed, in an exploit which, under normal circumstances, would have made headline news’. The DEA had irritated Law by cabling him on 28 March that he was to limit any press interviews with himself and the expeditioners on arrival
E
A R L Y
to ‘events, personal experiences and sidelights’. Statements on achievements and the value of the expedition would be preserved for a report to the minister ‘and may be the subject of a later statement’.32 Law wrote in his diary: ‘This is typical. The first chance to give the newspapers some serious scientific stuff, and I am reduced to nattering about penguins!’ Apart from the Heard Island expeditioners’ relatives there was no great crowd to welcome the explorers on 31 March. The Minister, Richard Casey, was there though, and came on board to chat informally with Law and Captain Petersen. Conscious that Mawson Station was far from ‘permanent’, Law took the occasion to remind Mr Casey: . . .that although we had ten men now at Mawson, we had no government approval for a relief expedition to pick them up in 1955, or for the appointment of a new party to replace them. One quarter of the year had passed, and we in the Antarctic Division would need an immediate decision by the government if we were to be ready in time to sail in January.33
E X P L O R A T I O N
RICHARD CASEY, MINISTER FOR EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, TALKS TO CAPTAIN HANS CHRISTIAN PETERSEN AFTER KISTA DAN’S RETURN TO MELBOURNE ON 31 MARCH 1954. (I FOX)
Casey told Law there was a meeting the next day to talk about all this. However, Law was surprised to hear from administrative officer Jeremiah Donovan that it was not a full meeting of the Executive Planning Committee—the principal Antarctic policy-making body. He suspected that there were moves afoot to undermine the role of the EPC and determined to fight for its retention. As it happened, Law’s domination of Australia’s Antarctic agenda had been under attack on a number of fronts while he had been down south. Despite the fact that the establishment of Mawson Station fulfilled the final requirement set down by the Government in 1947 for Australia’s involvement in Antarctica, Law—fatigued and drained by his long and arduous voyage—would have to act quickly to retain his control of Antarctic-related events. 131
NINE
VIRGIN
A
132
TERRITORY
lthough supportive and influential in promoting post-war Australian Antarctic activity, Sir Douglas Mawson thought that more attention should be paid to the eastern sector of the AAT, near Cape Freshfield, and Commonwealth Bay where he had his base in his 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition. There were also scientific benefits, he felt, in being near the South Magnetic Pole. Phillip Law, on the other hand, favoured the western sector of the AAT near the Amery Ice Shelf, where there were coastal ice-free areas and interior mountain ranges to be explored. The Norwegians had also been active in this area and Australia’s claims needed to be strengthened. During the Executive Planning Committee meeting in November 1953, Law convinced the committee (including Mawson) that the Kista Dan expedition in 1954 should go west, to the coast of Mac. Robertson Land. Law regarded the EPC highly. It brought together the main players in ANARE—the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (formerly CSIR), Bureau of Mineral Resources, the armed forces, Treasury, National Mapping, the Australian Academy of Science, the universities and ANARE’s parent department, the Department of External Affairs, as well as influential Antarctic experts like Sir Douglas Mawson and John King Davis. The committee was chaired by Law who valued its role in breaking down ‘selfish’ departmental barriers, creating long and short-term Antarctic policy and playing a powerful role in getting government acceptance of that policy. He orchestrated it skilfully to support his Antarctic plans, and made sure he always drafted the minutes of its meetings:
V
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
It is terribly important that the Minutes are written in such a way that they contribute constructively to the direction in which you want to go. . .I didn’t believe in falsifying Minutes or ‘rigging’ them in any way but I am sure that if you write the Minutes with an object in view you can, over the years, influence the way a thing goes.1
Sir Douglas Mawson was well aware of Law’s strong guiding hand on the EPC. On Wednesday 20 January—while Law was heading towards Antarctica on Kista Dan —External Affairs Minister Richard Casey asked Sir Douglas to see him in Canberra to discuss future Australian plans in Antarctica. Mawson pressed his views on the importance of the Cape Freshfield area of the AAT as a site for a future base and told Casey that the Government should abandon the Heard Island station and ask New Zealand to take over the ANARE station on Macquarie Island, or at least share the expenses of maintaining it, as the meteorological data was of interest ‘only to New Zealand’. In a confidential minute to the DEA Casey wrote: I asked Mawson what sort of a body the Antarctic Committee [EPC] was. He told me confidentially that he did not think it was a very active or useful body—as it only met once or twice a year—and then largely to be told by P G Law what it had been decided to do.2
This struck a chord with the DEA’s Keith Waller (who had vexed Law by cabling him on Kista Dan to stop him making press statements of substance on his arrival in Melbourne). Waller wrote to DEA Secretary James Plimsoll on 22 February 1954: Minister is concerned at the lack of control over Law’s activities. I have suggested (and Minister agrees) that Law is playing the Department off against the Antarctic Committee [EPC] and vice versa. Minister has agreed that we should set up a small executive Committee of the main Antarctic Committee, consisting of Law, White (CSIRO), Treasury representative, J K Davis (an Antarctic expert) and me, under his Chairmanship.3
In March when Law returned from Antarctica and was alerted by his administrative assistant, Jeremiah Donovan, he moved to counter-attack. He rang the chief geophysicist of the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Jack Rayner, whom he regarded as one of the important figures on the EPC, and found he had not been invited to the meeting: I then rang Keith Waller in Canberra, who admitted that the Minister was thinking of replacing the [EPC] with a much smaller committee consisting of a few selected men from the present committee. I told him
133
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
to inform the Minister that if he proceeded with this idea I would immediately resign.4
The meeting on 2 April passed smoothly with Casey in the chair. At the end, Law asked the minister bluntly how often he intended to call this small committee together and whether it was intended that it should usurp the functions of the EPC. He received Casey’s assurances that this would not be so. Law, who had chaired the EPC since 1949, continued as its chairman until 1963, when it was allowed to lapse.5 The next EPC meeting, on 16 June 1954, was extremely important. Law, once again with his hands firmly on the reins of Antarctic policy, presented a draft five year plan to ensure stability and continuity PHIL LAW SHOWS SIR of the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic stations. A submisDOUGLAS MAWSON THE FIRST sion to Cabinet sought approval for expanded activities PUBLISHED PICTURE OF at Mawson Station with a fifteen-man party for 1955. MAWSON STATION AFTER HIS The Heard Island station was to be closed to help pay RETURN TO MELBOURNE IN for the expanded activity on the Antarctic mainland. MARCH 1954. Exploration was stressed, with qualified surveyors and (MELBOURNE AGE ) aircraft provided by the RAAF to investigate and chart territory within 100 miles’ [160 kilometres] radius of Mawson, supported by coastal exploration from Kista Dan. Law also spelled out his proposed scientific program: a boosting of meteorological activity (including experimental automatic weather stations), geology, geomagnetism and seismology, cosmic ray and ionospheric work, biology and glaciology. As no glaciologist was available in Australia, Law hoped to recruit from overseas.6 At Mawson, blissfully unaware that the station was not yet assured of a future, Bob Dovers and his nine companions continued to build huts and prepare for their first winter on the Antarctic continent. All were without their appendixes. Bob Dingle, a weather observer, was one of eight team members operated on by the doctor, Bob Summers, for prophylactic reasons before embarking on Kista Dan. ‘He said it was a good idea for him to do the operation because it would give us faith in him.’ A certain amount of faith in Summers was lost, though, after he buried their entire year’s supply of fresh meat in the ice. Dingle: ‘The first blizzard came down and removed the marker flag. . .When you bury something in a featureless bit of ice or snow, unless you take bearings on it, you never find it again.’ Fortunately for all, Summers located the cache two months later—but there was still only enough meat for one meal a month plus birthdays.7 134
V
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
However, there was plenty of tinned meat, and the choicest cuts of seal killed for the huskies also found their way on to the expeditioners’ table. The prefabricated wooden hut Phil Law had obtained from the NBS Expedition was the main living quarters and mess. Five sleeping bays and bunks on each side of the hut meant little privacy—although towards the end of the year plyboard partitions were put up to create minimal personal space. A communal dining table filled the centre of the hut and, at the MEDICAL OFFICER BOB end, a slow combustion Aga stove was presided over SUMMERS IS THE MAN IN THE by the cook, Jeff Gleadell. ICE MASK AFTER RETURNING Despite the cramped living conditions, personal FROM THE MAWSON DOG LINE relations remained cordial despite ‘a few grouches’ IN A BLIZZARD, WINTER 1954. and there were agreed ground rules to avoid friction. (R DINGLE) Bill Storer: ‘We had a policy that we would not discuss religion or politics while we were there. In other words, that was our own little private affair. We could pray in our little cubicles if we wanted to.’ Talk about women was allowed but, according to Storer, did not dominate conversations in the NBS hut. For recreation the ten men played cards (canasta), listened to gramophone records or read from the excellent polar and general library provided by the Antarctic Division. There was little time to relax. The huskies had to be fed and looked after each day, snow had to be continuously carted to the snow melter for fresh water, and equipment prepared for field trips. Everyone did a day’s turn as ‘slushy’ for the cook and cooked for the rest on Sunday, Gleadell’s day off. Night watches were kept to guard against fire—a very real hazard in a wooden hut with a combustion stove and pressure lamp lighting. Dingle, the sole weather observer, began his daily weather reports and balloon launches in April. He had no radiosonde apparatus to send aloft, but measured the upper winds by sighting the released balloon with his theodolite. Any spare time remaining was often spent instructing other expeditioners in specialist tasks, in case of death or injury. Storer: I taught the guys how to operate the radio, the surveyor [Dovers] taught us how to take bearings and things like that. [Bob Dingle] taught us all how to read the weather. We all had our little lectures—not every night—but at least once a week.
135
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
OIC Bob Dovers was keen to begin exploring the virgin territory surrounding them and in April led a party of ROUTE OF 1954 PARTY FROM five on a four-day field trip up to the plateau behind MAWSON STATION TO Mawson Station into the Framnes Mountains, to find SCULLIN MONOLITH AND a safe route onto the ice cap towards Mt Henderson. RETURN. This was a preliminary canter to test equipment and vehicles for a much more ambitious journey—Dovers wanted to push east along the coast to the Scullin Monolith. He proposed to travel along the sea ice with two Weasels each towing a wooden barge caravan and a sledge loaded with fuel. Dovers would lead a party of four, including the carpenter Harvey, geologist Stinear and radio operator Storer: The sledge [barge] caravans were ordinary caravans with a roof on the top like a triangle or diamond, and in this we stored all our equipment. One caravan had all our survival gear and the other had our scientific equipment.
136
They set off on 17 May and made such good progress over the sea ice that they sighted the bulk of the Scullin Monolith two days later. But on the morning of 20 May a gale burst upon them. That night Dovers was forced to camp on the sea ice in front of the sheer rock face of the monolith. He was uneasy about camping on the ice but noted in his log that it was two feet [0.61 metres] thick and that he ‘was not unduly worried about our situation’.8
V
The Australians woke early on the morning of 21 May to find themselves in a desperate position. The sea ice was heaving up and down in a heavy swell and breaking into floes. Dovers started the motor of No. 1 Weasel and alerted Stinear and Storer in No. 2 to do the same. Unfortunately neither vehicle had been refuelled the night before, but there was no time now for that. Dovers:
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
THE FORBIDDING CLIFFS OF THE SCULLIN MONOLITH SEEN FROM KISTA DAN, 1954. (AAD ARCHIVES) NO. 1 WEASEL BROKE THROUGH THE ICE AND
STARTED TO SINK, 1954. We tried to make the eastern tip of the bay which was (W HARVEY) lower lying. . .however the rapidity with which the ice was breaking up precluded this. Already the floes were individual sections heaving up and down in the swell. The Weasels were truly magnificent scrambling from floe to floe. As the weight came on a floe it would sink and tilt leaving a gap and step to the next, but the Weasels managed to proceed, dragging their loads.9
They could not make it to shore, and were stopped by open water and brash ice about 200 metres out. Survival, uppermost in their minds, necessitated securing the barge caravan containing their food and emergency supplies to the shore. Leaving the Weasels and all the other equipment on ice floes, the four men began to winch the vital barge caravan towards the land by hand, precariously balanced on a tongue of non-tidal ice, clinging to hollows in the ice hummocks. Dovers: How we managed to cling on there in that merciless wind was a mystery. We saw the manhandled sledge fully loaded flying through the air before crashing into the tide crack near us, narrowly missing Stinear in its trajectory. Our heavy bridging timbers wafted about the bay like matchsticks. The second barge caravan was turned completely over in a gust. Then a few minutes later a subsequent gust righted it again. Even the sledges each carrying a ton and a half [11¼2 tonnes] of petrol were moved about.10
137
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
THERE WAS A DESPERATE STRUGGLE TO MANHANDLE THE REMAINING BARGE CARAVAN ASHORE,
1954. (W HARVEY)
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
By this time all four men were suffering badly from exposure. Not only that, the survival barge caravan had a large hole punched in the side, and certainly would not float. Dovers asked carpenter Harvey and Storer to patch it. While this was going on, No. 1 Weasel heeled over on its side on its ice floe and started to sink. Fortunately Storer had already removed all their sleeping bags from both Weasels, and put them in the caravan. Dovers realised that they could not survive on land without shelter, and their only hope was to get in the caravan tethered on the ice for the night and hope for the best:
A very worrying night. . .The caravan was under constant bombardment by ice fragments that rattled on the plywood walls. The floes outside were all detached and moving. We could hear water lapping against the hull and the caravan was continually bumped by moving floes that scraped loudly against the thin plywood hull. No water came through the patch.11
138
At 0400 hours conditions eased a little, and they even managed some sleep. All had minor frostbite, and Harvey had a badly cut hand he had jammed in a Weasel door. Dovers had a deeply frostbitten hand. They dressed their wounds and next day managed to winch the caravan closer to the shore and make a cache of emergency food on land. On 28 May after five days in this desperate situation, Dovers decided to take advantage of better ice conditions to try and winch the survival caravan to shore. It was resting on ice, but they succeeded in tethering it to a rock face in such a way that if the ice did move out to sea, they would be left suspended like a lifeboat in ship’s davits. They slept better that night, Dovers noting in his log that ‘the gentle rocking motion of the ice under the swell was not missed at all as an aid to sleep, and the groaning and growling of the tide crack had lost its sinister significance’.
V
On 2 June ‘there was a frightful crash’ and the barge caravan gave a sideways lurch as the ice bank beneath it collapsed, and left the four men hanging in mid-air. Dovers noted laconically in his log: ‘Radio contact [with Mawson Station] interrupted by the foregoing episode. We will have to find a new home, this is no place for anyone who likes a quiet life.’12 By 4 June the party was in its best shape since the ice break-out. The surviving No. 1 Weasel had been able to drag the barge caravan from its precarious position to dry land at a location nearby dubbed ‘Weasel Beach’. No. 2 Weasel and the second barge caravan were lost on the sea ice. However, the party had ample food, fuel, accommodation and a working Weasel to get them back to Mawson Station if and when the sea ice froze again. If not, there was still an option. Storer:
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
HOME AWAY FROM HOME. THE BARGE CARAVAN WAS SUSPENDED OVER THE SEA ICE BY CABLES GUYED INTO THE
SCULLIN MONOLITH, 1954. (W HARVEY)
ROCKY CLIFFS OF THE
We knew we could survive at that particular place even if we had to be rescued by ship in nine months’ time. While we were there we couldn’t do anything because the sheer cliffs were too steep to climb up. Our only exit was via the way we came—by sea.
Bruce Stinear made good use of the enforced stay by collecting geological specimens, later received with great joy by Sir Douglas Mawson, who had not been able to land at the Scullin Monolith during his BANZARE voyages in 1929 and 1931. By the second week in June the sea ice seemed strong enough for an escape attempt, but the Scullin seemed unwilling to let them go. On 10 June a blizzard struck with such ferocity that it tipped over both the barge caravan and No. 1 Weasel. At last, on 13 June Dovers and his three companions set off with the battered Weasel towing the barge caravan and two sledges, and were back at Mawson Station by the evening of 19 June. The saga was not quite over. Dovers:
139
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
At 2300 hours just as everybody was settling down to bed, Schwarz burst into the hut reporting that No. 1 Weasel was on fire. Despite our best efforts the fire damaged the machine beyond repair before it was put out. This was the crowning blow of an ill-fated venture.13
The loss of two of the three Weasels caused a rethink on plans for further exploration.
T
140
he huskies had not been brought to Mawson to be cuddly canine companions for expeditioners. They were working dogs, on the cutting edge of existing polar technology. The vulnerability of heavy tracked vehicles running over sea ice had been demonstrated during the Scullin Monolith venture. Both George Schwartz and Bob Dovers had experience driving huskies and after much discussion it was decided to take two dog teams along the coast to King Edward Gulf, 230 kilometres to the west of Mawson, and carry out scientific work along the way.14 Apart from filling in blanks in the map, they planned to take tidal observations, astrofixes from rocky features, magnetic observations, collect geological and botanical specimens and make a ‘rough’ survey of animal and bird life along the way.15 They set off on 12 October and in comparison with the Scullin Monolith debacle had a smooth run, proving the advantage of dogs over machines on sea ice—the first of many such journeys that would be made by ANARE expeditioners until 1992. Dovers planned to be away for six weeks, but only fourteen days’ rations of dog pemmican were carried—they planned to kill seals to feed the huskies. On 21 October they saw many emperor penguins, and followed these magnificent birds in to the coast to discover what was later named Taylor Rookery. Radio contact was maintained with Mawson during the coastal run. Dovers’ dog team led and he reported little trouble, ‘but George was furious with his undisciplined crew tonight’. Dovers summed up the Western Coastal Journey as workmanlike—‘nothing extraordinary except remarkable in the smoothness of events’. They were out for 41 days, and had run 880 kilometres with the dogs, which had set out a rabble and returned as well-trained teams, with ‘all objects achieved’.16 This was a valuable training run for the Southern Reconnaissance—the major field journey for the year—that Dovers was itching to begin. The territory inland from Mawson Station was totally unexplored and he was aware that ‘Operation Highjump’ aerial photographs taken by the Americans in February 1947 had shown a tantalising glimpse of what might be a mountain range to the south of Mawson.
V
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
This expedition was carried out in three stages. The surviving Weasel No. 3 now sported a wooden cabin, ingeniously constructed by John Russell.17 Dovers, Russell and Jeff Gleadell, the cook, began by taking the Weasel on a route reconnaissance past Mt Henderson to 69°40'S, where it broke down. Leaving it there, the three men went back to Mawson and Dovers returned with Dr Bob Summers, Lem Macey and two dog teams to survey the terrain further as well as find a track south. On 13 December, Dovers, Summers and geologist Bruce Stinear left Mawson with the repaired Weasel and one dog team and pushed into the unknown.18 Again the dogs proved more reliable than the Weasel, which plagued them with fuel blockages. On Christmas Day the three explorers sat in the Weasel cabin to enjoy their specially provided Christmas dinner. Dovers wrote: ‘A Xmas present to Summers from his people was opened and it contained some gum leaves which were ceremoniously burnt, filling the Weasel cabin with the nostalgic fragrance of the Australian bush.’19 On 27 December the party sighted five peaks about 240 kilometres south southeast of Mawson Station—later named the Stinear Nunataks after the expedition’s geologist. The excitement of raw discoveries in virgin territory was palpable. Summers later wrote: The culmination of my year at Mawson was the Southern Journey. I found it extremely satisfying putting my big feet down on to territory that one knew no one had ever trod before and wondering what the next day would bring.20
The following day the Weasel, followed by the dogs, laboured up a great snow drift to the peak of one of the Stinear Nunataks, and a major discovery could be claimed. Dovers: A most interesting surprise awaited us here. As soon as we topped the crest we saw a great range of mountains leading away to the south-east. Up to this time we had not the least suspicion of the existence of this range. It was a magnificent spectacle and a very fitting climax to the journey; well worth the petty annoyances of the Weasel.21
Dovers, Stinear and Summers were the first to see the northernmost ranges of the Prince Charles Mountains, extending about 300 kilometres southwards in an arc from their northern extremity. These great mountains form a barrier through which streams the Lambert Glacier, which in turn feeds the vast Amery Ice Shelf. The Lambert Glacier drains a third of the AAT as its immense rivers of advancing ice move inexorably off the Antarctic continent and into the surrounding ocean. It is an area
141
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
of great drama, beauty and scientific importance, and major ANARE summer programs are carried out there to this day. The Dovers party could go no further. They did not have enough fuel or supplies to go on, and time was running out as Kista Dan was due to pick up the Mawson party in a matter of weeks. They returned reluctantly to Mawson Station by 7 January 1955—the same day Kista Dan left Melbourne for Heard Island and Mawson. It had been an important year for ANARE. Dovers and his men had made significant discoveries along the coast and inland from Mawson. They had tested, in the field, methods of travel that would be adopted and adapted by the ANARE parties that were to follow, exploring and conducting research in the AAT. The relief voyage was led by Phil Law, assisted by Dick Thompson, with Kista Dan again skippered by Captain Hans Christian Petersen. This time the ship was carrying two amphibious army DUKWs to help with the cargo operations at Heard and Horseshoe Harbour, but no aircraft. Law was eager to continue exploring the fascinating ice-free Vestfold Hills, so briefly visited the previous year. The party was astonished at the first sight of the outlying islands, now snow free, with their rocky terrain teeming with rookeries of Adélie penguins. Captain Petersen was seeking Magnetic Island, but approached another island by mistake. Instead of retreating and coming back along last year’s track, he tried to edge over to Magnetic Island directly. Mariners in uncharted Antarctic waters usually try to keep to corridors of known safety, and Petersen’s sideways move nearly led to disaster. Law: At 1140 hours there was a grinding jar, the ship lurched and bucked several times before the way could be taken off her, and we found ourselves stranded on top of a sharp pinnacle of rock which had passed to one side of the echo-sounders without registering and had struck the ship amidships. It took half an hour’s manoeuvring by the Captain to get clear again.22
142
The DUKWs made landings easier, although both machines became bogged inland and had to be winched out. Land parties were able to explore the remarkable lakes, frozen fjords and ice-free extent of the Vestfold Hills for two days, although Law regretted not having aircraft to assist in an overview of the area. On 1 February, Kista Dan sailed towards the Larsemann Hills 100 kilometres to the west, until the ship was stopped by fast ice 20 kilometres from the coast. Law judged the ice to be much stronger and thicker than that across which they had unloaded cargo at Horseshoe Harbour the previous year. An attempt to reach the Larsemann Hills over the fast ice to take an astrofix was abandoned after the Weasel
V
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
in which Law and his companions were travelling nearly broke through on several occasions.23 A PRECARIOUS OVERNIGHT On 3 February Law decided to risk a sledge journey CAMP ON SEA ICE AMONG over the sea ice to the nearby Bolingen Islands with a GROUNDED ICEBERGS IN six-man party. John Béchervaise (the incoming OIC PRYDZ BAY NEAR LICHEN at Mawson) took part in this expedition, which managed ISLAND, FEBRUARY 1955. to get an astrofix from one of the small rocky islets (P LAW) amongst icebergs and highly unstable sea ice. At 0300 hours on 5 February, Law woke to a fresh PHIL LAW LEADING A PARTY north-east wind and an ominous outlook. ‘The prospect MANHAULING A SLEDGE TO of a hurricane setting the whole area into heaving LICHEN ISLAND, PRYDZ BAY, motion. . .was not pleasant.’ He woke the rest of the FEBRUARY 1955. party and they moved camp onto the rocky islet the (J BÉCHERVAISE) Norwegians had named Lorten Island. By later that day surveyor Bob Lacey completed his observations and geologist Peter Crohn had gathered samples of a rich profusion of both rock and lichen samples. Perhaps because of Adélie guano deposited there over the years, the Norwegians had named it Lorten—literally ‘The Turd’. Law decided to change the islet’s name to Lichen Island, which he thought more aesthetically pleasing.24 The weather looked threatening, and the party set out to return to the ship over the sea ice on skis, towing a sledge. As they did so, they realised the ice was beginning to break up around them. Béchervaise: This is a very unhappy prospect, to cover some miles over ice floes which are breaking up. . .the floes were up to 30 feet [9.14 metres] across and we had to wait till they moved together and then make a crossing from
143
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
T
he OIC of the 1955 Mawson party, John Mayston Béchervaise, was a man of many accomplishments. School teacher, classicist, poet and mountaineer, ‘Béch’ was 45 years old when he arrived at Mawson. He had been co-editing the travel-adventure magazine Walkabout when Law asked him to go to Heard Island as OIC in 1953. With the magnet of a major unclimbed peak drawing him to it, Béchervaise led two attempts in August and November 1953 to climb Big Ben, but the notoriously wild weather around the 2745 metre volcano beat them back. On the first attempt Béchervaise and his two companions, Peter Shaw and Fred Elliott, sheltered in a snow cave and were nearly killed by carbon monoxide poisoning when their ventilator shaft was blocked by drift. Béchervaise was not a scientist and in later life seemed mildly puzzled why he, a generalist, should have been selected to lead parties of scientists in Antarctica. His strengths were in leadership, and he represented a break from the policy of appointing a senior scientist—often the head meteorologist—as the OIC of an ANARE station. This emphasis on management rather than scientific expertise became more evident in later years when the administration of a modern station became a far more complex logistical and staffing exercise. John Béchervaise had that rare combination of infectious enthusiasm and an instinctive ability to motivate people. ‘Perhaps’, wrote fellow bushwalker Graham Wills-Johnson of Béchervaise in 1981, ‘the very first qualification of an Antarctic leader, therefore, is to be a good generalist. Good generalists are in much shorter supply in the twentieth century, the age of the specialist, than they were in the eighteenth.’25
POET, SCHOLAR AND EXPLORER JOHN BÉCHERVAISE RELISHED THE EXCITEMENT AND PRIVILEGE OF ‘FIRST FOOTING’ UNDISCOVERED FEATURES IN ANTARCTICA. PHOTOGRAPHED ON HEARD ISLAND, 1953. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
In the 1940s and 1950s keen climbers could still find new peaks to conquer in remote areas of Australia. Béchervaise had led the first ascent of Federation Peak in the south-west of Tasmania in January 1949. His delight in finding himself in virgin territory at Mawson was palpable: We were extraordinarily fortunate. . .all round the horizon were these mountains which had never been climbed. And some of them had been named from the sea by Douglas Mawson in 1930. There was the Casey Range, for instance, named after young Richard Casey, who was Official Secretary in London and was a big help to Mawson. We had all these virgin peaks. . .we were very lucky in having them.
V
one to the other—sort of floe-hopping. It’s a slow and anxious business. The nearer we got to the ship the happier we were.
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
THREE MEMBERS OF THE ANARE PARTY THAT MADE THE FIRST ASCENT OF MT HENDERSON IN FEBRUARY 1955. FROM LEFT: PHIL LAW, JOHN BÉCHERVAISE AND PETER SHAW. THE FOURTH MEMBER, TONY HALL,
Petersen, an experienced ice captain, was aware of their problem and was moving towards them as fast as he could with the ship. As they got closer Béchervaise realised that the ship itself was helping to compress the ice floes they were traversing, ‘And when we got to within hailing distance, over the very clear, still TOOK THIS PHOTOGRAPH Antarctic air came the skipper’s voice through his ON THE SUMMIT. megaphone: ‘‘Make straight for zee ship! I am holding (A HALL) the floes together!’’.’ Béchervaise said it sounded ‘like God Almighty making a pronouncement that he had control of everyone’s destiny’. After further coastal survey work along the western end of the Amery Ice Shelf, Kista Dan arrived off Mawson Station on 9 February to find Horseshoe Harbour free of ice. Law was delighted with what had been achieved at Mawson, which he found ‘in immaculate condition—orderly, 145
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
clean and attractively laid out’. He was concerned, though, to find OIC Dovers far from well: The strain of his various field journeys and of his responsibilities at the Station had told heavily on him and he had been under treatment for some time for a chronic gall bladder. All told me he had driven himself without respite for months.26
Dovers was ordered onto Kista Dan for complete rest and he improved rapidly. The incoming doctor, Bob Allison, did not agree with the gall bladder diagnosis but said the affliction was a psychosomatic condition. After Dovers had made a rapid recovery on the ship Law formed the view that extreme stress had been the cause. The DUKWs handled the cargo easily and the changeover was smooth. Ten extra huts were built, a BOB LACEY (USING radio mast erected, and ‘40 seals killed and stored for THEODOLITE) AND ERIC winter dog food’. Law even found time to achieve the MACKLIN (WITH first ascent of Mt Henderson with Béchervaise (a keen CHRONOMETER) SURVEYING IN mountaineer), Peter Shaw and Lieutenant A T Hall, THE PRINCE CHARLES officer in charge of the DUKWs. In contrast to the first MOUNTAINS, 1955. Kista Dan voyage, Law lavished praise on Captain (J BÉCHERVAISE) Petersen who, he said, ‘had been cooperative in every way’.27 From Mawson it was back to Heard where Law had the sad task of closing down the station, sacrificed to help finance the development of Mawson and an expanded continental program. With Mawson Station now well established, an expanded program of science and exploration was begun. Cosmic ray research was a priority and during 1955 two large meson telescopes comprising 150 Geiger counters (which had been built at the University of Tasmania under the direction of Drs G Fenton and N R ‘Nod’ Parsons) were assembled on converted anti-aircraft gun mounts set in concrete piers weighing four tonnes, and screened with one tonne of lead. The cosmic ray building was designed to withstand winds of up to 250 kilometres per hour. Nod Parsons wintered at Mawson to establish the cosmic ray laboratory. By 146
V
I R G I N
T E R R I T O R Y
the end of 1955 there were nineteen buildings in use, and the station operated the most elaborate scientific establishment the Antarctic had seen to that date.28 In August Béchervaise with five companions and a dog team inspected he Weasel was a World War II vintage the emperor penguins at Taylor Rookery vehicle, originally built as an all-terrain west of Mawson in what was becoming Bren gun carrier and designed for only an annual Mawson Station ritual. Dogs a short operational life. It was not really were not used on the follow-up expeadequate for Antarctic field work, although dition to reinforce Dovers’ sighting of ANARE engineers nursed them past the limits the Prince Charles Mountains (PCMs). of the possible. It could be fitted with a demoAfter a depot-laying exercise early in lition charge to allow its destruction in combat. November 1955, Béchervaise, with six (Surveyor Syd Kirkby thought that was its companions and two Weasels towing best design feature.) sledges, set out for the PCMs on 14 November. Important geological and surveying work was achieved, but the Weasels were not equal to the task and the party was plagued with breakdowns. They did, however, reach the northernmost range of the PCMs, enabling Béchervaise to write in his diary of 26 November:
T
This was a good day, containing our longest outward run of the expedition so far. It ended with us being first-footers in the Prince Charles Ranges; with our having gone further south in Mac. Robertson Land [than] any previous party.29
Leaving one ailing Weasel abandoned in the field (but retrieving its engine) the PCMs party returned to Mawson on 7 December.
147
TEN
SPREADING
WINGS
P
hillip Law had little difficulty in persuading DEA Minister Richard Casey to approve the purchase of aircraft (to assist exploration) and the construction of a hangar at Mawson Station. The RAAF agreed to send an Antarctic Flight which would remain at Mawson during 1956 to carry out flying operations. The Antarctic Flight would again be led by Squadron Leader Douglas Leckie, supported by Pilot Officer John Seaton and two engineers, G Sundberg and G Johansen, but the choice of aircraft was more difficult than selecting personnel. The Auster aircraft were under-powered for Antarctic work, with minimal cargo-carrying capacity. The RAAF briefly considered using a World War II vintage Wirraway training aircraft but then decided to import a de Havilland DHC2 Beaver from Canada. This single-engined high-winged monoplane had a roomy cabin, could operate on wheels, skis or floats, and had been used successfully in the Canadian Arctic. Leckie: The Beaver was an ideal aircraft for the job. It could carry trimetrogon cameras for taking vertical and oblique [photographs] which is absolutely necessary for detailed aerial mapping and surveying. . .and when stripped down it was an ideal transport aircraft. We used to carry 44-gallon [200 litre] drums of fuel and also take passengers and field crews around to their various locations. It had a good range—with extra petrol tanks it would fly well over 1000 miles [1600 kilometres].
148
A back-up aircraft was needed to rescue the pilot in the event of a forced landing or crash and, with light aircraft in short supply in post-war Australia, Leckie remembered that the fuselage of Auster 201 had been
S
returned to Australia after its wings and other fittings were cannibalised in February 1954: It was now owned by the Royal Victorian Aero Club. So after quite a bit of negotiation we purchased [it] back, with skis and floats. We’d also [need] a hangar to erect at Mawson to keep the aircraft serviceable for all-year-round flying.
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRINCE CHARLES MOUNTAINS SHOWING THE LAMBERT GLACIER AND AMERY ICE SHELF
A prefabricated steel and corrugated iron hangar was designed by the Department of Works and loaded on Kista Dan with the two aircraft. Kista Dan left Melbourne on 27 December 1955 and by 5 January reached Davis Bay close to the French Antarctic sector, Adélie Land. The Beaver was launched on floats and Law accompanied Leckie on its first flight in good weather, reporting the new aircraft ‘steady as a rock’.1 During the voyage along the coast of Wilkes Land, Law reported that he and Leckie managed to photograph 1600 kilometres of coastline. On 21 January the Australians on Kista Dan visited the Russians who were building their first Antarctic station at Mirny (on Australian territory situated half way between the present Davis and Casey Stations). This was the start of a friendly association that was to continue through the years ahead.
149
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
BEAVER AIRCRAFT FITTED WITH SKIS BEING OFF-LOADED FROM KISTA DAN ON THE SEA ICE OFF THE COAST OF
MAC. ROBERTSON LAND FOR A RECONNAISSANCE FLIGHT, 1956. (M CHRISTENSEN)
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Despite being beset in heavy pack ice for ten days, Law was reasonably happy with what had been achieved—‘Many valuable soundings were taken throughout the voyage and important magnetic, gravity, geological and biological observations were made whenever we landed’—although disappointed that the delay made it impossible to visit the Prydz Bay area.2 Kista Dan reached Mawson on 17 February and work began immediately on building the hangar at the water’s edge near the east arm of Horseshoe Harbour. This construction work was supervised by the incoming medical officer, Dr Don Dowie, a man of many talents. Dowie’s construction expertise came from his experiences as a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II, building timber bridges on the Burma Railway. He was also a pilot. Law reported that the hangar site was on one of the most exposed areas of rock at Mawson where conditions were so bitter the men christened the area ‘Siberia’. He later wrote:
The men who bolted cross-braces to the arches 30 feet [9.14 metres] above the ground, sitting astride the steel girders and working with gloved hands while the freezing wind plucked savagely at them, carried on hour after hour uncomplaining, working in ten-minute bursts up aloft and then thawing out before a coke brazier behind a packing case wind-break.3
The ever present ‘Antarctic Factor’ made their task more difficult. A contractor’s error caused them to be short of 250 bolts for the frame and 300 hook bolts for attaching the corrugated iron sheeting.4 Fortunately Dr Dowie’s genius for making do on the Burma Railway was no less effective in colder climes. Dowie:
150
The problem of erecting the pylons and getting them to stand up in 40 knot winds was considerable. We had guy ropes everywhere with a tractor on one side and an army DUKW on the other, holding things vertical, while a few idiots like myself were climbing up these things with nuts and bolts trying to put in the arches.
S
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
Swaying precariously eight metres above the granite rocks, Dowie found that the only way it was possible to bolt cross-members to the arches forming the hangar roof was for men to feed a rope over their shoulders, haul up the new girder and wait for the wind to blow it into position—at which point a bolt was slammed through as the two holes became aligned: THE FIRST HANGAR EVER Bolting on the corrugated iron sheeting was worse. BUILT IN ANTARCTICA UNDER Initially the thing had been designed to have neoCONSTRUCTION AT MAWSON prene rubber discs [as washers]. I pointed out to Phil STATION, FEBRUARY 1956. Law that this was probably not going to work and (P LAW) that the snow—it’s like powdered salt down there, not nice fluffy flakes—would seep through. The idea was to have a snow-free hangar. I suggested we dice this neoprene washer idea and use piano felts, which we did, and it worked like a charm and never gave any trouble.
Since the aircraft could not be put in the hangar until the sea ice froze on Horseshoe Harbour, keeping them from being bashed to bits by Mawson’s notorious katabatic winds was a challenge. They were tethered in the lee of the new hangar, with wire mesh suspended above to stop ice falling on them and a three metre wire netting fence to act as a windbreak. They successfully weathered winds of up to 160 kilometres per hour before the sea ice formed and they were moved inside in April 1956. This was the first hangar ever built in Antarctica and it is still standing. The 1956 party had great hopes of air-supported exploration because the number of huskies at Mawson had been reduced following a decision to donate the best of them to a planned Trans-Antarctic Expedition as part of the International Geophysical Year in 1957–58. Don Dowie was critical of this decision, which left only one rather poor team on the station: The program for the year was looking a bit thin on the ground if we were to rely entirely on tracked vehicles, and the huskies were very
151
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
depleted. . .I think it was a miscalculation really, in Melbourne, where the huskies were looked on as not being useful any more, when in fact they were vital.
Surveyor Syd Kirkby was more scathing, describing ‘the motley collection’ as ‘three strong, mature dogs, two old, old men, a village idiot, a shiftless lurk-merchant, one old lady and two breeding bitches’.5 Pups were eagerly awaited. Nils Lied, a radio operator who had wintered with huskies on Heard Island in 1951, took a special interest. As a boy growing up in Norway, Nils had an Eskimo friend who taught him how to handle sledges, harnesses and dogs. When one of the bitches did whelp in 1956, a blizzard was blowing, and the six puppies were almost snap frozen as they were born: There was only one thing to do. I bundled all these little pups into my parka and raced up to the surgery and brutally woke Doctor Don Dowie from a deep sleep and said, ‘This is important! What can you do?’ So Doc Dowie eased his bottom over and lifted his blankets and said, ‘Put them in here’. Two looked very dicky—lifeless and cold. He said, ‘Now you knead this one like a piece of dough and let him get the temperature of your hands into him.’ I did this, and he slowly warmed up and jack-knifed and squeaked like a mouse and he was right. Under the blankets with him too! The last one we thought we’d lost, but Doc took two bowls of water, one cold and one hot. He dipped this pup into cold water, then into the hot and rubbed him with a piece of old towel. And, so help me, he blew down his mouth and got life back into him!
152
Fortunately Sunday was the cook’s day off. ‘Jock’ Mackenzie was adamant there would be ‘nae dawgs in ma kitchen!’ Lied alleged the obliging medical officer ‘slipped him a mickey’ and the cook slept blissfully through his day off while the bitch and six puppies enjoyed the sustaining warmth of the Aga combustion stove during that vital first 24 hours. This building up of the husky population would be of benefit to expeditioners in the following years. The scratch collection of adult dogs available was nevertheless to play a vital part in the 1956 exploration program, backing up the mechanically fragile Weasels in the field. The pilots, surveyors and geologists waited impatiently for the sea ice in Horseshoe Harbour to form so that flying could begin. This was the first time flying with fixed-wing aircraft had been attempted during the winter. Mawson Station at 67°36' south has an hour or two of twilight each day, even at midwinter.
S
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
On 20 April flying operations began with the Beaver, and ambitious probing flights were made in the available daylight to the south and south-west. Drawn by the lure of fresh geographical discoveries, Leckie and Kirkby flew on occasions much further south than was officially notified. Correctly calculating that they were beyond any search and rescue capabilities by the back-up Auster aircraft anyway, a practice developed of switching off the radio and pushing on to the limits of fuel consumption. Kirkby: We would get to the maximum range and then we would switch the radio off and say, ‘We’re just going to stooge in this area for a while. . .’ and we would fly on. It was one of those unsaid things because the minute anyone knew it, then Bill Bewsher the OIC would have had to stop it.
Not all the sightings, however, could be verified. Syd Kirkby is ribbed to this day about the sighting of the ‘Princess Anne Mountains’ during one of these early winter flights: In April 1956 we set out on a long flight south-west of Mawson, ‘trudged’ along for a couple of hours—went quiet on the radio—and trudged on a bit further. Lo and behold, what should we see coming up to the front of us and to our right but mountains, quite extensive mountains. They looked to be about 40 to 50 miles [64 to 80 kilometres] away. A big discovery, the ‘Princess Anne Mountains’!
They flew back to Mawson in high excitement and radioed a report to Phillip Law in Melbourne, who suggested further flights to confirm their location. The problem was they never found them again. Kirkby believes that the American navigator Charles Wilkes had a similar problem in 1840 when he reported sighting various features, which later explorers could not verify, on the coast that now bears his name. Under certain weather conditions and low light a phenomenon occurs a bit like over-the-horizon radar: The Russians subsequently quantified it. They named it the ‘Novaya Zemlya Effect’ from the island in the Arctic where they did a lot of work on it. It’s a situation where you get very, very dense cold air over plateau, and relatively warm air over sea ice or sea—and you get lensing. You’re actually looking right over the horizon. And what we had seen when we saw the ‘Princess Anne Mountains’ apparently 40 to 50 miles [64 to 80 kilometres] away were the Scott and Napier and Nye [Mountains] way, way over the other side of Enderby Land 150 miles [240 kilometres]
153
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
away. I was somewhat pleased when the Russians quantified it and came up with shifts of this sort of order. . .many years later.
Later that year the quirky Antarctic light deceived Kirkby again during a dog sledge run through the southern Prince Charles Mountains with geologist Peter Crohn. Emerging from their polar tent one morning, he was elated to see a great range of black and brown mountains in the distance. The weather was clear, but ‘whiteout’ conditions prevailed with high cloud and reflected light off the snow. No horizon was visible. ‘You just have a bowl of white’ said Kirkby: We were in a high state of excitement until someone walked a little way away and realised that the mountains were moving very much relative to the tent. . .They were actually husky turds about 30 or 40 metres away, and we had no idea. They looked for all the world like mountains 80 kilometres away. So it wasn’t a great discovery. It was almost as bad as the Princess Anne Mountains that Doug Leckie and I didn’t discover.
They were exciting, pioneering times. John Seaton flew the Beaver 300 miles [480 kilometres] along the 63rd meridian and noted a continuation of the Prince Charles Mountains (PCMs) swinging gradually westward.6 Although in May there were only four hours of daylight, field work supported by aircraft continued west of Mawson at Stefannsson and Scoresby Bays where Syd Kirkby and Peter Crohn were doing a survey. Crohn was wintering for the second consecutive year, and had accompanied Béchervaise’s party into the northernmost reaches of the PCMs the previous year. The Beaver and Auster were used to lay fuel and food depots at Edward VIII Gulf in preparation for the exploration of the Amundsen Bay area, on the western extremity of the AAT, in the coming spring and summer. Flying into the interior of Antarctica means climbing up the ever-rising ice sheet. The Beaver carried no oxygen, and on one of the autumn exploratory flights Leckie was flying at 4500 metres above sea level, but only 600 metres above the ice cap. He noticed that Syd Kirkby’s fingernails and lips were turning purple:
154
I looked at my fingers and they were going purple, so we were running out of oxygen. I said to Syd, ‘We’ve got to do an about turn and head for the coast as quickly as possible and lose height, otherwise we’re going to pass out.’ So we turned, but it seemed so gradual. We were trying to go down but we couldn’t beat the rate of the contour of the ice sheet, otherwise we would have flown onto the ice surface.
S
Syd Kirkby queries Leckie’s version and says he was the first to pick Leckie’s hypoxia. ‘I looked over his shoulder and saw him resolutely flying along, wing down about ten to fifteen degrees and I raised the alarm.’ (Syd’s notes taken at the time show an illegible scrawl!) As the daylight merged into twilight, landings on the ice at Mawson were interesting. Leckie: We’d drop a scientific group about 60 or 70 miles [96 or 112 kilometres] away at a penguin rookery. . .and then we’d come back, and Corporal Cooper would turn on the headlights on the Ferguson tractor and we’d land over the headlights with our lights [showing] on to Mawson harbour. So it was quite dicey flying all the year round.
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
MEMBERS OF THE RAAF ANTARCTIC FLIGHT, MAWSON STATION, 1956–57. FROM LEFT: P CLEMENCE, D JOHNSTON, R PICKERING, N MEREDITH. (AAD ARCHIVES)
(Corporal Noel ‘Toby’ Cooper was an army man, not RAAF. He had sailed on Kista Dan as an engineer with the army DUKW team for the 1955–56 changeover, and had volunteered at Mawson to stay down for the 1956 year to help with the flying program.) Flying continued until 25 May and then closed down for winter maintenance. As soon as the daylight began to lengthen in July flying resumed and by August both pilots had made a series of flights west to the Amundsen Bay area, photographing previously unseen mountain peaks, a new glacier and many islands. Some flights were of more than seven hours’ duration. Leckie recorded that he and Seaton were sometimes notching up seventeen hours’ flying in a twenty-four-hour period. While acknowledging that Antarctic flying is conducted in the world’s most extreme weather conditions, and that a certain amount of good fortune is necessary, 28 October 1956 was nevertheless a frightening day in the history of Australian Antarctic aviation. Seaton (in the Auster) and Leckie flying the larger Beaver were laying fuel dumps to assist a field trip to Amundsen Bay, an area not previously
155
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
visited by ANARE scientists. They met at King Edward VIII Gulf, 300 kilometres west of Mawson, because Leckie needed Seaton to help him lift two 44-gallon [200 litre] drums of fuel into the Beaver. It was too cold to risk switching off their engines and they left the motors of both aircraft running while they worked. Seaton then took off to return to Mawson to the east, and Leckie (with his two drums of fuel) headed further west to Amundsen Bay. Some 130 kilometres out from Mawson, just after passing Cape Wilkins, Seaton realised that his elevator controls were jammed, although he was able to maintain straight and level flight by juggling his engine power: I considered the position for some fifteen minutes. . .and decided to attempt a landing in an area a few miles west of Taylor Glacier. A very long final approach had to be made. . .every time power was reduced the nose dropped and it was impossible to hold up due to the state of the elevator controls.7
What Seaton had to do was to fly the Auster on to the ice at full cruising speed. Only then could he reduce power, and he had no brakes. A dead calm existed at the time and as a result the aircraft continued to run over the blue ice for what seemed miles; however the speed was dropping off enough to see that the end result would not be particularly hair-raising. Even so, avoiding action had to be taken when approximately 150 yards from the glacier tongue, and eventually the aircraft came to rest amid a [group] of Weddell seals.8
Seaton found that the rear support of the radio compass control box had snapped, dropping it down on the control system beneath the instrument panel. He removed the control box and took off again for Mawson ‘without further trouble’. Meanwhile Doug Leckie in the Beaver was going through one of the most traumatic incidents of his flying career, and which was not logged on the official record at the time. As he approached Amundsen Bay he climbed to clear the Napier and Tula mountain ranges ahead. The tops of the mountains were poking through cloud, and there was a higher level of cloud which Leckie decided to climb above also. The party at Amundsen Bay had reported quite good weather there, so he pressed on:
156
I’d been flying for an hour or so and I looked at my radar-altimeter. It indicated zero—that I was over sea ice—and I thought, ‘I must have struck a tail-wind’.
S
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
Leckie was not over the sea ice at all. His radar-altimeter had actually broken at that very moment, and his eye had been caught by the sinking indicator. Thinking he had to get down quickly or he would overshoot Amundsen Bay, he let down through the cloud beneath him: There was another bank of cloud below me. . .and as I broke through, there was a sheer rock face coming straight at me. Well, my heart nearly stopped. So all I could do was a violent turn to the left. . .and there was rock facing me on the left. I finished up doing a complete 360° [turn] and I had rocks running straight up into the cloud all round me. I thought, ‘This is it!’
It was a pilot’s ultimate nightmare. Leckie’s only chance was to go on instruments and try to climb out of those rock-filled clouds, but he was ‘a bit rusty’ on instruments: It was no good delaying things. I could have stayed until I ran out of fuel. . .or just climb and face the music. If I climb out of it clear, I climb out of it clear. If I go into a rock—well, I’ll know nothing because I had two 44-gallon [200 litre] drums at my back and it would’ve just been a ball of flame against a rock.
Going back into the cloud was ‘more than flesh and blood can almost stand’. Leckie was flying blind and had to concentrate on maintaining his climb on instruments to the exclusion of all else: That was more frightening than before, because of the varying changing shades of the cloud. You feel it start to get dark and you would think it could be the rock face, but you’d have to trust your instruments that your turn was accurate. . .and then it would start to lighten until eventually I could see the blue sky above me. Then you are inclined to do what all seats-of-the-pants pilots do and go for the blue sky and then, of course, your instruments start toppling and you start losing control.
Leckie was so shaken by the time he climbed clear that he set course back home to Mawson Station without delivering his drums of fuel to Amundsen Bay, and did not speak of the incident publicly for 37 years. Despite flying on the edge of operational limits, the aircraft not only dramatically expanded the ability to map and explore the surrounding coastline and interior of Enderby, Kemp and Mac. Robertson lands but were able to support wide-ranging field parties. Original discoveries were being made. For instance it was found that Amundsen Bay was really two bays and not one.9 The major field operation for the year was a journey from Mawson into the Prince Charles Mountains in November to extend the work done
157
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
in 1954. Depots of food and fuel were established first by Weasel and aircraft. Picking a landing spot from the air was extremely hazardous as crevasses covered in snow could not be seen. On 4 November, Leckie flew the Beaver 200 miles [320 kilometres] south with OIC Bill Bewsher and geologist Peter Crohn. The aircraft was laden with food, fuel and dog food to establish a supply depot for the ground party. Ice flowing around mountains is invariably heavily crevassed but Leckie thought he saw a fairly smooth stretch of ice and landed. Before he switched off his engine, he asked Crohn and Bewsher to get out and check the area: Peter Crohn stepped straight into a crevasse. Well, that was it. I then told them that they had to unload the aircraft, all the spares and everything they could, and I would take off with an empty aircraft and while I was away refuelling at Mawson they could put down an airstrip for me with lots of flags.
Leckie was confident they could probe and explore the ice sheet nearby to find a safe landing area. While he was away, though, a blizzard blew up and he could not find any trace of them when he returned. Bewsher and Crohn were sitting in a grey pyramid tent almost impossible to see from the air, and with flapping of the fabric in the high wind, they did not hear the aircraft. It took three flights from Mawson to locate them. The supplies off-loaded from the Beaver in the crevassed area remained there deep frozen in perfect condition for 30 years. The alternative site, located on a stretch of stable blue ice, was named Aerial Depot (or 250 Mile Depot). On 19 November 1956, Bill Bewsher, Syd Kirkby, Peter Crohn, John Hollingshead and Lin Gardner left Mawson with two Weasels, two cargo sleds, one man-hauling sledge and a wooden ‘Nansen’ sledge pulled by a small team of six dogs—Mac (leader), Oscar, Horace, Streaky, Brownie and Dee. Plagued with the usual Weasel mechanical troubles and delayed by having to winch them out of crevasses, they did not get in to Aerial Depot until mid December. There, the dogs came into their own as Bewsher, Kirkby and Crohn sledged through crevassed areas of the PCMs the Weasels could not have negotiated. Syd Kirkby:
158
We used the dogs fairly ruthlessly—as we used ourselves pretty ruthlessly. But it’s bloody hard work. Any of this precious nonsense about dog-sledging being. . .you know, lovely and beaut and fun. . .Serious dog-sledging is about as hard a bloody thing as you can find to do. You run the best part of a marathon distance in 30 lbs [14 kg] of clothing day-in, day-out, and then climb a mountain at the end of that. . .You stand up on top of
S
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
it, do some work for anything up to eight hours and then on your way back—just in case you might break into a run in your enthusiasm —you and your geologist mate pick up a half a hundredweight of rocks to keep you from breaking into a canter. It’s hard, it’s very hard work.
Surveying was crucial. Kirkby climbed mountains to take an astrofix from a point other than moving ice. Distance travelled was theoretically measured with a wheel trailing behind the sledge. But the wheel seldom worked for more than a few days: We measured distance by pacing as we ran beside the sledge (in my case 900 double paces to the nautical mile). After a while one becomes very adept at counting paces while simultaneously assessing the terrain, yelling at the dogs, noting features for inclusion on the map and perhaps carrying on a conversation.10
A WEASEL WAITS AT 90 MILE DEPOT IN THE PRINCE CHARLES MOUNTAINS FOR THE RETURN OF THE SLEDGING PARTY
1956–57 SOUTHERN JOURNEY. (S KIRKBY)
DURING THE
The downside of this technique, Kirkby noted, was a tendency to count paces in your sleep. Some idea of the pioneering nature of the work being done on this field trip can be gauged by the fact that all five members of the expedition have major peaks in the Prince Charles Mountains named after them. The names of the six huskies were put forward as well, but the Australian Committee for Antarctic Names (ACAN) was not convinced. ACAN did accept an alternative suggestion and Husky Dome is on the map a few kilometres southwest of the Aramis Range—their furthest point south.11 This ‘poor old mob’, as Kirkby described the huskies, certainly merited the honour, as he, Crohn and Bewsher pushed on through the mountains, while Gardner and Hollingshead remained with the Weasels for weeks at a time, qualifying in Kirkby’s opinion for ‘leather medals’ for
159
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
their fortitude (although Hollingshead did go on the second of the three main dog sledging runs). During this enforced wait, two more verses of the ANARE ‘Chain Blocks’* song were composed and ‘written in tears of blood on the walls of the Weasel’: (Tune—‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’) We sat in the Weasel for hours and hours, We stuck it as long as we could We stuck it, we stuck it, and then we said: ‘Blow [?] it! Our arseholes are not made of wood!’ CHORUS (Tune—‘My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean’) Chain Blocks, Chain Blocks, Oh bring back my Weasel to me, to me. Chain Blocks, Chain Blocks, Oh bring back my Weasel to me. The tracks are in very good order The springs they are right on the dot, The engine it goes tick-tock, But the lot’s down a bloody great slot.12
Unlike the previous year in the PCMs with no aircraft available, Weasel spare parts could at least be dropped by the Beaver on the way in, and helpful notes were dropped to Bewsher after aerial reconnaissance indicating that it would be unsafe to take the Weasels near the eastern end of the PCMs due to extensive crevassing.13 Syd Kirkby recalls the pioneering dog sledging runs at that time: We sledged up and down the ranges, Peter geologising and I doing astrofixes and rounds of terrestrial photographs from the mountain tops and triangulating. We had a glass plate camera that mounted on top of the theodolite but we had a limited number of plate holders, so every 24 plates you had to change plates somehow. We had no [photographic] dark bag, there had been one at Mawson but it was moth-eaten and ratty and let in the light and everything else. So I used to climb into the bottom of my sleeping bag inside the double sleeping bag to load fresh plates into the plate holders. You probably can’t imagine what a sledging sleeping bag is like. After you’ve been sledging for a while and the dogs pee on you to show they like you, and you get filthy and grotty (and of course, you’re going to bed virtually fully booted and spurred all the time) the bottom of the sleeping bag
160
* Chain blocks are a portable winching system used to extricate vehicles from crevasses, and a ‘slot’ is ANARE parlance for a crevasse.
S
gets absolutely foul! I always reckoned that if you put a pit canary in there it would’ve died instantly!
Aerial reconnaissance in September had convinced Kirkby that the ice flowing down from the PCMs joined the Amery Ice Shelf, which extended inland some 250 kilometres from its seaward edge. This was later found to be so. The second major sledging journey of the PCMs field trip was to run down the Charybdis Glacier between the Porthos and Aramis Ranges right down to the Amery:
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
A HUSKY TEAM RESTS, PONDERING THE STUPIDITY OF THE HUMANS WHO HAD STEERED THEM INTO IMPOSSIBLY ROUGH TERRITORY.
PRINCE CHARLES MOUNTAINS SOUTHERN JOURNEY, 1956–57. (S KIRKBY)
RESCUING BROWNIE FROM A We’d come down from high cold to relatively warm, down near sea level, and we were pretty tired by that CREVASSE DURING THE stage of the game. It was very, very hard going down EXPLORATION OF THE PRINCE the glacier, a lot of crevassing and broken-up country. CHARLES MOUNTAINS, We had a couple of days down at the bottom of the 1956–57. glacier there. We did a lot of walking, and we walked (S KIRKBY) over to Jetty Peninsula and Peter discovered the coal there—which was the first location of coal in the AAT. Then we went around on the east of what came to be known as the Amery Peak and I have a diary entry of the day we saw Beaver Lake for the first time—with no name then, of course—saying that it was so wonderful to sit there beside this fresh water in the amphitheatre. The sun was shining on the rock behind us and it was warm and relatively calm. We ate a block of chocolate and everything was beautiful and sweetness and light.* * Curiously enough Beaver Lake has never been seen as open water since. It is regarded as a perennially frozen, tidal, freshwater lake.
161
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
quiz question might well ask: ‘Who has explored and surveyed the most Australian territory?’. The answer is not Burke or Wills or even Charles Sturt. It is Sydney L Kirkby, surveyor in the service of ANARE, in Antarctica. Kirkby wintered at Mawson in 1956 and 1960 and was OIC Mawson (at the ripe old age of 47) in 1980. First into the Prince Charles Mountains with dogs in 1956–57, he again used dogs for a remarkable 400 kilometre journey through Enderby Land from the Napier Mountains to Mawson Station in the autumn of 1960. He went south on coastal exploration and resupply voyages in the summers of 1961–62 (including a visit to Oates Land on the eastern extremity of the AAT), 1962–63 to George V Land (on the east of the French sector, Adélie Land) and to Enderby and Kemp Lands (on the western extremity of the AAT) in 1964–65. There are features named after Syd Kirkby along 6000 kilometres of the coast of the AAT, inland at the PCMs—Mt Kirkby—and even outside the AAT. Kirkby Glacier in Victoria Land is actually just within the New Zealand sector. Kirkby Shoal can be found near Casey Station (off the coast of Wilkes Land) and, to the extreme west, Kirkby Head on the Tange Promontory is near the Russian station Molodezhnaya, just on the Australian side of the border with Norway’s Queen Maud Land claim. He has personally surveyed more Antarctic territory than any other explorer—including Scott, Shackleton and Mawson. Syd Kirkby was an unlikely candidate for Antarctic exploration. At the age of five, growing up in Fremantle, Western Australia, he developed poliomyelitis and was severely disabled
1954–1966
for years. His father (who admired the pioneering work that Sister Kenny was achieving with an exercise program for polio victims) quit his job to help Syd, and ‘rebuilt’ him: He would take me down to the South Fremantle baths—it was a sandy beach—and unstrap the irons from my legs and sit me on the beach. He’d then go in and swim. I hated anyone to look at me—the cripple—so I would crawl down in the water and splash around. My upper body was always fine. We’d swim and swim, and then he’d rush out saying, ‘Oh, see you later, son’. It was a deliberate ploy to force the crippled boy to crawl up the beach, or stay in the water. Either way he had to exercise to the limits of his endurance. Later, standing beside Syd at the pool, he would often stumble against his son and knock him back into the water, so that he would have to do another half lap. I hated being a cripple. I really hated it. I loathed it. Don’t let people tell you that suffering ennobles you and makes you a better person. It doesn’t at all, it makes you ratty and cranky. This treatment was effective, however, and Kirkby recovered his strength. He could not run and jump as fast as other boys, so his father suggested boxing, saying it ‘was the most mental and least physical of all sports’. It’s a matter of dominating your own fear and thinking about your opponent carefully. And if you look through boxing you’ll find quite a number of famous boxers over the years who have been people with some level of physical disability. In my case, my ➤
162
S
most severely impaired movement was with my right leg. Boxing in an orthodox style meant that leg was behind me. So I always found it relatively difficult to retreat in the ring, which was something of an advantage. It’s one of nature’s incentives—you keep punching or you get into trouble. In 1960 the Commonwealth Medical Officer examining Syd Kirkby picked up that he walked with a limp, as a legacy of his polio, and was not going to pass him medically fit for Antarctica. He bluffed his way through, saying to the surprised medico that he had already been to Antarctica. This doctor would have been even more surprised to learn later that shortly before leaving Mawson in 1961, Syd Kirkby and his companion Graham Dyke ran 67 nautical miles [124 kilometres] with a dog team from Depot A, behind the Framnes Mountains, back to Mawson Station in one day. That is more than a double marathon! In 1956, during his first year at Mawson, surveyors were beginning to develop the technique of using daylight stars to make an astrofix from rocky features in Antarctica—essential for accurate mapping: The few brightest stars are visible through a theodolite telescope in full daylight, in conjunction with sights to the sun to determine position. Before this it had been the practice, by surveyors from all nations, to use only sun sights, which gave rise to many problems.14 Surveying in Antarctica was heavy work, often involving rock climbing on virgin peaks with heavy packs. By 1964–65 astrofixes had
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
been replaced by electronic distance measuring, but it was still necessary to reach the pinnacle of the peak to be measured, carrying batteries, theodolite and other essential gear. The ‘hardest and longest’ climb of Syd Kirkby’s career was on Leckie Range in Kemp Land in early 1965. He had to hang off the peak with a rope around his waist to sight his theodolite. During the six-hour climb a rope broke on a steep pinch and Kirkby dropped some nine metres with a 40 kilogram pack on his back. At the time he was concerned about spraining his ankle, but the more serious injury was a whiplash which broke two vertebrae in his neck. He managed to climb Leckie Range a further three times, however, and finish his work. The discomfort was offset, in his view, by being awarded an MBE for his services in Antarctica, to complement the Polar Medal awarded in 1957. He maintained his contact with Antarctica by working with the Division of National Mapping (NATMAP) full time from 1965 until 1980, when he returned to Mawson Station, this time as OIC. He hopes to return to Mawson in the year 2000 but has been told he is ineligible because of heart bypass surgery. Perhaps this will not stop him. While Syd Kirkby seized all the Antarctic pioneering opportunities available to him with great gusto, he never ceases to marvel at his good fortune: We’d climb a mountain peak and look out and say: ‘Wow! In all time, certainly no human being and probably no creature has ever seen it.’ It’s a funny feeling. It’s not a possessive feeling, it’s a privileged sort of feeling—‘How did I get this lucky?’ 163
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
This euphoria was balanced by the necessity to climb back up the glacier, over crevassed territory, into the high country again with a heavily laden sledge and exhausted dogs. By that time Mac had died in harness and the other dogs were weakening. The three explorers took turns helping to pull in harness with the dogs. Falling down crevasses became so common that one photograph taken by Kirkby at this time shows the THE HUSKIES HAD TO BE overturned sledge straddling a large ‘slot’ on the FITTED WITH MAKESHIFT Charybdis Glacier, while one of the huskies, Streaky, BOOTS OF LEATHER AND rests seemingly unconcerned, taking full advantage of CLOTH TO PROTECT THEIR the delay. As they climbed back up the glacier, the FEET FROM THE SHARP-EDGED dogs’ feet were cut by the granulated ice caused by GRANULAR ICE NEAR THE rock dust blowing off the mountains. Kirkby: ‘We made JUNCTION OF THE AMERY them little boots of leather and ventile and strapped ICE SHELF AND THE them on to protect their feet. Then you had to watch PRINCE CHARLES the dogs constantly to stop them eating the boots MOUNTAINS, 1956–57 because they were starving.’ SOUTHERN JOURNEY. On the way back to Mawson, on 4 February, Dee (S KIRKBY) died after eating a lump of cotton waste with oil or grease on it, to the great sadness of the PCMs party. It is part of a husky’s nature to work and work, literally to death if need be. Syd Kirkby recalls the final moments of Brownie during the third major PCMs sledging journey:
164
He got very tired and very weak, so much so that he couldn’t run in the traces and we let him off hoping that he could just follow us along for a day or two and then with a bit of rest maybe he’d pick up. It was fairly early in the morning and by the time we’d been travelling for a few hours, he was maybe half a mile back behind us and repeatedly falling over. It was quite clear that he wasn’t going to be able to keep up with us, so I took the pistol and walked back to him.
S
I’ll never forget this old fellow as I came up. He’d been struggling and trying to walk and falling and struggling. . . and when I got within twenty or so metres of him, he sat down and waited for me. While I patted him and talked to him he looked at me with these bloody great eyes and you could see him saying, ‘Oh, gee, everything is right now, me old mate’s come back to look after me’. His old mate put a pistol to his head and shot him. So, it’s not all sweetness and light. But they’re fantastic things.
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
LEAD DOG STREAKY, WEAK BUT DEFIANT, HOMEWARD BOUND AT THE END OF THE
1956–57 SOUTHERN JOURNEY. (S KIRKBY)
The PCMs party did not return to Mawson until 10 February 1957—eight days after the arrival of Kista Dan to relieve them. Their return journey had seen the chain block winches in constant service, winching the battered Weasels out of the crevasses into which they had crashed. On their return to the Framnes Mountains just behind Mawson they had the unusual experience of being greeted by the director of ANARE, Phil Law, fresh from Kista Dan, who had driven up by Weasel for that purpose. Law described how they appeared over a rise—‘two battered Weasels hauling four sledges followed by a dog sledge drawn by [three] lean huskies with a man running beside’: They drew up beside us and five bearded, grimy, gaunt men strode towards us amidst much laughing, back-slapping and affectionate abuse. These men had been in the field for three months. . .15
While the PCMs party was away, John Seaton flew the last major Beaver flight of the year on 28 November. Seaton flew a passenger to Aerial Depot to undertake magnetic observations and then, with radio operator Pat Albion as his ‘key man’ (to handle communications while he concentrated on navigation, photography and flying), headed south-east until at 74°south he could see the southernmost peaks of the PCMs beyond which ‘only the eternal white of the plateau could be seen’:
165
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
In this position I could see the gentle sweep of the stream onto the eastern end of the Prince Charles Mountains and finally the Amery Ice Shelf. The small subsidiary glaciers flowing into the main stream from the west were very clearly outlined from this position; their stream lines and crevasses stood out distinctly.16
Returning to Aerial Depot to refuel, and without the necessity to take trimetrogon photographs, Seaton altered course to observe some of the western mountains, noting vast tributaries of ice running through them into a main glacier:
THE LAMBERT GLACIER, LOOKING SOUTH, 1960. THE WORLD’S BIGGEST GLACIER, IT WAS SEEN FIRST FROM THE AIR
RAAF PILOT JOHN SEATON, FLYING A BEAVER, ON 28 NOVEMBER 1956. (R RUKER) BY
T 166
From my observations on this flight, I would say that the glacier is roughly 200 miles [320 kilometres] in length, varying in width from 15 [24 kilometres] to 40 miles [64 kilometres]. At 73° south its height is approximately 3200 feet [975.3 metres]. . .The mountains on the east are upwards of 6000 feet [1828.8 metres] while those to the west go to an estimated 8000 feet [2438.4 metres].17
Seaton had been the first to fly across and observe the whole of the Lambert Glacier, the largest glacier in the world, draining one-third of the entire AAT.
he advent of the RAAF flight based at Mawson had lifted the horizons of Australian science and exploration in Antarctica. During the year the robust Beaver and the smaller but essential Auster had transported 11 tonnes of food, fuel and equipment on depot-laying flights, and transported some 150 passengers, mostly scientists and support staff on field excursions. The trimetrogon camera had been flown on 27 sorties, capturing 12 000 photographic exposures over an area of one million square kilometres, including 2000 kilometres of coastline. The RAAF pilots had logged a remarkable 1200 flying hours.18 Using fuel
S
P R E A D I N G
W I N G S
depots, the Beaver had on several occasions flown 800 kilometres from Mawson. Law was delighted with the success of the scientific program, noting in his report that the cosmic ray and magnetic observatory work—and the marine biological investigations—had been meticulously carried out and some excellent results obtained, as well as the expanded exploration, geology and field geophysics made possible by the use of aircraft.19 This was a useful and timely prologue to the most ambitious science program yet attempted in Antarctica—the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58.
167
ELEVEN
A N TA R C T I C A I N T E R N AT I O N A L
T
168
he International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58 not only raised the profile of Antarctic science worldwide but was an important stepping stone to the Antarctic Treaty negotiated in 1959. The first International Polar Year (IPY), held in the Arctic in 1882, concentrated on the gathering of magnetic, auroral and meteorological data. The second IPY of 1932–33, again confined to the Arctic, had similar scientific aims but suffered considerably from cutbacks caused by the Great Depression. On the evening of 5 April 1950, in the United States, a notable group of scientists attended a dinner party at the Silver Spring, Maryland, home of James A Van Allen (for whom the radiation belts around the earth were later named). Although the tradition was for an international polar year every half century, the scientists felt that science was moving too fast to wait that long and the concept of a new IPY was suggested by Dr Lloyd B Berkner who had been a radio engineer on the first Byrd Antarctic expedition.1 After some discussion the concept was broadened to include simultaneous observations of geophysical phenomena over the entire planet—on the land, in the seas, and in the atmosphere. This proposal went before the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) which set up a committee to organise what had now been named the International Geophysical Year.2 For Antarctica, the major geophysical questions were defined as the volume and structure of the ice sheet, the nature of the land beneath the ice, the influence of the ice cap on global and southern hemisphere weather, the aurora, and the high atmosphere with emphasis on the
A
N T A R C T I C A
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
ionosphere. For instance, it was not known what happened to the ionosphere—an electrified region of the upper atmosphere which supposedly formed only in sunlight—during the long polar night. The plans for the IGY came at a critical time for the Antarctic Division. Director Phil Law (who began his Antarctic career as the division’s senior scientific officer) had been pushing science as the enduring reason for Australia’s activity in the AAT, but his sense of priorities was not shared in Canberra. On 24 March 1955 Keith Waller of the DEA wrote to him: ‘As you know I do not think of our Antarctic effort as a scientific expedition. To me the scientific work is secondary to the political consideration of maintaining our claim to this territory.’3 Waller was simply stating the obvious, for the DEA view at that time was that occupation was more important than scientific work. Australia’s claim in Antarctica of nearly 42 per cent of its land mass was ambitious to say the least, and while the AAT was considered strategically important, there was little evidence of Australian activity to bolster its sovereignty other than one scientific station on the western extremity of the AAT’s 6000-kilometre coastline. Australia did not even possess a ship capable of reaching Antarctica, so the IGY was the trigger for a flurry of increased activity. Law: The advent of the International Geophysical Year solved my major political problems. Up until then it had been a great battle trying to persuade politicians that we should be doing something in Antarctica. But when the IGY occurred, the Russians set up three stations in Australian Antarctic Territory. This embarrassed the Australian Government in relation to the Australian claim. Naturally there was nothing they could do to prevent the Russians going in, so they saved face by sending the Russians an official invitation to do what they had done. The Russians, of course, couldn’t acknowledge that, otherwise they’d be acknowledging the Australian claim, which they didn’t recognise.
Law, who had been closely involved with international conferences set up to organise the IGY, saw the opportunity to put an Australian station on what he considered one of the choicest sites in Antarctica—the ice-free Vestfold Hills on the eastern end of Prydz Bay. He had visited the area briefly after establishing Mawson Station in 1954 and managed a more thorough reconnaissance in 1955: This gave us the opportunity to approach the Government and say, ‘Look, Australia must have a second station in order to try and neutralise the activities of the USSR’, and I said, ‘There’s that wonderful
169
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
site. If we don’t get in quickly to the Vestfold Hills, the Russians will put their station there.’
170
Approval for a small station was obtained, despite an earlier suggestion by Waller that it would be politically more advantageous to have six extra stations each staffed by ‘two or three men’, as effective occupation was the important thing. Law’s view prevailed after he explained that finances limited ship charter to 100 days and it was impossible for one ship to visit and relieve so many stations in one season.4 In 1957 Antarctica was about to be visited on a scale not seen before or since. Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States and USSR planned some 60 stations on the Antarctic continent and sub-Antarctic islands. Not to be outdone by the American decision to build a station at the symbolic heart of Antarctica, the South Pole, the Russians proposed a station at the Pole of Inaccessibility—the point on the ice cap most distant from the coasts.5 In order to take advantage of the aim of simultaneous observations of meteorological, magnetic, and upper atmosphere phenomena, the stations in Antarctica were distributed as widely as possible over the continent. As it happened, all of the IGY stations planned by the USSR were in the Australian claim, giving rise to increased Australian concern about Russia’s real aims on the continent. An Antarctic radio communications network was set up to coordinate the sharing of meteorological and other scientific data from all stations using a ‘mother–daughter’ model. For example, Australia’s ‘mother’ station was Mawson, and the various ‘daughters’ included Norway Station, Syowa (Japan) and Roi Baudoin (Belgium). Smaller outlying bases were ‘granddaughters’, like Shore Base (Norway) and Advanced Base (Japan), in this case all reporting by Morse code through to ‘mother’ Mawson. The IGY was the first big test of Antarctica as a zone of peace and cooperative science and it is a tribute to the scientists and support staff of all the nations involved that the ‘Cold War’ never invaded Antarctica. In Australia, anti-communist, anti-Soviet sentiments were fuelled by the Petrov Affair in 1954, following the defection of Vladimir Petrov and his wife from the Russian Embassy in Canberra and their request for political asylum. The Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with Australia until 1959. Remarkably, none of these international tensions seemed to impinge on the IGY. On 30 January 1956, on his way to relieve Mawson Station, Phil Law called in to the Russian station, Mirny, then being built on the coast just east of Cape Filchner, about halfway between the present Australian
A
N T A R C T I C A
stations of Casey and Davis. There was an initial awkwardness in that first meeting between Australians and Russians in Antarctica:
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
VESTFOLD HILLS REGION NEAR DAVIS STATION.
This was the period of the ‘cold war’—we were not sure how the Russians would react, and they were not sure how we would react—so there was a sort of inhibition on both sides. We were both standing off looking at each other very warily.
The Russian expedition was led by a distinguished Arctic explorer, Mikhail Somov, whom Law considers one of the greatest leaders he ever
171
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
IGY STATIONS IN ANTARCTICA.
A
N T A R C T I C A
met, and the two men quickly established a rapport. Somov was keen to get Law’s opinion of their site, which left a lot to be desired. There were a few pimples of rock sticking through the ice, but some of the huts were on ice, which meant they would eventually have to be replaced. Law’s main message to Somov was to work non-stop building the station while the good weather lasted. He said, ‘The curtain comes down at the beginning of March and the station must be ready by then. Later Somov told him the weather did break up on 3 March and it had been good advice. Law:
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
THE MINISTER FOR EXTERNAL AFFAIRS RICHARD CASEY IS ADDRESSING THE CROWD FROM THE DECK OF
KISTA DAN BEFORE ITS DEPARTURE FROM
MELBOURNE IN 1955. PHIL LAW IS STANDING ON A FUEL DRUM JUST BEHIND CASEY. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
During that time our scientists mingled very closely with the Russians and there were some furious arguments, because we had some young 23-year-old scientists and they had some young vigorous scientists. They were each representing a different doctrine, and the arguments pro and against communism and other forms of government became very heated. I remember once going in to visit some of the men and finding one of these furious arguments raging. I kept telling my men, ‘Cool it, cool it, we must preserve good relations with these people’. . .and we got through without any eruption or any great problem.
173
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
174
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
The advent of the IGY saw an increased Australian Government financial commitment to Antarctica. In 1955, £67 000 [$134 000] was made available to the Australian Academy of Science to enable universities and other interested organisations to take an active part. Government organisations such as the CSIRO and the Commonwealth Government departments of National Development, Supply and the Interior undertook to expand their normal functions during the IGY. In 1955 External Affairs Minister Richard Casey announced that a new Antarctic station, staffed by four to six men, would be set up in the Vestfold Hills as recommended by the Executive Planning Committee. Law had told the meeting of 29 August 1955 that if the Vestfold Hills area was not occupied by Australia it would be by some other nation.6 The final Australian commitment to an IGY project in 1955 was £25 000 [$50 000] towards the cost of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1957–58. This traverse of the entire continent was based on the plan of Shackleton’s failed attempt in 1914–16. A British party led by Sir Vivian Fuchs would travel overland from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea via the South Pole, using ‘Sno-cat’ tractors and dog teams. The party would include one Australian, geologist Dr Jon Stephenson (who became the first man since Amundsen to drive dogs to the South Pole). Plans for 1957 were the most ambitious and complex ever attempted by ANARE. They were previewed at a symposium to publicise the work of ANARE held by the Royal Society of Victoria in Melbourne on 3 December 1956 and opened by the Duke of Edinburgh. Among the speakers were Sir Douglas Mawson, still taking an interest in Australia’s Antarctic program as an active member of the Antarctic Executive Planning Committee (EPC), and the Antarctic Division’s Director Phil Law.7 With so much cargo to load on Kista Dan in December 1956 (including the huts and stores for the new Vestfold Hills station) arrangements were made for the US Antarctic Expedition to pick up seven Australians and the USA observer in New Zealand and a rendezvous was organised at the Windmill Islands, on the eastern side of Vincennes Bay, after Kista Dan had established what would be named Davis Station at the Vestfold Hills. Even so, Law was disappointed to have to leave an automatic weather station on the dock at the last minute. Kista Dan carried a Beaver aircraft to augment the RAAF flight (commanded by Flight Lieutenant Peter Clemence) at Mawson Station for the IGY-associated field activities. The master of Kista Dan was Captain Kaj Hindberg. It was the first time for three years that Law had sailed on a Lauritzen charter without Captain Hans Christian Petersen. Finding a suitable site for a station at the Vestfold Hills was extremely difficult. The Norwegian-style fjords that looked so spectacular from the
A
N T A R C T I C A
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
air were too shallow for ships to enter, and the approaches to the coast shelved gradually so that ships could not get closer than two or three kilometres to possible landing sites. The Vestfold Hills in high summer is reminiscent of a chunk of the Simpson Desert transplanted to Antarctica. In January 1957 Law was dismayed to find no snow banks remaining on the brown rocks and hinterland, a source of water for the station being essential. For three days from 10 January he and the ANARE expeditioners searched unsuccessfully for a suitable site. Law had earlier sent a radiogram to his minister, Richard Casey, following an aerial reconnaissance, saying that if the Vestfold Hills were blocked by fast ice, there was a possibility the site for a station could be established in another similarly rocky region nearby—the Larsemann Hills. Casey became concerned and consulted Sir Douglas Mawson in Adelaide. A radiogram was sent to Law relaying Mawson’s advice, which was that the Larsemanns would not be as good as the Vestfold Hills but would do if that were the only alternative. Law: This was amusing on two counts. First, neither man had any idea of what the new land was like. Secondly, I was the only living [Australian] to have detailed first-hand experience of Prydz Bay; yet Casey had sent me advice from Mawson who had never been there! I did not blame Mawson—he was just trying to be helpful. But I thought Casey should have had more sense.8
On 12 January Law returned to Kista Dan in the ship’s motor boat from yet another search of the coastline, tired, cold and disconsolate: I began to turn over in my mind two other possibilities—making do with one of the outer islands of the Vestfold Hills, or abandoning the region altogether and trying the Cape Ann region in Enderby Land. However, we passed another small sandy beach and decided to land and examine it as a last resort.9
Although far from perfect, this site looked as though it could be reached by the army amphibious DUKWs. Kista Dan could probably approach within two kilometres of the shore. Law, accompanied by the incoming OIC Bob Dingle and four others, landed on the beach: There was a flat terrace about halfway up the steep headland on the left of the cove which looked promising for huts. We clambered up to it and decided that it would be possible to clear enough boulders away to make a rough track for the DUKWs. The terrace was very flat and obviously
175
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
the site of a great snow drift, for the pebbles constituting its floor were flattened as though from a giant steam roller. The outlook to the horizon on every side from the top of the rise was perfect.10
On the down side, water would have to be found somewhere during the summer. There was no time for further searching, and unloading began on the same day. By 1600 hours the next day, 13 January, a remarkable amount of cargo had been landed. Work stopped and all hands assembled around a flagpole which had been strapped to the wall of the first hut being erected. Law: All our party and Captain Hindberg attended. I made a short speech in which I stressed the importance of the new station in IGY research and wished it and its men under Bob Dingle success and good luck. I then broke out the flag and officially named the station ‘Davis’. There followed a short account of the achievements of Captain John King Davis. . .We then sang God Save the Queen, gave three cheers, and returned to work again.11
176
By 20 January Davis Station was established enough for Kista Dan to sail. Five men only were to winter there. The weather observer Nils Lied, who had wintered at Mawson the previous year, volunteered to double up, and was dropped in (with a small team of huskies) by Kista Dan on her return trip. The station had no doctor, but there was the possibility of evacuation by air to Mawson Station. The first flight from Mawson to Davis by Beaver took place on 1 May. One of the passengers was an extra husky for Nils Lied’s dog team.12 In August the geologist Bruce Stinear was flown by Beaver aircraft 637 kilometres from Davis to Mawson to continue his geological work. (The ability of ANARE to transfer people between stations by air ended in 1960 when fixed wing aircraft capable of extended flights were no longer stationed in the AAT. Long distance flights did not resume until more than 30 years later with the advent of twin-engined Sikorsky 76 helicopters in 1994.) The use of two Beavers and the seemingly indestructible Auster based at Mawson during the IGY enabled an impressive program to be completed. The Beavers ranged as far east as the Russian station at Mirny, south beyond the southernmost ranges of the Prince Charles Mountains, and west to Enderby Land near the Norwegian sector, as well as supporting parties in the field. Pilots Peter Clemence and Doug Johnston flew all through the winter, clocking up 213 flights. Some were on the edge of safety. During August, one of the Beavers landed at Davis with only six gallons [27 litres] of fuel remaining in its tanks.
A
N T A R C T I C A
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
The modest dog team at Davis was used to good effect. On 10 May 1957, Nils Lied, Bruce Stinear and a visiting surveyor from Mawson, Morris Fisher, sledged along the coast of the Vestfold Hills and located the proclamation canister left by Sir Hubert Wilkins on 11 January 1939, claiming the coastline for Australia. The proclamation note inside was wrapped in a copy of Walkabout magazine dated 1933 and between the pages was a typewritten note signed by Sir Hubert referring to the Order of Council of 7 February 1933 which established the AAT, and recording his landing at several places in the vicinity.13 Lied, Stinear and Fisher signed their own names and replaced the canister at the site now known appropriately as the Walkabout Rocks. International Polar Years only take place during cycles of maximum solar activity. Australia was able to contribute to the recording of upper atmosphere phenomena with both Macquarie Island and Mawson Station ideally placed for magnetic, auroral and other associated observations. Phil Law believes there has not been adequate recognition of the immense amount of exploration and scientific work achieved by Australia during the IGY: Australia, I think, produced more of significance than any other nation, including the Russians and Americans, mainly because we were the only ones, apart from the British, who’d had enough experience beforehand to set up a decent scientific program. Even the British and Chileans and Argentinians in the Peninsula area were only minuscule stations, literally only doing a bit of biology and meteorology. They hadn’t got stuck into the hard core science—geophysics and so on. So then the IGY came on. Here was Australia with its experience in geophysics at Heard and Macquarie for a number of years, and Mawson for three. We’d ironed most of the bugs out of the equipment and the procedures. So we just flowed on and produced a lot of good, solid data. And almost every other nation that went down in the IGY produced a bit of a shambles in the first year because their equipment broke down, their people were not properly trained, and so on. After the IGY, of course, the Russians and Americans just left us for dead with their immense power. But power itself was not enough, in the IGY, to put them ahead of us.
That was on the ground. In space, the rockets and satellites of the US and the Soviet Union made fundamental discoveries during the IGY, the most spectacular of which was the discovery of the Van Allen radiation zones around the earth. Yet Australia from the ground could claim some success in space research which had more relevance in later
177
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
years—when the break-up of the ozone layer over Antarctica in the winter was first measured by British scientists in 1981. In something of a victory for the principle of pure as opposed to applied science, ANARE scientists were among the first people in the world to do ozone measurements, now a source of global concern in Antarctica. Law: In 1950 I was looking for a program of something to do, and I heard there was a man in England called Dobson who had invented an ozone spectrophotometer, so I bought one and put it down on Macquarie Island. Then Fred Jacka [ANARE’s chief scientist] arranged for it to go down to Mawson. We had results. . .[but] we had no idea what these measurements meant. And from being about the purest form of science, you now find that it’s fundamentally important to mankind.
The IGY work mapped and assessed the structure of Antarctica in a way that changed our perceptions of it dramatically. Seismic traverses revealed the details of mountain peaks and troughs hidden below the great Antarctic ice cap. Only a little more than 2 per cent of Antarctica’s bedrock is visible as mountain peaks or coastal ‘oases’, but intensive geological studies during the IGY provided strong evidence in favour of continental drift—an unpopular hypothesis before the IGY but now generally accepted by the great majority of scientists. So successful was the IGY that—by mutual consent of all the nations involved—it was extended for a further year into 1959, known as the Year of International Geophysical Cooperation. Clearly the evaluation of so much primary data needed even more time, and it was agreed that three World Data Centres would be set up, one each in the United States and the USSR, with the third being spread over a number of institutions in Western Europe, Australia and Japan.
T HE A NTARCTIC T REATY
178
Neither the USA nor the former USSR has ever claimed any part of Antarctica or recognised other nations’ claims. The US made its position clear in 1924 under the Hughes Doctrine, and in 1939 when Norway claimed territory in Queen Maud Land, the USSR announced that it did not recognise any Antarctic claims. Both the superpowers, though, had historical precedents. The United States could cite the extensive explorations of Greater Antarctica by Wilkes, Admiral Byrd and aviator and explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, who in 1939 flew in his Northrop Delta aircraft 300 kilometres into the interior of Princess Elizabeth Land (already claimed by Australia) and dropped a copper cylinder and proclamation claiming 43 000 square kilometres for the US, naming the area the
A
N T A R C T I C A
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
American Highlands. Although these territorial initiatives were never formally advanced by the US Government, the possibility of an Antarctic claim at some future date could not be ruled out. The Soviet Union had the historical basis for an even more sweeping claim, following the exploratory voyages of Captain T von Bellingshausen—who actually circumnavigated the Antarctic continent between 1819 and 1821. The sector under the tip of South America, and encompassing the Antarctic Peninsula, became the most hotly contested part of Antarctica, with overlapping claims by Britain, Argentina and Chile during World War II. The establishment of two bases on Gamma Island and Greenwich Island by Argentina and Chile was countered by formal protests from Britain in December 1947—followed by further British indignation about an Argentine base begun on Deception Island in the same month. Britain suggested that the disputes over Antarctic claims between the three countries be brought before the International Court of Justice at The Hague for settlement—otherwise Britain reserved its right to take ‘appropriate action’ to ensure its territory was respected.14 Both Argentina and Chile rejected this option and called for an international conference to settle claims over the entire Antarctic continent. Argentina and Britain sent warships to the region, and 1948 looked like ushering in a warm time indeed on the coast of the coldest continent. The United States was keen to mediate between Britain and Argentina and suggested the internationalisation of Antarctica in the form of a United Nations trusteeship. After advice from Britain, the US Secretary of State George C Marshall suggested an eight-power condominium (joint sovereignty over a territory) made up of the seven nations with Antarctic claims plus the US as an intending claimant—and excluding its superpower adversary, the Soviet Union. Britain and New Zealand were the only supporters of the condominium idea. Argentina, Australia, Chile, France and Norway were against.15 Dr Evatt, then Australia’s Minister for External Affairs, was keen to retain Australia’s own sovereignty over the AAT so as to be able to exploit any minerals that might be found there. In July and August of 1948, Professor Julio Escudero (a legal adviser in the Chilean Foreign Ministry) put forward another suggestion to solve the dilemma of competing national claims in Antarctica, known as the modus vivendi proposal, to effectively freeze all claims so that nations could proceed with their scientific programs. Eventually this ingenious compromise was taken up and became a key element of the final draft of the Antarctic Treaty eleven years later. In January 1949 the All-Union Geographical Society in the USSR made a public statement that no agreement on Antarctic sovereignty
179
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
without the participation of the Soviet Union was going to be legitimate—an assertion taken seriously by the US, which began to explore Professor Escudero’s modus vivendi idea as a basis for an international Antarctic agreement in discussions between 1949 and 1952 with nations claiming territory in Antarctica. The outbreak of the Korean War on 25 June 1950 distracted attention from attempts to formalise an international regime in Antarctica, and the modus vivendi concept being explored by the US suffered a severe setback when its own Department of Defence opposed it. In 1952 tensions between Argentina and Britain over their Antarctic claims were further exacerbated when a party of armed Argentinians fired over the heads of a British party attempting to re-establish a survey base at Hope Bay.16 There were further incidents in 1953. In February two Argentine nationals were deported from Deception Island (part of the South Shetlands) by British authorities, and several Argentine and Chilean buildings were dismantled. In 1954 the USSR announced it would participate in the IGY.
T
180
here is a view that the noble cause of science in Antarctica led to the agreement known as the Antarctic Treaty, but there is compelling evidence that although scientific cooperation was a useful practical lubricant, the primary reason for negotiating the Treaty was a negative one—fear of chaos. Unless an international solution for the Antarctic could be found, a confrontation on a world-wide scale could easily have erupted in that area.17 The Antarctic Treaty has been described as ‘an elegant mixture of US self-interest and international high-mindedness’.18 So the question is why the Soviet Union supported it at the height of the so-called ‘cold war’. The answer is a blend of pragmatism, the tyranny of distance and perhaps just a dash of idealism. The Soviet Union’s decision to take part in the IGY had spelt the end of US attempts to quarantine the Russians from Antarctica. The US, together with Britain, Australia and New Zealand in particular, was concerned that the Russians might establish military bases in Antarctica during and after the IGY. By the early 1950s both superpowers were concerned to find ways and means of avoiding flashpoints that might involve sudden escalation into nuclear war. This was difficult enough in the Northern Hemisphere. The prospect of extending this tension to remote Antarctica was unattractive to both superpowers. By establishing a presence in the Antarctic without the risk of conflict, the Russians could demonstrate their global reach—as well as establishing themselves as a legitimate force in future Antarctic developments.19 On the other hand,
A
N T A R C T I C A
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
the Soviet Union was prepared to concede the dominance of the US in Antarctic affairs. Considering the state of the cold war at the time, it was remarkable that anything was agreed at all. Negotiations for the Antarctic Treaty lasted eighteen months. There were sixty preparatory meetings held in Washington between June 1958 and October 1959. Then there was the full-scale conference which concluded with the signing of the Treaty on 1 December 1959 by the representatives of the governments of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, the French Republic, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, the Union of South Africa, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America. Australia played a key role in the negotiations leading to the Antarctic Treaty through the diplomacy of Richard Casey, the Minister for External Affairs. The crucial objectives for Australia were freedom of scientific research, non-militarisation of the area, and the freezing of territorial claims. Clearly, without the last two points any treaty would be worthless. As it happened, Australia was extremely influential in convincing the Soviet Union that it should accept the freezing of all territorial claims. The Russian position at the beginning of discussions was that the Treaty should say nothing at all about territorial claims and that any reference to those claims placed claimant countries in a superior position—indeed ‘if Russia was required to renounce the right to make a claim, other countries, in fairness, should renounce the claims they had already made’.20 This position was totally unsatisfactory to Australia and the other claimant states. Malcolm Booker was Australia’s chief negotiator in the preliminary negotiations for drafting the Treaty. He was aware that ‘Australia’s absurd territorial claims’ of 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent were very weak in international law: My problem was to get the Government to realise this and insist that the Treaty should embody their claim. We had the same problem with the Chileans and the Argentinians. Their original position—like our original position—was that these claims must be respected. Then we had the bright idea (I’m not sure that I can claim the authorship of it) but. . .with my Chilean and Argentinian colleagues, we said: ‘Why don’t we put these claims on ice?’ And we thought that was a funny thing to say.
The ingenious formula of Article IV—in essence to agree to disagree on the freezing of national claims—was the cornerstone of the success of the Antarctic Treaty, but it was by no means certain it could be achieved in the early stages of negotiation.
181
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Yet Russia’s flexibility on other aspects of the Treaty was surprising Australia’s diplomats who had been expecting a harder ‘cold war’ line. Diplomacy away from official discussions was vital to progress towards the Treaty. Malcolm Booker was keen to explore the possibility of the Antarctic being a nuclear-free zone: . . . that in spite of the ‘cold war’ there could be areas of the world that could be kept free from nuclear competition and from any possible nuclear conflict. It was accepted, of course, that this wouldn’t really solve the nuclear problem, but that it would establish a principle that might later be applicable in wider circumstances. And interestingly, the other delegate who was keen on this idea was a Russian.
Booker had known one of the Russian delegates, Andrei Ledovski, when they were both posted to the Nationalist capital Chonqing in China in 1943 and 1944. They had become friends during this chaotic time, when the USSR was an ally of the West. While in Washington the Australian diplomat bent the rules to sound out Ledovski on the Russian position on Treaty matters in a series of private conversations and meetings: The Government requirement on us all was to report whenever we met a Russian, or Soviet, official, and give details of what they said and what I said. . .Well, this was absurd in this situation, because we were meeting regularly discussing the Antarctic treaty and it was very much the matter of achieving a successful combination between him and myself in getting acceptance for the idea of a nuclear-free zone. So sometimes I reported when I met him, and sometimes I didn’t.
Booker and Ledovski would arrange to have lunch together in one of Washington’s busier restaurants, confident that they were totally secure: Nobody could have known you were there and nobody could hear—because of the background noise—anything that was said. And it often struck me how all these enormously expensive spy services could easily be evaded by anybody who wanted to evade them. But anyway our meetings were entirely innocent. . .we were serving our governments loyally and there was no possibility of any espionage on his part. Of course there wasn’t on mine. . .he was a very intelligent, witty, cultivated bloke . . .
182
Ledovski worked for the principal Soviet representative, Grigory Tonkin, an international lawyer who, Booker maintained, dominated the final Treaty conference intellectually.
A
N T A R C T I C A
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
The problem for me was that the Americans did not want the Antarctic as a nuclear-free zone, they. . .felt they had to have the option of using the Antarctic for nuclear defence, nuclear surveillance—at the worst, nuclear war. And the Australian Government in those days was, of course, entirely subservient to the United States—more subservient than at any other time probably. So it was very difficult to persuade our Government that, in effect, they should oppose the American wish to reserve the right to use the Antarctic for nuclear weapons.
In fact Australia enthusiastically supported the use of the Antarctic for ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosions in Antarctica—a concept not ruled out by the Russians at first, although later they hardened their position. In October 1959 Argentina was pushing for a total ban on nuclear tests or explosions of any kind in Antarctica and Casey was advised by the DEA to oppose the Argentinians on this point. Commonwealth Attorney General Sir Garfield Barwick cabled Casey on 24 October: Taking into account our best scientific advice, I would think on balance, the potential scientific and technical advantages of peaceful nuclear explosions in the Antarctic outweigh the possible risks (i.e. the fallout hazard if adequate precautions are not taken and the possibility that some information of military value might be gained from an essentially peaceful explosion).21
Correspondence between the DEA and the National Radiation Advisory Committee (NRAC) at that time also gives an interesting insight into the more relaxed attitudes of the day towards the disposal of nuclear waste. On 2 October, NRAC Secretary J R Flanagan advised that it could be reliably stored in deep stable ice away from the seaboard for long periods: It may be unnecessary to separately contain the radioactive material when depositing it in the ice, but this aspect would need very careful examination before being put into practice. If it were proven acceptable, it would probably constitute a considerable saving in cost.22
On the nuclear explosions issue, however, the USSR won the day during the final conference, with the banning of both nuclear explosions and disposal of radioactive waste material in Antarctica being enshrined in Article V of the Treaty. Looking back, Booker believes that the Soviet premier, Nikita Khruschev, intended to use the nuclear issue in Antartica as a signal to the west that he wanted to improve relations between the Soviet Union and the United
183
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
States—an early expression of glasnost and perestroika. But he faced resistance from his hardline generals who favoured continuing an ironclad Stalinist policy of isolation. Booker: Khruschev was hoping, I believe, to achieve a settlement in the nuclear area which would relieve the Soviet Union of the enormous burden of constantly having to keep pace with the American developments. I can only believe that when Ledovsky at these negotiations surprised us all with his readiness to see the nuclear free zone apply to Antarctica—this was a reflection of Khruschev’s own policy of a more cooperative relationship with the west.
184
The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 ended any immediate prospects of détente on the question of nuclear weapons, and the arms race between the USSR and the US continued for another two decades. In early 1959 prospects for agreement on Article IV (the freezing of claims) seemed remote, despite some encouraging remarks by Ledovski to Booker in Washington that ‘he still felt sure that something could be worked out’.23 The breakthrough occurred at an unlikely location—Broadbeach in Queensland. The occasion was a meeting of the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, and the leader of the Soviet delegation was Deputy Foreign Minister Nicolai Firubin. On 12 March the Australian Minister for External Affairs, Richard Casey, had a private conversation with Firubin about the mutual reinstatement of their embassies in Moscow and Canberra (following the break in diplomatic relations in 1954 caused by the Petrov affair). He also raised the issue of Antarctica and ‘explained Australian objectives and interests in orthodox but forceful terms’.24 Firubin responded by outlining the Soviet position—that the matter of territorial rights and claims in the region should not be dealt with as part of the current debate—but agreed to study a letter from Casey outlining the Australian position. In his letter, delivered the next day, Casey made two main points—that the freezing of claims would have the effect of keeping all national differences ‘quietly in abeyance’, and that it would create a legal situation in which no activity in Antarctica by any country, claimant or non-claimant, would improve its legal claim to sovereignty.25 He also stressed that he was seriously apprehensive about the risks of future cooperation between nations operating in Antarctica if the Treaty was not concluded.26 Firubin’s verbal response to Casey ‘that all would be well’ was confirmed on 11 May when, at a luncheon at the Russian Embassy in Washington, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Mikhail Menshikov, made it clear to US Ambassador Paul Daniels that there was no basic
A
N T A R C T I C A
I
N T E R N A T I O N A L
disagreement between the two states on the peaceful use of Antarctica, that there had been an apparent misunderstanding in regard to the US draft article on the subject of rights and claims, and that he and his colleagues were ‘willing to get along with the conference’. Confirmation of Casey’s contribution to this breakthrough was received in early June in a letter from Firubin, through the British Embassy in Moscow, in reply to his Broadbeach letter of 13 March. Firubin went on to say that he was pleased to be able to tell Casey ‘at the present time that the Soviet side is prepared to agree to the text of Article IV in the form indicated. . .[and] the representative of the Soviet Union at the talks in Washington has been given instructions to agree to Article IV of the draft Treaty’.27 The breakthrough had been made. Richard Casey’s diplomatic skills were to be needed again, however, on the persistent issue of the freezing of claims. Three days before the final conference to negotiate the Antarctic Treaty was due to begin in Washington on 15 October 1959, the French representative, Ambassador Pierre Charpentier, dropped a bombshell, saying that his instructions were ‘positive and definite’ that ‘under no circumstances was France to agree to an article such as Article IV. . .’28 Casey and Charpentier met to discuss ‘the devastating French decision’. In his diary, Casey wrote: I made no attempt to hide my feelings on this. . .I suspect it is a de Gaulle decision. Charpentier showed signs of personal disagreement with his instructions. I said if the decision was an unalterable one, it would destroy the Conference and the Treaty.29
Casey immediately sent a long telegram to the French Foreign Minister, M. Couve de Murville, explaining that Australia would not have attended the conference unless an understanding among all twelve parties had been reached on Article IV, and detailed the role he had played in convincing the Russians to accept it. He concluded: If, therefore, the conference fails, the responsibility might well seem to rest solely upon France. . . . It would therefore cause me great personal regret if it were to appear to the Australian people that the French Government, at the eleventh hour, refused to accept a treaty that would provide such valuable protection for Australian national interests. I would therefore most earnestly hope that you might feel able, in advance of the conference on Thursday, to reconsider the French position on Article IV.30
This appeal had no immediate effect. On 20 October, the French moved to delete the paragraph of Article IV relating to the freezing of
185
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
territorial claims. They did not, however, pursue this opposition following the US announcement that it was accepting the Soviet formula on Article IV, with the agreement of most of the other nations involved. Charpentier did tell Casey on 26 October that Couve de Murville had said that if he had had copies of the correir Douglas Mawson retired from acaspondence with Firubin at the time, demic life in Adelaide in 1953. He his attitude about the freezing of claims was 70, and his interests had ranged would have been different.31 So it is far beyond Antarctica. For 30 years he reasonable to assume that Casey’s interheaded the Geology Department of the vention was influential. Twelve nations University of Adelaide, and was also active signed the Treaty on 1 December 1959. in the fields of conservation, farming and International recognition of Richard forestry. Casey’s role in the successful resoluHe died unexpectedly on 14 October tion of the Antarctic Treaty was marked 1958, following a cerebral haemorrhage, by the selection of Canberra for the survived by his wife Paquita and two daughfirst scheduled Antarctic Treaty ters. His role in establishing ANARE in 1947 Consultative Meeting which began on had been pivotal, and he lived to see 23 June 1961. Australians established in two permanent The Treaty has been successful in stations on the mainland of Antarctica, and keeping Antarctica insulated from frica third on Macquarie Island—which he had tions generated between member been instrumental in having declared a sanccountries elsewhere. It has also ensured tuary in 1933. a peaceful mechanism for growth, with The Mawson Institute for Antarctic Re43 states adherent to the Treaty by 1996. search was established within the University Its consensus decision-making system of Adelaide in 1959. Its library incorporates has remained intact and although there Mawson’s collection of polar literature, his is no permanent secretariat, its conAntarctic diaries, and a substantial collecsultative arrangements have been able tion of papers, photographic records and to accommodate questions not objects of historical importance. The Douglas addressed in 1959—like pollution Mawson chair of geology was created in control, tourism, political status, and 1983. living and non-living resources.32
S
186
T W E LV E
1959—A
YEAR
TO REMEMBER
I
f any year in the half-century of ANARE operations can be singled out as momentous, 1959 is a good candidate. Events included the occupation of Australia’s third continental station at Wilkes, a tragic death midway through the year, mental illness involving visits by Russian and United States aircraft, disastrous fires at Macquarie Island and Mawson stations, and the total destruction of two aircraft at Mawson in a violent storm. The curtain-raiser took place on 16 January 1959 when Thala Dan ran onto an uncharted pinnacle of rock approaching Davis Station. John Béchervaise (who was on his way to Mawson Station as the incoming OIC) recalled that it was an absolutely still sunny day, ‘with all that marvellous calmness that comes inside the pack ice’: Suddenly we struck a rock. This was really a tremendous shock, in every sense of the term. I can remember the masts quivering and making a strange noise, as though they were vibrating, and a few men were almost thrown off their feet.
The master, Captain Hans Christian Petersen, immediately signalled the engine room for full astern, but without success. It became clear that Thala Dan was impaled on a pinnacle of rock and had been holed. Oil gushed from a pierced fuel tank and spread over the surface of the sea. Béchervaise noted at the time that it had a singular effect on the penguins, and this was not a pleasing sight: ‘I think it caused a change in the refractive index of the sea surface—for they started leaping straight out of the water, as though onto invisible ice floes.’1
187
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Thala Dan was not in immediate danger, but the ship had grounded near the top of the tide, so it would be 24 hours at least before any realistic efforts could be made to free her. Half an hour after hitting the rock, Captain Petersen called the ship’s company. Béchervaise recalled that moment: ‘To prevent rumours an’ all ’dat sort of bullshit, I will tell you what we now know. The ship she is not in danger.’2 Petersen said he was confident that he could get Thala Dan off the rocks. There was little the ANARE men could do, so they marked that evening by having a shipwreck party. Béchervaise later wrote: ‘It lasted until well after dawn. The oily water, almost motionless round the ship, carried scores of floating beer cans.’3 Over the next fifteen days, Captain Petersen displayed remarkable seamanship in extricating his ship from this isolated and dangerous situation. After shifting ballast to raise the bow, Petersen took the same
WILKES STATION ON THE COAST OF VINCENNES BAY, WILKES LAND.
188
A N D
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
T O
R E M E M B E R
traditional course of action that Captain Cook had taken on the Great Barrier Reef in 1770, and ‘fothered’ the ship. Béchervaise: A sail was passed under the hull which prevented the inflow of water, the water was pumped out of the tank, and the captain prepared a number of wooden wedges to be driven into the gash from the oil tank just inside the hull, which had taken the strain.
The next day, Captain Petersen prepared for high water. His plan was to put out a stern anchor and then winch Thala Dan off the rock, with engines full astern. The most immediate practical problem was how to get the anchor—weighing more than a tonne —to its position. None of the ship’s boats could possibly carry it. The ingenious solution was to suspend the anchor underneath a dinghy, where it would weigh less under water. Béchervaise: This allowed perhaps an inch or two inches [21¼2 to five centimetres] freeboard. The captain and the second mate rowed very cautiously—with this great anchor hanging below—until they got to the position astern. Then he took a broad axe, and with one swipe cut through the rope that held the anchor. . .the ship’s boat fairly leapt out of the water with the sudden relief of the strain.
Everything went according to plan. At high water the engines went full astern and the ship’s winches began pulling against the ingeniously placed anchor. Thala Dan came off the rock to the cheers of all on board. But it would be twelve more days before the ship could continue her journey a further five kilometres to Davis Station. Ship’s boats ferried rock and sand from nearby Magnetic Island as aggregate for concrete, which was poured in to reinforce and seal off the damaged tank. The repair was successful, but the waiting was taking its toll on the Davis Station people, desperate for their mail. On 20 January, a Beaver aircraft on floats was launched from Thala Dan and an airdrop of mail and a well-padded crate of Carlsberg beer was made by RAAF pilot Jim Sandercock.4 At the same time, the second Lauritzen Line ice-strengthened ship Magga Dan was approaching Vincennes Bay with the ANARE wintering party for Wilkes Station to establish Australia’s third base on the Antarctic continent. Law had assigned his deputy Don Styles as voyage leader on Thala Dan to relieve and resupply Davis and Mawson, while he oversaw events at Wilkes, as well as continuing the yearly program of coastal exploration. Wilkes had been established by the United States Government in 1957 as part of its contribution to the IGY. Although built in a mere seventeen days, it was a lavish complex compared with the simple frugality
189
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
of any of the Australian stations. Because it was constructed in a hollow, even in its first year of operation its buildings were buried under a relentless accumulation of ice and snow. Nevertheless the heated buildings and enormous supply dumps were an eye-opener to the Australians when they first saw it. As the IGY wound down in 1958 American scientists were hopeful that the scientific observations carried out at Wilkes could be continued. Phil Law: The Americans found themselves over-committed. . .and their scientists came to me and said: ‘Look, Wilkes is a good station, scientifically it’s extremely valuable. It fills an important gap as an observatory for meteorology, geomagnetism, seismology and scientific work generally. It would be a great pity if it just closed down. We are going to be forced to close down; what say we come to an agreement where you take it over. We would love to see the Australians continue to run it, because we’re just as interested in the results that come out of it as you are.’
Law said he would try to persuade the Australian Government that resources could be stretched to this extent, particularly as nothing had to be built—a ready-made station was just sitting there. As early as January 1958 the US State Department was pressing the Australian Government for a response. There were two alternatives: to hand over Wilkes to Australia as a going concern, or to share its operations. The Department of External Affairs recommended the first option. The secretary, Arthur Tange, wrote: I would believe that it would not be practicable for us to share the operation of the Wilkes Station with the United States. The political future of the Antarctic is at present uncertain and probably will remain so for some months at least. I believe our best policy in the interim would be to continue to consolidate our sovereignty. Granted this, the opportunity of replacing the last United States base in our territory by an Australian base presents obvious political advantages. The advantage might be lost if we only participated in the operation of what would still be a United States base.5
This reflected Law’s preferred position on Wilkes and he urged his minister, Richard Casey, to take a tough line with the US on the issue:
190
I had stressed to him that we were in a powerful position to impose our complete demands on the situation. They wanted the stations preserved—not us. It was either us or nothing! The Americans knew it, and we knew it.
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
T O
R E M E M B E R
The US State Department argued that there could be trouble with Congress (and the American taxpayer) if it was all just handed over, and proposed it should be a joint station, 50 per cent Australian and 50 per cent American. Law: ‘At least I managed to get an assurance that the leader would be an Australian, but they had a deputy put in who was an American, so you had almost a dual control of the station’. US-BUILT JAMESWAY HUTS AT The awkwardness of this arrangement was evident WILKES DISAPPEARING UNDER from the very first contacts with the Americans at Wilkes. THE RELENTLESSLY Law and Dick Thompson, his chief supply officer, had ACCUMULATING DRIFT, 1966. spent three weeks in Washington organising the logis(P LAW) tical arrangements and examining lists of equipment at the station. But External Affairs had not briefed Law about the protocol of taking over a station from another nation: The first thing I ran into was the question of what we do about flags. I was going to pull down the American flag and put the Australian one up [but] they promptly reminded me that that wasn’t on. So on our ship I was going to fly the Australian flag with the American flag on the same mast. And someone said: ‘You can’t do that Phil—protocol. You can’t put some nation’s flag underneath one of ours.’ So we had to fly the Australian flag on the foremast and the American flag on the aftermast.
On 3 February 1959 Law signed a document accepting custody of all the American buildings and equipment at Wilkes for use without charge or liability, and guaranteeing the eventual return of the property to the United States.6 This was impractical, and the whole Wilkes complex, with all the stores, abandoned equipment and spent fuel dumps now lies entombed in the ice. What to do about the historic rubbish at Wilkes remains one of the unsolved Antarctic environmental dilemmas to this day.
191
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
The changeover ceremony at Wilkes went smoothly on Wednesday 4 February, with Australian and American flags on separate poles, but the dual arrangements between the Australians and the Americans soon led to diplomatic difficulty. The senior US member of the Wilkes party, Herbert Hansen, a meteorologist (who had objected to the way the flags were flown during the changeover) demanded the right to radio his communications direct to the US base at McMurdo and not through Antarctic Division channels.7 This caused a bureaucratic flurry within External Affairs as officers in Canberra tried to unravel the complex web of events that led to the joint facility. As Law had predicted, it all got too hard for both the Americans and the Australians: After two years it was obviously so unworkable that the State Department devised a formula where they lent all the equipment to us on long-term loan, indefinitely, and without payment. . .the divided operation ceased and we took over as we should have done right from the beginning.
192
On 5 February 1959 Magga Dan left Wilkes, with Law hopeful of voyaging east to the extreme edge of the AAT to attempt the first ever Australian landing on the coast of Oates Land. At the last moment he was able to arrange for Corporal John ‘Snow’ Williams, the RAAF air-frame fitter, to remain at Wilkes for the winter. Law was concerned that it would be impossible for the two Australian mechanics adequately to look after all the technical equipment at the station.8 This turned out to be an extremely fortunate decision in view of later happenings at Wilkes during the year. The day before Magga Dan left Wilkes, the damaged but still serviceable Thala Dan broke through the fast ice into Horseshoe Harbour at Mawson to resupply the station and change over the personnel. On 11 February unloading was halted to cope with a sudden personal emergency. One of the incoming meteorologists, Ian Widdows, developed acute appendicitis. The recreation room in Weddell Hut was scrubbed and draped with polythene sheeting. Two medical officers were available, due to the changeover. Incoming Grahame Budd was the surgeon and Grey Channon the anaesthetist, assisted by four other expeditioners.9 Widdows made a good recovery. It was now the turn of Macquarie Island to hit the headlines and for that ANARE station to play its part in the year’s bizarre events. On Friday 13 March, the lead item in the Hobart Mercury revealed that the gaff-rigged schooner Patanela would voyage to Macquarie Island in a bid to start a sealing industry there.10 Mr Alan Powell (described by the Mercury as the ‘key man’ of the syndicate), a former consultant to the Australian Whaling Commission in Western Australia, explained to readers that he hoped
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
T O
R E M E M B E R
to establish a modern plant in Hobart for the packaging and flash-freezing of fresh seal meat for export to America. Macquarie Island had been declared a sanctuary in 1933 because of the slaughter of the fur and elephant seal populations by sealers in the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless the new sealing venture was enthusiastically supported by Tasmania’s Minister for Agriculture, Mr Jack Dwyer, who said that ‘the establishment of a sealing industry on Tasmanian-controlled Macquarie Island’ would not be opposed by the Commonwealth or the State Government or the Fauna Board. As Patanela buffeted heavy seas and high winds on her way to Macquarie Island, public opinion in Hobart erupted. The reaction was led initially by Norman Laird, a former expeditioner on Macquarie during the first year of ANARE occupation in 1948. Laird worked in the Tasmanian Government’s film unit and wrote under the nom de plume ‘Antarcticus’. Laird reminded readers of the Hobart Mercury’s Letters To The Editor columns of Sir Douglas Mawson’s efforts to have the island declared a sanctuary in 1933: ‘Now we may wonder whether Mawson’s work is to be in vain, and whether we are to be the unhappy witnesses of a convenient adjustment to the law which made the island a sanctuary?’11 Laird alerted Frank Hurley, the photographer on Mawson’s 1929–31 BANZARE voyage and a ferocious anti-sealing activist, who wrote from Sydney pointing out that he had assisted Mawson in ensuring that the sealing licence of Joseph Hatch was cancelled by the Tasmanian Government in 1919. The Antarctic Division and ANARE were by no means passive participants in the sealing affair. On 24 December 1958 the Tasmanian Premier, Eric Reece, had asked Phil Law for his view, and Law (in an era when commercial opportunities in Antarctica were seen as positive revenue-raising) replied: My own view is that, properly supervised, exploitation of the elephant seals at Macquarie Island would have no harmful effect upon the seal population of the island. . .The presence at the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition station of an official curator would enable such supervision and control to be exercised.12
The officer-in-charge at Macquarie Island was Tom Harwood, who also wore another hat. He was the Tasmanian Fauna Board’s representative on Macquarie, obliged to show the sealing syndicate’s Alan Powell around the elephant seal populations on the Macquarie beaches. However, on 30 March Harwood had more urgent matters to attend to. While the syndicate’s chartered schooner Patanela was anchored in Buckles Bay, one of her crew yelled: ‘There’s smoke pouring from one of your huts!’
193
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
The ionospheric and cosmic ray laboratories were sited away from the main camp, on the shores of Hasselborough Bay, and it was the cosmic ray section that was well alight when the alarm was raised. All expeditioners available rushed to the fire with extinguishers and buckets and some fairly desperate measures were attempted, according to John Munro, one of the physicists on Macquarie: In an effort to isolate the fire efforts were made to break through the partition joining the huts and Brian [Bell] brought the tractor to try to pull the Ionospheric Hut away completely. But all to no avail. The wire rope burned through—white hot each time.13
Little could be salvaged and much valuable scientific equipment was lost, including a brand new ionospheric recorder, Whistler recorder, cosmic ray telescope and the highly prized Dobson ozone spectrophotometer. Much of this equipment had been an important element in the success of ANARE’s contribution to the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58. Essentially the upper atmosphere and cosmic ray programs for 1959 were wiped out by the fire. Powell and Patanela were able to help ANARE by giving Brian Bell, the physics radio-technician, a stormy ride back to Hobart, to save him a year’s professional inactivity. Patanela arrived in Hobart on 7 April with Powell claiming the Tasmanian Government had already issued him with a sealing licence. He was publicly gung-ho about his plans on Macquarie and contemptuous of the ‘storm of protest from animal protection societies’, saying: ‘The public is ill-informed and doesn’t understand conditions at a sealing station. If the public is still against it, we’ll go ahead just the same. They haven’t had the experience we’ve had.’14 Powell reassured his critics that killing methods would be humane: In the old days they got a 4 foot [1.21 metres] pole with an iron spike on the end, hit them on the snout, then cut their throats. These days we shoot them in the brain with a .303 rifle or a .45 revolver. They roar when you walk up to them, and you shoot them through the mouth and into the brain. They drop dead instantly.15
194
Powell’s grasp of the scientific biological program on Macquarie being carried out by Stefan Csordas, the medical officer, seemed rudimentary. The ANARE team there made a ‘hobby of studying seals and other animals’, he said. Mixing his metaphors rather unfortunately given the subject, the sealing entrepreneur said there were plenty of seals available and concluded: ‘We’re going to put in a big investment and we’re not going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs’.16
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
T O
R E M E M B E R
Powell was wrong about public opinion. The issue had become so politically heated that six days later it was all over. The Premier, Eric Reece, admitted publicly that the popular opposition and concerns about sealing had won the day, and that no licence would be issued.17 The Hobart Mercury commented that the Government had ‘shown good sense in bowing to the weight of public opinion’. Its editorial was scathing in its criticism of the Tasmanian Fauna Board for its apparent ‘readiness to ignore the wishes of the public and views of zoologists alike’. In fact the board opposed the sealing plans, but seals were not under its jurisdiction. They came under the Sea Fisheries Act. Eric Guiler, a lecturer in zoology at the University of Tasmania, was a board member at that time: The board was under heavy Government pressure to revoke all or part of the sanctuary, but steadfastly refused to do so. It agreed to ‘consider’ a lease of one acre for a factory-cum-residence, fully aware that the area was too small for the sealers’ purpose. The board was determined to resign in a body if their views were overridden by Government.
Public opinion had had little influence on Antarctic policy before the Tasmanian sealing imbroglio. The making of Antarctic policy was traditionally the preserve of public servants and governments. The routing of the aspiring sealers was a sign that the traditional thinking on Antarctica as a resource to be plundered could no longer be taken for granted, and was a pointer to the conservation politics of the 1980s and 1990s.
A
ny outbreak of fire on Antarctic stations is greatly feared. At Macquarie Island the science buildings were separated from the main camp. On continental stations, isolated in winter unlike Macquarie which can be reached by ship at any time of the year—the outbreak of fire in moisture-free, tinder-dry flammable structures (heated by internal combustion stoves in the early years) could be catastrophic. The concern about fire was the main reason behind the ANARE night watches, instituted at all stations so that someone was on duty to take action and give the alarm in the event of fire. Lack of water is an added hazard and fire drills and awareness of extinguishers have been, and still are, drummed into all ANARE expeditioners. On 3 April, four days after the Macquarie Island physics laboratories succumbed to fire, work was proceeding as usual at Mawson Station on one of the year’s most essential projects. This was the construction of a new powerhouse which was being built over the old one, so that that powerhouse could keep operating until the bigger overall structure was
195
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
roofed and finished. With hindsight this was not such a good idea, because diesel fuel from the original hut had soaked into the ground beneath for the previous five years. Work on the new powerhouse was popular because it meant enjoying the warmth from the operating generator. The interior of the larger structure was being lined with Caneite insulating panels, and the whole job was nearly finished. RAAF pilot Jim Sandercock recalls that he was having lunch in the mess when the alarm was given that a fire had broken out: ‘People raced for fire extinguishers. We grabbed some from our hangar, some were taken from the other buildings—but of course they were entirely useless.’ Heat had built up in the smaller, older powerhouse, enclosed by the new, and had caused the fire. The problem was to get at the seat of the blaze through or around the new building. OIC John Béchervaise recalled that one of the greatest problems was that the doors of the two buildings did not coincide: We put smoke masks on, crawled in one door, and then had to turn left, and then turn another way to get to the seat of the fire. This was very dicey and very hard to see. . .you just felt your way. Finally you saw a flare and did what you could.
But it was far too dangerous and the outer building was sealed. When flames broke through the roof Béchervaise ordered a bucket brigade. Holes were punched in the sea ice and a human chain formed. Sandercock: A chap would dip his bucket in and run madly up the line, hand it up to that part of the building that was not on fire, and the chaps would throw the bucket of water through the now partly burnt roof. But we were wasting our time.
Desperate measures were employed. At one stage Béchervaise had men punching holes through the roof with crowbars, to pour in salt water. But we weren’t winning, and in the end I heard a sound which was very unpleasant. . .a bubbling of something down below. As I knew that was diesel fuel, I got everybody off the roof—fortunately before it blew up.
Anything useful close by was dragged away either by hand or by D4 tractor. Fortunately one of the new diesel generators had not been moved into the new shed and was saved. Finally, at 5 pm, Béchervaise ordered everyone away from the scene and they watched the powerhouse burn: 196
There were tremendous flames, huge columns of smoke, many explosions. One explosion shot a column of flame and burning oil nearly a
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
hundred feet [30.5 metres] in the air; it was from a drum containing only about fifteen gallons [68.1 litres] of lubricating oil finally bursting under pressure . . . I treasure old Bert Evans’ remarks from the roof just before we gave the job away. ‘Hey! Anyone got a smoke? Haven’t had one for hours. . .it’s good to have one’s feet warm for a change.’18
T O
R E M E M B E R
THE MAWSON STATION 1959. (M KIRTON)
POWERHOUSE ON FIRE,
The loss of the power station was catastrophic and threatened the entire year’s scientific program. That night Béchervaise called a meeting to take stock and worked out a new program. Within two weeks, scrap timber was used to build a small shelter for the one remaining big generator: ‘There is nothing like a crisis like that to get everybody very close together. It may have been part of the great success of the year that everybody was so very helpful.’ Those at Mawson were to experience more challenges in this extraordinary year of 1959. But April also had an unwelcome surprise for ANARE expeditioners on Macquarie Island. On 30 April a tremendous storm sent waves surging across the narrow isthmus separating Hasselborough Bay from Buckles Bay, near the station. Reporting gusts of up to 170 kilometres per hour, OIC Tom Harwood noted in his log that flying debris had punched holes in three of the water storage tanks. With their fuel dump on the isthmus at risk, the station bulldozer was used to shift drums of fuel to a safer location: [A] large wave washed right across and moved whole fuel dump eight feet. . .arrested only by the loaded sledge—even so 15 drums were carried towards Buckles Bay; 11 rescued, but 4 swept out to sea. Retainer wall construction commenced immediately and second sledge hauled to east side of dump and loaded. [It] was now dark and the tide still rising. Dozer with headlights worked overtime and 3 feet high [0.91 metres] retainer wall built by 1900 hours fortunately when largest wave. . .crashed across. . .By 2000 hours washes small and infrequent so organised night
197
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
watch whilst everybody bitterly cold and wet had welcome mugs of brandy and then dinner. The battle was won—thank God.19
Four days after the powerhouse fire at Mawson, the combined Australian and American wintering party at Wilkes was confronted with an emergency never before encountered on an ANARE station. On 7 April one of the two diesel mechanics, German national Henry Brandt, had a nervous breakdown, became violent, and had to be restrained. Brandt’s behaviour had been causing concern ever since the departure of Magga Dan in February. He was not self-motivated and, if not supervised, tended not to finish the jobs he was given. On 4 April, OIC Robert Dingle wrote in the station log that Brandt was ‘a most unsatisfactory type for expedition life’ and that he had been obtaining drugs from the medical officer for a ‘nervous disorder’. Dingle canvassed options to try to motivate him: It has been suggested to [senior diesel mechanic Hartley] Robinson that he spend a little more time with Brandt where they complete each major job as a team instead of applying themselves as individuals to different phases of the engineering program.20
There was an enormous amount of engineering work to do. The Americans at Wilkes had run their vehicles, tractors and diesel generators until they dropped, and if they could not get a replacement from reserve stores, they cannibalised parts from other working machines. For economy-conscious Australians like Hartley Robinson, it was an eyeopener: The engines in the powerhouse had run continuously for two years with absolutely no maintenance whatsoever. . .these engines had all done anything from 5000 to 8000 hours—which says something for the Caterpillar engine. I don’t know of any other engine that would work under these conditions and still give satisfactory service.21
Besides keeping the vital powerhouse going, all the other machines—tractors, Weasels, fork-lifts and trucks—were run down and needed extensive repair and reconditioning. Brandt’s expertise was urgently needed. But on 7 April Brandt entered the mess with a knife in his hand and had to be disarmed. He was young and fit and Snow Williams recalled:
198
His craziness made him even stronger. We wrestled with him, but whether he intended to use the knife or not, who can say. Five or six of us had to hold him down to get the knife out of his grip. . .his hand was cut in the struggle.
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
T O
R E M E M B E R
After this incident the medical officer, John Boda, sedated Brandt and decided that he would have to be confined while under treatment. Robinson: The boys were all perturbed about it and none of us slept for a couple of nights. We had to stand guard over him and manhandle him and it was really a very, very unhappy occurrence. It was obvious that the man had gone out of his head. We didn’t know what to do so we cleared out a little bit of a storeroom and I got to work and made some wire grilles for the windows. We took all the stuff out of it, and stripped it, and made a cell and locked him in.22
Boda diagnosed manic depression with suicidal tendencies, and Dingle sought advice from Melbourne. Don Styles, deputy director of the Antarctic Division, contacted the Victorian Mental Hygiene Department where the psychiatric consultant thought it likely Brandt was suffering from incipient schizophrenia and recommended medication—there was even talk of radioing instructions to make a simple machine at Wilkes to administer electroconvulsive therapy. Meanwhile the RAAF made it clear that an evacuation by air was impossible. An added problem for Dingle at Wilkes was the necessity for secrecy: You couldn’t send these messages back to Melbourne in plain language, you had to break them down into a code so that the rest of the world didn’t know what was happening down at Wilkes at that time. . .They were decoded in the Antarctic Division and taken out to the Kew mental asylum in Melbourne so they could do their diagnosis there. . .it would come back to us in code. . .oh, it was a trying business.
It was not practical to confine Brandt in his makeshift cell all the time, and Snow Williams recalls that everyone was on edge when he was free: A door opening, or the rattle of the buckles of the type of boots that Henry wore was enough to turn all heads in the room. Henry was quite strong, and until the medication took effect it would need five or six people to hold him down for an injection.23
After some official soul-searching in Canberra and Melbourne, it was decided to request medical assistance from the Soviet station at Mirny, 800 kilometres to the west. Don Styles was handling the situation from Melbourne: The Russians became aware of the situation and flew the 600 miles [960 kilometres] across from Mirny to Wilkes with some stimulants to keep the man in reasonable condition until the end of the season.
199
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
While this was an excellent example of the kind of international goodwill becoming the norm in Antarctica, local politics at Wilkes were more intense. The medical officer, John Boda, was a refugee from the Russian invasion of Hungary, and his attitude to a Russian visit was ‘a red rag to a bull’. The Russians had finished flying for the year, but cheerfully agreed to attempt a flight to Wilkes and land on the ice cap behind the station on a hastily graded airstrip prepared by the Australians. They landed on 4 May and anchored their Dakota-style aircraft to ‘dogs’—wire ropes attached to baulks of timber melted into the ice by Robinson. While the two doctors conferred on Brandt’s condition the Russians, Australians and Americans inspected the station and then cemented good international relations by throwing a party. On the second day, the leader of the Russian party became concerned about the weather and asked to be taken back up on the plateau to inspect the tethered aircraft. Robinson, accompanied by Dingle, drove them up in a Sno-cat: We went inside and they boiled a billy and made a cup of tea and put a drop of jungle juice in it, ‘aerovodka’ as they call it, which is actually de-icing fluid for the wings. It’s about 200 per cent alcohol so I declined.24
Robinson’s excuse was that he had to drive back, but Bob Dingle, ‘a non-drinking man’, accepted an ‘aerovodka’ out of politeness. During this short time in the aircraft a strong wind blew up, creating white-out conditions. The two Australians became lost within 200 metres of the aircraft when they tried to return to Wilkes and it took them twenty minutes to find the Russians again. There was nothing to be done but ride out what was rapidly becoming a blizzard with wind speeds of 65 to 70 knots. Dingle: It [the aerovodka] didn’t agree with me because I threw up all over the inside of this aircraft. And they put me to bed in one of their bunks in the aircraft and I slept right through the blizzard—I didn’t know a damn thing about it. It was quite embarrassing actually, just trying to be sociable with these people. . .and I went out like a light!
200
Robinson recalled that during the worst of the storm the aircraft was vibrating ‘just like a plane revving up on full power prior to a take-off’, and both he and the worried pilot hoped that the anchors in the ice would hold. Next morning the wind dropped and Bob Dingle woke ‘full of beans’ and curious about what had happened during the night. They returned to Wilkes for another party and film night before the Russians finally took off for the flight back to Mirny on 6 May. Their visit had
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
T O
R E M E M B E R
brought minor drama and jollity, but not much joy for the continuing problem of what to do about Brandt. The Russian doctor and Boda had consulted and, with extra drugs provided for treatment, Brandt did show some improvement. He began at least to correspond with his parents in Germany but he still had to be kept in isolation for most of the time. His condition affected everyone at the station, but Snow Williams (the RAAF engineer Phil Law had asked to stay at the last minute to help Robinson and Brandt) had particular praise for the medical officer: Reading my notes now that thirty years have passed, I realise again the tremendous job John Boda did medicating, feeding, exercising and looking after the welfare, generally, of his patient. John also had to learn English at Wilkes, as his skills in that direction were rudimentary.25
Back in Melbourne, Law radioed his thanks to the Russians at Mirny for their assistance in flying to Wilkes, but when the Minister for External Affairs, Richard Casey, wanted to add his message of appreciation to the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was advised against it by the DEA secretary Arthur Tange: . . .we feel that such a message would need to be very carefully drafted if it is to avoid providing the Russians with a useful document which [they] might produce at a later stage to demonstrate Australian acceptance of their presence in the Australian Antarctic Territory.26
At that time, international negotiations leading towards the Antarctic Treaty were still complex and unresolved.
T
he stations were able to enjoy their midwinter dinners and associated celebrations, although an attempt to fly back two scientists studying the aurora at Taylor Glacier, 80 kilometres west of Mawson, for midwinter dinner could have ended badly. A Beaver aircraft, piloted by Geoff Banfield, flying in twilight conditions and extremely low temperatures, had to return to Mawson for an emergency landing after its port aileron failed in flight. After repairs the field party was retrieved safely. At Wilkes, a growing ANARE penchant for cross-dressing at midwinter saw the normally reticent OIC Bob Dingle shave off his moustache and arrive at dinner resplendent in a steel wool wig and velvet dress as Mrs ’Obbs of commercial radio serial fame. Others adopted the personae of Red Indians (with mohawk haircuts) and Australian Aborigines, while Hartley Robinson dressed as a penguin with flashing torch globes for eyes:
201
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Another chappie, one of our big fellows here, carrying a lot of weight, dressed up as a baby in a napkin. Another put a brassiere on and slipped his backside into a big red lampshade and came as a ballet girl.27
Wilkes was a treasure trove of stores and equipment—if they could be found under the ice. There were odd shortages, though. Snow Williams: We had ten years supply of beer and spare parts, but hardly any light globes. They were all Edison screw bulbs. But we had countless thousands of indicator bulbs out of washing machines. Harvey Nye, one of the US weather observers, would solder them into the brass base of the broken bulbs. It saved the day. Those indicator bulbs used to light the corridors with a dim glow.28
Light in the corridors was necessary because by the end of the year most of the Wilkes buildings had iced up to roof level and the 1959 party were living like troglodytes below the surface. One of Williams’ jobs was to cut trapdoors through the roofs of the huts for emergency exits in case of fire. On 9 July at Wilkes, a tragic accident took the life of Hartley Robinson who was working long hours keeping Wilkes Station functioning, with no help available from Brandt. ‘Robbie’, as he was known, was excavating some oxy-acetylene bottles using a tractor. Snow Williams went to give him a hand and jumped into the hole Robinson had dug with his excavator shovel, while the machine reversed up a short, steep ice slope. Williams dropped to his knees trying to free one of the gas cylinders and Robinson came to help him: Instead of getting to the top and parking, he parked on the slope. I didn’t know that. . .he’d hopped out and come around behind me to give me a hand. And I heard the tractor rattle and roll, and I looked up and saw it bearing down and shouted and jumped at the same time. He was coming behind me and was caught by the track.29
202
It is thought Robinson slipped on the ice as he tried to jump and was killed instantly. He was moderately deaf and may not have heard the runaway tractor.30 His death had a shattering effect on the Wilkes party. ‘Robbie’ Robinson was a popular expeditioner. He had been a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese in Malaya during World War II, and at 48 was one of the older expeditioners. He showed the films on Saturday nights and could turn his hand to any engineering job that needed attention. Now, with Robinson dead and Brandt incapacitated, the station was without its two diesel engineers. It was fortunate that Phil Law had asked
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
Snow Williams at the eleventh hour to winter at Wilkes, otherwise the station could have been left without any power. Williams: The biggest hassle was that I had a three-phase powerhouse to look after. . .I’d done a little bit of electricity in the Air Force, but never touched three-phase power. Luckily the Caterpillar generating set had books with them, and I had observed ‘Robbie’ do one or two changeovers when those engines were due for an oil change.31
T O
R E M E M B E R
HARTLEY ROBINSON’S WILKES. (T BOWDEN)
GRAVE (LEFT) AT
WILKES RADIO ROOM, 1964. (A CAMPBELL-DRURY)
It was a case of utilising all skills. Radio supervisor Alan Marriner had some electrical knowledge, and the cook, a young Englishman, ‘Alby’ Giddings (formerly second chef at Menzies Hotel in Melbourne), had trained as a motor mechanic. Bob Dingle had to rearrange the list of station duties: When we needed things done on the engineering side, we’d take him off the cooking roster. . .and he’d move into the workshop and somebody else would do the cooking. Young Williams and Giddings kept the station going mechanically.
B
y early August another occurrence was about to be added to the 1959 catalogue of unwanted emergencies. David Norris, the auroral physicist at Mawson, had returned to Taylor Glacier after the midwinter break accompanied by weather observer Les ‘Wacky’ Onley. OIC John Béchervaise became concerned when radio contact with the field party was lost, and an emergency flight was organised from Mawson. The
203
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
two aircraft reached Taylor Glacier on 4 August and Béchervaise experienced his worst moments ever in Antarctica when pilot Geoff Banfield said, ‘I can’t see the [field] station. The station’s not there. The station is gone!’ As Béchervaise described it: We banked steeply. Long snowdrifts ran down from a meteorological mast on a rocky outcrop. There was a black scar near the tide cracks. ‘There’s been a fire!’, Geoff said. ‘God, the place has been burnt down!’32
Both Beaver aircraft banked for a second circuit. Béchervaise feared the worst. Survival without shelter, food and bedding during the Antarctic winter was problematical at best. The second, smaller stores hut was still standing, but there was no sign of life. Jim Sandercock was the pilot of the second Beaver: We circled round, came in and landed. Very slowly, and virtually with tears in our eyes, we walked towards the hut expecting the worst. From behind us came a shout: ‘Hey, you blokes!’ We turned around. . .the chaps had been out walking. They’d seen the aeroplane coming back in. . .came racing back and came up behind us. We were very pleased to see them.
204
Norris and Onley were equally delighted. A sudden, violent fire had burnt down their hut four days earlier, leaving them time only to snatch a few blankets and rush out on to the ice. All their scientific records, auroral observing equipment, radios and personal gear were lost. They had sheltered in the second hut, unable to make contact with Mawson. It had been a near thing. On 8 August, there was another near miss. One of the RAAF team, fitter Sergeant Hedley McIntyre, was running a Beaver engine in the Mawson hangar. Snow drifts built up against the structure made it almost completely airtight, and McIntyre collapsed with carbon monoxide poisoning. Luckily, pilot Jim Sandercock noticed him lying prostrate under the aircraft and pulled him to safety. The day before this incident, Mawson’s sole diesel power generator (rescued from the earlier powerhouse fire) broke down, leaving the station on emergency power supplied by a tractor and one small portable generator. The situation was extremely serious as a spare part needed to be manufactured and the workshop with its essential lathes had perished in the fire. An ingenious solution was devised—Joe Lawrence, Mawson’s assistant diesel engineer, would fly to Davis Station in a Beaver aircraft, manufacture the vital part in the workshop there, and fly back.33 On 12 August weather conditions lifted, and the engineering mission began. Twelve days later Mawson went back on to its main generator and
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
no major power problems were experienced for the rest of the year. Mawson’s flying program continued with flights to Davis alternating with the support of field parties in the Prince Charles Mountains and Kemp and Enderby Lands. On 3 November, a cross-wind gust caused a Beaver aircraft to scrape a wingtip on the ice at Beaver Lake in the PCMs, but despite damage to the starboard aileron it was flown safely back to Mawson.34 In early December, the unhappy situation with Brandt at Wilkes was finally relieved when the United States agreed to send an aircraft from McMurdo Station in the Ross Sea to pick him up. On 3 December, Snow Williams wrote in his diary:
T O
R E M E M B E R
AIRCRAFT NEAR THE HANGAR AT MAWSON AFTER A BLIZZARD, 1959. (J BÉCHERVAISE) JATO (JET ASSISTED TAKEOFF) BOTTLES FITTED ON A UNITED STATES NEPTUNE AIRCRAFT TO PROVIDE EXTRA THRUST FOR EMERGENCY TAKE-OFFS FROM ICE RUNWAYS.
THIS AIRCRAFT EVACUATED HENRY BRANDT FROM WILKES IN DECEMBER 1960. (R DINGLE)
A Neptune landed, spent two hours on the ground refueling, while a Constellation circled overhead. We brought our firefighting Weasel. . .to pump the fuel into the Neptune. All went well and the Neptune, with a subdued Henry on board blasted off to the roar of about a dozen JATO [Jet Assisted Take Off] bottles, giving extra thrust.35
Despite an improvement in Brandt’s condition after nine months of treatment and confinement at Wilkes, the Americans insisted that the unfortunate man be restrained for the flight. From McMurdo, Brandt was flown to Christchurch in New Zealand. Don Styles arranged for the Antarctic Division’s medical officer in Melbourne, Frank Soucek, to take care of him: ‘He flew back with him to Melbourne and there we gave
205
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
he entire division was saddened by the death of the popular chief medical officer Frank Soucek, who collapsed with a heart attack during unloading operations at Macquarie Island on 24 December 1967. Soucek was one of the refugee doctors who came to Australia from Europe during World War II. He worked cheerfully in the only locations permitted by the medical authorities—Papua New Guinea and the Antarctic. He wintered on Macquarie Island in 1952 and emerged with a fluent but idiosyncratic command of the English language.
206
1954–1966
There are many affectionate stories told of the enthusiastic and gregarious Hungarian. Shortly after his Macquarie Island year, he worked in Papua New Guinea. On one occasion he was showing Lady Slim, the wife of the Governor-General of Australia, through one of the outlying hospitals. ‘This is the bloody dispensary’, explained the ebullient Soucek, ‘and this is the bloody operating theatre’. After taking in the ‘bloody’ casualty section and the ‘bloody’ wards, Lady Slim asked her guide where he had learned his English. ‘From those bloody bastards on Macquarie Island’, replied Soucek.
him the medical treatment that ensured his recovery. We spoke to the German Consul about this before we became too involved and he was quite aware of what we were doing, because the man concerned was a German migrant.’ Phil Law confirmed that after treatment Brandt returned to his home town in Germany and settled down to a normal life. One of the immediate results of the Brandt affair was a move to ensure psychological screening of ANARE expeditioners before sending them south to winter. December and the lengthening days of the Antarctic summer saw all stations hurrying to complete their annual programs and preparing for the changeover voyages. But with only a few weeks to go, the demons that controlled events in this extraordinary ANARE year of 1959 were still active. The RAAF flight stationed at Mawson in 1959 had flown almost continuously through the year, although one of the disadvantages of the hangar at Mawson was the dependence on sea ice in Horseshoe Harbour for ski-equipped operations. As the ice weakened before its annual breakout—usually in late January—aircraft were not able to exploit the best flying conditions of the year when there were almost 24 hours of daylight and periods of comparatively settled weather. With that in mind, permission had been obtained from the RAAF to move the two Beaver aircraft on to the plateau behind Mawson Station to operate on an ice strip with skis and so be available to support summer field work. Flying operations began from the plateau from 5 December. The aircraft were tethered to ‘dead-men’—wooden railway sleepers dug into the ice sheet—by half-tonne breaking strain steel cables.
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
On the morning of 28 December, Squadron Leader Jim Sandercock and engineer Sergeants Stewart Bell and Hedley McIntyre set out from Mawson Station in a Weasel over-snow vehicle to perform routine maintenance on the two Beavers anchored up on the plateau.36 The weather was fine, and the katabatic wind—a regular feature of the Mawson environment—was not unduly strong. But as they moved further up on to the plateau, it became stronger. When they neared the area where the two Beavers were tethered, Sandercock was astonished to see one of the aircraft well away from its anchored position: Seeing this [Beaver 203] put a lump in our throats. Obviously it had broken free and glissaded down the slope till it got itself into a little bit of a hollow, and there it sat. . .The second aircraft was still in its place.
T O
R E M E M B E R
RAAF PILOT JIM SANDERCOCK FLYING A BEAVER AIRCRAFT OUT OF MAWSON STATION IN 1959. THE AIRCRAFT WAS LATER DESTROYED ON THE GROUND DESPITE
SANDERCOCK’S
HEROIC EFFORTS TO ‘FLY’ THE UNTETHERED
BEAVER
AGAINST THE BLIZZARD.
Sandercock decided to climb aboard the straying (COURTESY J SANDERCOCK) Beaver, start its engine and taxi it back to where it could be secured. The rudder and aileron chocks were removed, and he began to taxi back up the ice slope while engineers Bell and McIntyre went ahead in the Weasel. As he did so, the wind increased to gale force and Sandercock found himself becoming airborne: There was nowhere I could go. I had no elevator controls to control the up and down movement of the aeroplane, and it was a matter of juggling power against the wind and using the rudder to keep it as much as possible into the wind. . .
By this stage the wind was gusting up to 120 knots, dropping back at times to 70 and 80 knots. Sandercock had committed himself to an untethered aircraft which was becoming airborne, but which he could not fly
207
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
he stress and strain of trying to save the Beaver aircraft may have contributed to the unusual situation confronting Jim Sandercock in January 1960. In the supposedly germ-free environment of Antarctica, he had apparently contracted poliomyelitis! He had, however, visited the Russian ship Ob which called at Mawson on 10 January and may have picked up an infection. By the time the ANARE relief ship Thala Dan arrived on 25 January the diagnosis of a poliomyelitis-like illness had been confirmed. The medical officer, Grahame Budd, faced a potentially disastrous situation. Poliomyelitis is highly infectious, and during the changeover period at Mawson there were 90 people potentially at risk. Any winterers incubating the disease would not develop symptoms until after Thala Dan left for Australia. Budd decided not to alarm Mawson’s population—fear of illness in isolated situations can lead to great
1954–1966
anxiety—but stressed that Sandercock’s illness was ‘a particularly debilitating virus infection’ and scrupulous attention to personal hygiene was essential to prevent further cases. Budd did tell three men about to set out on a long sledge journey about the possibility of polio, and they elected to continue.37 Budd’s next problem was whether to risk allowing Sandercock to embark on Thala Dan, but the alternative was to leave him at Mawson with limited access to physiotherapy. Sandercock tackled the journey strapped down and firmly wedged in his bunk with pillows: I was hospitalised at No. 6 RAAF Hospital, where they treated me for some nine or ten months before they would let me out, back up on my feet. I made a pretty good recovery after that, with physiotherapy. . .resumed light duties back in the RAAF and eventually got back to flying duties.
because his elevators were immobilised. He tried not to think about what would happen when his fuel ran out: The aeroplane was sliding backwards, power was being applied to get it back up the hill, and no decision was being made as to what was going to happen or when the wind was going to stop. I do remember looking at the fuel gauge and calculating that, at the rate I was using fuel, I could do this for 21¼2 hours as long as the fuel hung out, but I wasn’t so sure of myself.
208
As he juggled the nobbled Beaver, his plight was radioed back to the station and a D4 tractor and additional Weasel were driven (with difficulty) up to the area. Meanwhile the other tethered Beaver pulled its ‘dead-men’ out of the ice, and Bell and McIntyre, with great presence of mind, chased the aircraft in a D4 Caterpillar tractor (kept on the plateau for power generation) and dropped its blade on the cables and railway sleepers as the aircraft began to career down the slope. The arrival of the second D4 tractor would serve as anchor for the Beaver being manoeuvred by Sandercock. But OIC John Béchervaise, driving the comparatively light two-tonne Weasel, was worried that it might
1 9 5 9 —
A
Y E A R
T O
R E M E M B E R
not get there before the Beaver’s fuel ran out. The Weasel could not hold the Beaver by itself, but might do so—just—if anchored to iron stakes hammered into the ice. Getting a steel cable to the half-flying aircraft was a tricky and highly dangerous exercise and Sandercock watched their efforts with more than average interest: With great skill and resourcefulness, they placed the [Weasel] ahead of me. . .and I attempted to control the aeroplane while they tied steel cables and worked their way towards the wheels of my aircraft. You’ve got to remember the propeller was spinning at this stage of the game. . .how they did it I don’t know, but they managed to put cables around it and secure the aircraft. It was only after that that I was able to leave the aircraft.
THE REMAINS OF THE RAAF ANTARCTIC FLIGHT’S TWO BEAVER AIRCRAFT, TETHERED NEAR THE ICE AIRSTRIP BEHIND
MAWSON STATION
According to Mawson OIC John Béchervaise, the AFTER HURRICANE-FORCE elated and relieved pilot climbed down from the Beaver WINDS IN DECEMBER 1959. cockpit and greeted his rescuers with the immortal ( J BÉCHERVAISE) 38 words, ‘Ow yer goin’, mate? Orright?’ Sandercock was safe for the moment, but the wind was relentless. All the eight men on the plateau could do was crawl on their hands and knees to a caravan secured nearby and hope that it, too, did not blow away. Sandercock remembers looking out the window ‘and seeing the aeroplane absolutely thrash itself to pieces, like a balloon on a stick’: First it went over on one side and knocked a wing off, then back to the other, and the next thing you’d see a wing go past. Both aeroplanes eventually went that way. The second one tore out of its ice tie-down pit and it too was destroyed. It was only several days later that we were able to go out and recover what we could. They were complete wrecks. We brought the two fuselages back, merely because they contained radio wiring and instruments. . .it was a most unfortunate business.
It was not a good omen for the 1960 flying program when, for the first time, a twin-engined DC3 Dakota aircraft would be used by the RAAF in Antarctica. It would also be parked out on the plateau. The last three days of 1959 elapsed with no further dramatic events. 209
THIRTEEN
ANARE
LIFE
F
rom 1952 to 1963, the Antarctic Division had its headquarters in the Theosophical Building at 187 Collins Street, Melbourne, which also housed ASIO. Those who experienced life at 187 Collins Street regarded it as a vintage period of ANARE history when a zest for the pioneering phase of Australia’s Antarctic activities was reflected in the enthusiasm and dedication of its staff. Law tried to keep the division insulated from the ‘stereotyped attitudes’ of the public service generally: For example, it was a number of years before staff in the Division claimed overtime. Men would gladly work all Christmas Eve or New Year’s Day to get a ship away on time without any concern for payment.1
Des Lugg, who later became the Antarctic Division’s head of polar medicine, believed that the division was regarded as a front for ASIO: When I arrived, ASIO had moved out, but their paraphernalia was still there. . .massive armaments and window shutters and safes. In fact Phil Law kept the Law collection of Antarctic slides in probably the safest safe in Australia.
210
Lugg recalls that the eccentric mix of activities in the Theosophical Building was enhanced by the caretaker, who built himself a yacht on the roof and had it lowered into Collins Street one Sunday morning. Within the Theosophical Building, Phil Law involved himself in all aspects of ANARE operations. He was a ‘hands-on’ director in a way never again possible because of the sheer numbers of staff in later years. Law
A N A R E
T
L I F E
he Antarctic Division shared the Theosophical Building with the Australian intelligence service ASIO—a hive of activity during the Petrov affair in 1954. The first floor belonged to the Theosophical Society and housed their library and meeting room. The lift was driven by a formidable elderly theosophist, Miss Phillips, who was known to try to convert visitors to the doctrine of theosophy during their brief ascent to the upper floors. Susan Ingham was the Antarctic Division’s biology secretary:
We didn’t see much of the ASIO people. Sometimes they used the fire escape instead of the lift—possibly to avoid Miss Phillips! Miss Phillips’ enthusiasm for theosophy was matched by her fanatical campaign against those who dared to smoke in her lift. But the large sign PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SMOKING was often ignored by her passengers, who would conceal their cigarettes as they entered. Des Lugg:
On the ground floor there was a frock shop. The second floor was an up-market hairdresser’s which the Governor’s lady went to. The third floor was the Antarctic Division and the fourth floor was ASIO.
When confronted, they would say: ‘We are refraining from smoking’. So Miss Phillips would drive the lift very slowly to the top so that they were in danger of burning their fingers.
formulated major policy and often chaired the Executive Planning Committee: One of the problems of leading ANARE has always been that of creating a spirit of corporate endeavour and of breaking down the selfish departmental barriers. If departmental loyalties override the allegiance to the umbrella ANARE concept, fragmentation occurs and conflict disrupts the harmony of the enterprise both at the stations and in Australia. . . I found the Planning Committee exceptionally valuable. It helped me generate long-term policy and short-term programs, and when these were decided, it played a powerful role in gaining government acceptance for them. No major step was ever taken without the support of this body.2
The EPC was allowed to ‘wither on the vine’ at the end of 1962 and did not convene again until July 1965. It surfaced briefly in 1966 and then disappeared. Law believed it was never popular with ministers or senior bureaucrats because it had so many powerful and influential people suggesting how Australia’s Antarctic expeditions should be run. No similar advisory body existed until 1979 when ARPAC (Antarctic Research Policy Advisory Committee) was set up to advise the Minister
211
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
for Science and the Environment—then the parent department for ANARE. Law tended to have a combative approach towards the Canberra-based DEA bureaucrats charged with overseeing the Antarctic Division. He was dealing with diplomats often between postings. Most of them were unused to a logistics-based operation like ANARE and accustomed to more deference than they received from ANARE’s director. Law’s personal files reveal constant conflict over budgets and expenses, departmental and personal publicity (Law was well aware of the importance of publicity and public relations to ANARE), and attempts to have his own public service status upgraded. Despite the paper war and few face-to-face meetings—bureaucrats were not keen on return train trips from Canberra to Melbourne in the winter with a change of trains at Albury—Law respected most of the DEA people with whom he dealt, and this was largely reciprocated. Arthur Tange became secretary of the DEA in 1954: Everybody who needs government money. . .has to be a petitioner, it is just in the nature of things. . .[Law] was pretty blunt with me. . .blunt about what he wanted. An enthusiastic advocate for it. . .he naturally tended to see things from the point-of-view of the Antarctic Division and Antarctic expeditions. That’s the sort of enthusiasm that gets people places. It sometimes has to be curbed because of other prior claims for money and staff.3
Once in 1956 Law’s single-mindedness on advancing ANARE’s cause so exasperated James Plimsoll (then Deputy Secretary of the DEA) that he dashed off a handwritten note with an instruction to have it placed on Law’s personal file: I must tell Law one day that, in everything he writes and says to me, he leaves the distinct impression that he does not want to act as a servant of the Government; he wants only to explore the Antarctic.4
212
Until ANARE managed to get permission from the DEA to set up its own supply section, there were endless wrangles. Law recalls one particularly torrid session with a senior Treasury official over the division’s budget. The Treasury man queried the victualling of the stations, saying that a migrant hostel in Canberra could feed its residents for half the figure being claimed for Antarctic expeditioners. He was unimpressed by Law’s explanation that Mawson Station was a little more isolated than a Canberra migrant hostel, and threatened to send a Department of Immigration victualling officer to investigate the division’s food costs:
A N A R E
This was too much for me. I said: ‘If providing strawberry jam instead of plum jam at threepence a tin more will help to keep an Antarctic expeditioner happier, then that is what I will supply. . .The day that any victualling officer arrives to investigate the Antarctic Division’s system I shall send my resignation to the Department of External Affairs.’ I then walked out, followed by my very concerned departmental colleague saying, ‘Phil you shouldn’t speak to senior Treasury officials like that’. However, that was the end of the matter; it was not brought up again during my long period of office.5
Law was ably backed up in his dealings with Canberra by his administrative assistant Jeremiah Donovan and supply officer Dick Thompson, who were experienced public servants and knew how to put up credible, detailed budgets. Thompson understood the two major principles on which ‘hung all the Laws and the Prophets—the Public Service Act and the Treasury Regulations and Instructions’:6
L I F E
LEM MACEY (LEFT) AND DICK THOMPSON DURING CARGO OPERATIONS AT
HEARD ISLAND EN ROUTE TO ESTABLISH MAWSON STATION, 1954. (R THOMPSON)
Phil used to go there [Canberra] and argue and fight and scream and say they were destroying Australian science. They didn’t care about science, or hospitals, or academics—it was the Gladstonian thing of not spending money. So then we used to walk away with the money and Phil began to think I was the administrative marvel. What I did was to subvert the buggers—work out how the system worked, then make it work for you.7
Law not only involved himself with every aspect of ANARE operations, but played an activist role in defining its culture. This included creating rules of behaviour for expeditioners and officers-in-charge, personally selecting winterers, designing Antarctic clothing and buildings, overseeing cultural amenities, creating an ANARE uniform, and even choosing the vintages and varieties of the wine to be sent south. In Melbourne he constantly encouraged informal debates on how things could be improved—procedures streamlined or equipment made
213
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
A
lan Gilchrist, medical officer for the first wintering party on Heard Island in 1948, claims to have introduced the term ‘slushy’ to ANARE. He says the word is defined in some dictionaries as a slang term for ‘cook’s assistant’ on nineteenth century sailing ships, although it is not used by the RAN today. Gilchrist: In the typed instructions composed by Group Captain Campbell for the first expedition to Heard Island it was laid down that the messing officer (medical officer) should maintain a roster of ‘assistant cooks’ so that every
214
1954–1966
member of the expedition would take a turn to help the regular cook during the week and relieve him completely at the weekends.8 Gilchrist posted the roster as soon as the kitchen at Heard was reasonably operative. He titled it ‘Slushy Roster’ because of his professional concern that the correct disposal of all waste and observance of good kitchen hygiene would prevent any infectious diarrhoea. The ‘assistant cooks’ on ANARE stations have been ‘slushies’ ever since.
lighter, faster, safer or more cost effective. Collective food tastings were held to sample and judge rations to go south. To ensure staff were aware of Antarctic conditions, he began a policy of including HQ staff on resupply voyages—a tradition which has endured to the present. The station ‘bibles’—operations manuals—were constantly revised and updated. These documents not only set out the work program for the year, but covered all aspects of station organisation and administration, health, hygiene, field equipment and survival. Geologist Bruce Stinear recalls that in his three expeditions, no one ever queried any of the regulations. One of the rules specified there was to be a roster for ‘slushy’ duties—an expeditioner to help the cook. The only person on station who never acted as slushy was the cook.9 That is still the case. In the classless ANARE society even the officer-in-charge takes his turn at washing up, setting tables and sweeping out. Jack Field, a cook who wintered five times with ANARE, agreed that the slushy roster was a great leveller for the ‘boffins’—scientists: ‘They [the scientists] had to clean up the camp and do all the painting, not just the ordinary fellows. . .so it was an equaliser.’ Each expeditioner was issued with a personal manual covering all aspects of ANARE service from pre-departure procedures and use of Antarctic clothing to advice on interpersonal relations. The OIC had a confidential leader’s manual which included hints on leadership and how to cope with personality problems that might occur during the year. One of Law’s innovations that did not stand the test of time was the ANARE uniform, designed to be worn at formal mess dinners in the
A N A R E
L I F E
Antarctic and to give a smart corporate look to departing ANARE personnel on the wharf. The second version was a green gaberdine jacket with a belt, leather buttons, four pockets and matching trousers. Peter Lancaster Brown, about to sail to Heard Island in 1952, described it as a cross between a ski suit and a prisoner’s outfit. Others likened it to a coach driver’s uniform. Law was also determined that there would be an adequate library for expeditioners (including an Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘to settle any arguments’), a wide selection of gramophone records, and a stock of 16mm feature films. He thought it particularly important to have polar literature in the station libraries. Medical officer Grahame Budd recalls: Whenever he was overseas he would pick up second-hand copies of the polar classics, and both Heard Island and Mawson had marvellous collections—first editions of Shackleton and Mawson. We didn’t have much time to read, but when you do, it is a very good place to read about your predecessors.10
Law gave a lot of thought to ANARE policy on alcohol. There had been some difficulties with the ‘ration per man’ system in 1948 and 1949, and with hard liquor. In 1950 he forbade spirits and brought in a system where the OIC would issue a rationed amount of sherry, dry red and white flagon wines for evening meals: On Saturday nights (‘ding’ nights), good quality bottled dinner wines would replace flagon wines. After dinner on such nights there would be port, and for the rest of the evening during which cine films would be shown, beer would be available as well.11
The home brewing of beer was introduced to augment the limited stocks of bottled beer that could be taken south. The only exception to the rule on spirits concerned the officers-in-charge. Law contacted the chief distiller of CSR at Bundaberg in Queensland and arranged for a special brew of rum at 180 proof strength that would, when mixed with an equal quantity of water, be of standard strength. The OP rum was stored in specially constructed two-gallon oak casks: I then gave one cask to each OIC, and advised him to use it. . .for semi private occasions and not for general station use. The casks were beautiful and the rum of quality I have never tasted before or since. This experiment proved well worthwhile, the OICs appreciated this special privilege, and so far as I know, it was never abused.12
The tradition of a general ration of supplied liquor has continued although winterers are now permitted to take down personal stocks as
215
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
well. In the 1950s Australia was not a very multi-cultural country, and wine was regarded with suspicion by many Australians. Grahame Budd recalls that wine bars were places where ‘old plonks’ and ‘deros’ would go: On one occasion when we had some nice wine on the table [at Heard Island] one of the men looked at me very sternly and said: ‘Jeez Doc, I likes me drop of piss as well as the next man, but I draws the line at plonk!’13
Unwilling to impose his own sophisticated tastes in wine on the stations, Law instituted wine tastings at the division with those who had wintered and those who were about to, to get a consensus. He felt that his beer and wine policy paid dividends. Heavy consumption of spirits on Antarctic stations had led to quite awkward and dangerous situations. One man formed the habit of charging out and smashing the cinema screen down on Saturday nights: Another. . .would wander off outside on his own and pass out in a snow drift. When he was missed a search would be instituted and he would be rescued, half frozen, and put to bed. Still another man had the habit, when heavily intoxicated, of piling papers on his bunk and setting fire to them. In an environment where fire is the greatest single hazard, this was a frightening performance.14
216
As an administrator, Law was demanding and insistent on punctuality and on deadlines being met. If they were not, his response was always controlled—curt, abrupt or dismissive. Those who worked with him for ten years or more could never recall seeing him angry and he had a genuine ‘open door’ policy for any staff member who wanted to see him.15 Dick Thompson believed that Law added ‘an atmosphere, a dimension of excitement’ into what was happening by having everyone involved one way or the other. ‘You had no doubt you were working in a very, very interesting organisation compared to elsewhere in the Public Service.’16 Those who worked with Law at the Antarctic Division HQ in Melbourne believed he did not hold grudges against those who, for one reason or another, had failed his expectations. Having selected his team, he let them get on with their jobs, and backed them with the kind of loyalty he expected (and got) in return.17 This tolerance did not extend to expeditioners who had caused trouble or failed to do their jobs properly on ANARE stations. It was widely believed that those individuals were logged in Law’s mental black book, and were never selected to go to Antarctica again.18 Some were not even named in the official list of expeditioners. ANARE’s first leader, Stuart Campbell, had selected the 1948
A N A R E
L I F E
expeditioners through a combination of the ‘old boy network’ and a belief that anyone who applied to go to Antarctica ‘would be the right type anyway’. As soon as Law became director he established a formal application process which began with Australia-wide advertisements and ended with a personal interview before a panel. Law chaired these interview panels and effectively selected all ANARE expeditioners himself. He was impressed by applicants who were keen bushwalkers or skiers and who he thought would have some appreciation of what the elements in Antarctica could unleash. He often approved an applicant on a ‘gut feeling’, but admits some of his early judgments were flawed: I used to be impressed with enthusiasm. . .the sort of man who would say, ‘I will do any job. . .so long as you take me’. I thought that was a wonderful sign of enthusiasm. . . . Antarctica is so isolated, so many things in life are removed from your environment [that] really all you have down there is your job. If you don’t like that job, or you’re not good at it, your chance of success is heavily reduced. So the most important thing, I think, in picking an Antarctic person is that he should love his job, because he’s got to be at it fourteen or sixteen hours a day for a whole year. . .And if he’s good at it then he gets the respect of the other men, regardless of his personality, and that’s a plus.
On several occasions, in the 1950s and 1960s, ships were able to evacuate expeditioners with psychological and medical problems from sub-Antarctic islands which could be reached comparatively easily in ice-free seas. The Antarctic continent was not so accessible. The tragic situation faced by Henry Brandt at Wilkes in 1959, following his mental breakdown and isolation in a makeshift cell for six months, caused Minister for External Affairs Richard Casey to instruct Law to arrange psychological tests for ANARE expeditioners before they were selected: Casey had the simplistic view that you develop a questionnaire with thirty questions and you give that to every applicant, and the sheep go out one door and the goats go out the other. . .
Law consulted the Professor of Psychology at Melbourne University, Oscar Oeser, and asked him to design a suitable test for choosing Antarctic men: He said: ‘Well, Law, what are the qualities of the men that are successful?’ In other words, how do you define the qualities of a good expeditioner? I said: ‘That’s what I want you to tell me.’ ‘No’, he said. ‘You tell me what they are and I’ll design a test for them.’
217
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Even if ANARE did design a test, Law realised he did not have the budget to fly a psychologist around Australia every year to conduct interviews with prospective expeditioners. Oeser suggested he approach the Australian Army Psychological Service for assistance. He did and Lieutenant Colonel George Owens was selected to carry out the project. Owens was delighted to be involved: It was good for the army. . .because it would also help us to get some insight and get some scientific work done in relation to the performance of people in isolation. . .which was becoming more evident in these days with long range penetration. . .and small groups operating in isolated territories.
Owens steeped himself in Antarctic literature and accounts of the activities of Mawson, Shackleton and Scott, and began travelling to Antarctica on the annual resupply voyages, interviewing expeditioners on the spot, and debriefing them on the way home. (This procedure is still carried out by army psychologists.) The only published material available at that time on the psychology of Antarctic service was a paper by Law to the Medical Journal of Australia, 20 February 1960, ‘Personality Problems in Antarctica’. In it, Law identified some of the difficulties faced by a group of men surviving for a year in close proximity and total isolation, without the company of women, and in a community ranging from biologists and upper atmosphere physicists, through to diesel mechanics, carpenters and cooks. Although ‘trifling personal peculiarities’ could cause mounting exasperation and tension, there were many compensations in Antarctic life—apart from the adventure and magnificent scenery. He wrote: The existence of an expedition member is socially uncomplicated. . .there is no money, and therefore no financial anxiety. One has no concern about financial status—the Joneses have been left far behind. . .There is no time wasted in travel, social engagements or in holidays and weekends. A scientist can accomplish two years work in one at an Antarctic station.19
218
Although Law never wintered on an ANARE station he was aware of one of the greatest dangers facing an isolated group—the forming of cliques—and the need for the officer-in-charge to keep that situation in check, while not joining any faction himself. He also charted the entirely predictable graph of morale at a wintering station. Morale is down at the beginning, during the uncertainty of the changeover period, with the former party still there. It surges to its highest point as soon as the ship sails, for about two months, then dips as the long winter nights, lack of
A N A R E
L I F E
T
he advent of midwinter, the night of the solstice, has been a high point of celebration for all polar wintering expeditions since the era of Scott, Shackleton and Mawson. It is an occasion usually marked by a formal dinner, an elaborate menu, special wines and spirits hoarded for the occasion and speeches. As the evening progresses formality is abandoned. There may be recitations, songs, burlesque sketches and almost invariably a fancy dress party. At Scott’s last midwinter dinner in his hut at Cape Evans in 1911, Admiral Sir Edward Evans later wrote of the ‘only Antarctic dance we enjoyed. . .I remember dancing with the cook whilst Oates danced with Anton’. Fueled by brandy punch, the cook, Clissold, so far forgot himself as to call Scott ‘good old Truegg’. (Truegg was the name of a dried egg powder used in cakes and puddings.) Scott’s response to this indiscretion is not recorded. Men dressing as women on these all-male midwinter occasions has been an enduring Antarctic tradition enthusiastically perpetuated by many ANARE winterers over the years. Photographs taken at these occasions feature
AN INTREPID EXPEDITIONER ALAN MCNEILL DIVES INTO SUB-ZERO WATERS FOR A MIDSUMMER SWIM AT DAVIS, 1969. (R MCLEAN) A MIDWINTER PARTY AT MAWSON STATION, 1960. FROM LEFT: TERRY ‘CHEDDAR’ ELKINS, JIM KICHENSIDE AND GEORGE CRESSWELL. (G NEWTON) INTREPID ANARE EXPEDITIONER BILL BREEZE PADDLING HIS HOME-MADE RECREATIONAL CANOE AT CASEY, 1976. ( W BREEZE) ➤
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
bearded ‘ladies’ with improbably prominent chests and hairy legs appearing under extremely short skirts. While psychologists might be tempted to theorise about repressed homosexuality, ANARE winterers regard it simply as a joyous joke. Or as David Luders, an OIC at Casey and Mawson in the early 1970s put it: ‘I don’t think the thought of homosexuality crossed our minds.’ Luders was aware, however, of a general level of frustration at the lack of women on the stations. He can only recall one occasion when that manifested itself in any overt way during a midwinter celebration: At around midnight one of the fellows came into the recreation room dressed as a woman. His girlfriend had given him a wig. He had a pinkish complexion and he only had a very small black moustache. He had a miniskirt and stockings on, and the wig transformed him into a passable female. His/her unexpected arrival stopped the party in its tracks, and a great shout went up.
220
1954–1966
Luders was aware of a deal of horseplay and coarse male jokes, but not long afterwards he was alarmed to see the ‘girl’ lying on his back, with another expeditioner miming sexual intercourse with him. Although it was a burlesque, the OIC felt things were getting out of hand: I was fairly famous for unusual ways of dealing with situations and I turned around to a water fire extinguisher on the wall and sprayed them. They wouldn’t speak to me for three days afterwards. But I did that because it broke the tension. It certainly made them seem foolish. . .it gave people something to laugh about, because if I’d given them a dressing down everyone would have felt uncomfortable. A midwinter swim has become a more robust tradition for the extremely hardy—some of whom have to smash a hole in the coastal sea ice to indulge. The urges to celebrate the longest night, looking forward to the return of the sun, are powerful indeed.
sunshine and the need to stay indoors lower morale. The graph rises when the sun returns and the expeditioners prepare for summer field trips. Another high point is reached in the last two months when the prospect of relief and a return home acts as a spur to finish uncompleted programs. By the 1960s there was a realisation that the stations needed a core of solid professionals who just went about their work without flamboyance and great displays of ego. In 1960 Law bravely attempted to define the qualities of a good expeditioner as someone who was good at their job, unselfish (willing to pitch in and help in general station work), tolerant, capable of self control, optimistic, possessing ‘stickability’ (in carrying a work program through), and with a sense of adventure and curiosity. He believed that whether an expeditioner was married or unmarried was not particularly relevant and nor was age.20
A N A R E
L I F E
As the army-related psychological screening began in the early 1960s Law and Owens found they had less flexibility in vetting the personalities of the specialist scientists, although it was hoped a preoccupation with their work would overshadow any anti-social qualities. Owens believed that made it even more important to have maintenance and support staff who were confident, energetic, motivated and conscientious: Most of the mechanics had their funny little ways of making motors work under any circumstances and their acceptability to the other members was based on their ability to make those damn machines run, and to keep the electricity going.
It is universally accepted in ANARE culture that a happy and competent cook makes a good station. Law remembers receiving a requisitioning cable in Melbourne near the end of one year reading: SEND ONE GOOD COOK, PACK WELL IN COTTON WOOL.21 Stefan Csordas, medical officer on Macquarie Island, who spent three winters there in the late 1950s, faced a potentially serious situation when an expedition cook broke three front teeth from his upper denture: As he was a little bit on the alcoholic side, I thought that having a cook who can’t eat and doesn’t have enough to drink, will [give us] a horrible time. So I had to improvise something for him.
With typical ANARE ingenuity Csordas ground down an elephant seal’s tusk with a pedal dental drill, repaired the cook’s dentures and preserved group happiness. In the 1950s Csordas, like the other ANARE medical officers, had half a day’s training at the Royal Melbourne Dental Hospital to help cope with dental emergencies. In later years this was increased to two weeks after it became clear that doctors in Antarctica spent quite a lot of their professional time attending to cracked or broken fillings and other dental work. Most expeditioners knew their medical officers had only rudimentary knowledge of dentistry and visited them reluctantly. At Mawson in 1956 Don Dowie experimented with a pedal-operated drill which sometimes went unexpectedly into reverse, generating heat, and pain to his unfortunate patient. Once, while Dowie was taking his turn at cooking on Sunday, he attempted ice cream and caramel sauce. But the sauce turned into toffee. It was the chewiest stuff you’ve ever seen in your life, and fillings were coming out like machine-gun bullets—you could hear them popping! The next morning I had a line-up outside the surgery for dental work
221
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
while I put in temporary fillings. I’m quite sure they thought I’d done it on purpose to get a bit of practice.
Often expeditioners (and cooks) had their own ways of curing individuals of annoying mannerisms which disrupted the community. Bob Dingle was a weather observer at Macquarie in 1956 and remembers one winterer being obsessive about his food: He would examine all dishes put in front of him for little bits of hair. . .and if he found something he would hold it up and expose it to the whole group, saying: ‘Look, here’s another short and curly’.
NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION IN ANTARCTICA. MEDICAL OFFICER PETER GORMLY DRILLS HIS OWN TOOTH ABSCESS. (COURTESY P GORMLY)
This upset the cook, Jim Morgan, who waited till someone had their hair cut, then collected the results. The next day he baked individual fruit pies and completely filled one with hair:
So when this fellow faced up to the counter for his dessert he was given the hair pie, with a nice layer of crust over it, smothered in custard. Everybody else in the party had been warned this was going to happen, so when he got back to the table and put his spoon into the pie, all the hair fluffed out. . .He was certainly cured from ever mentioning again that he’d found a hair in his tucker.
Sometimes serious tensions would build up between individuals to a degree not always evident to the rest of the party or the OIC. RAAF pilot Doug Leckie wintered at Mawson in 1956 and late one night—as duty night watchman—walked into the mess to check that the fires in the kitchen stove were safe. He found two young men on the kitchen floor with their hands around each other’s throats. Leckie was sure they were out to do each other in:
222
I had to break them apart and order them off to bed because [I think] they’d have killed each other if I hadn’t turned up at that psychological moment. They were very serious and dead silent—dead silent. . .From then on they kept apart and had very little to do with each other.
A N A R E
L I F E
I
t has been estimated that the chance of a cerebral haemorrhage occurring in a small group of fit men is one in ten thousand. Yet that was the situation facing Russel Pardoe, the ANARE medical officer at Mawson in 1961. On 2 November 1961, the station’s senior diesel mechanic Alan Newman collapsed after lifting a bag of coal briquettes on to his back, suffering a haemorrhage from an artery at the base of the brain.22 Over the next 27 days his condition deteriorated, and Pardoe, who had been consulting with a Melbourne neurosurgeon by radio-telegram, was advised that if the pressure inside Newman’s skull was not relieved, he would almost certainly die. Pardoe had no previous experience in neurosurgery. Two Mawson expeditioners had attended the Royal Melbourne Hospital for two weeks before sailing for Antarctica. The cook, Ted Giddings, had been trained in the duties of a theatre sister, and the geophysicist Rod Hollingsworth as an assistant anaesthetist. Pardoe was given advice by cable from Melbourne on what he should do, but essential equipment had to be manufactured first. Pardoe: With the aid of some illustrations in an instrument catalogue, a brain cannula 6 centimetres in length and 2 millimetres in internal diameter was improvised from a dental dry-air bulb syringe. The tip of the syringe was closed with silver solder and a lateral opening was filed in the shaft. . .A second dental dry-air syringe was modified to make a sucker.23 In order to test these and other instruments needed for the operation, a Weddell seal was shot in the skull with a .38 revolver, and ‘the resultant cerebral haematoma was aspirated
RUSSIANS TO THE RESCUE. ALAN NEWMAN, SUFFERING FROM A CEREBRAL HAEMORRHAGE,
MAWSON STATION IN A RUSSIAN ILYUSHIN 18 AIRCRAFT ON 30 DECEMBER 1961. (R WYERS)
WAS EVACUATED FROM
by the technique to be used on the patient’. On 29 November, 28 days after Newman became ill, the Mawson surgical ‘team’ gathered in the main room of the surgery hut. Pardoe drilled through Newman’s skull and managed to aspirate some of the blood clot and relieve the intracranial pressure. However, Newman’s condition deteriorated further, and a second operation repeated this procedure on 3 December. This time Newman’s condition improved. But on 16 December he collapsed again, and by 23 December Pardoe was planning to operate once more. Newman rallied a little, and the operation was postponed. At this stage Pardoe was not optimistic about his patient’s chances. The relief ship ➤
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
was not due at Mawson until mid-January 1962 and would not be back in Australia until March after a long, rough sea voyage. However, in late December it was learned that two long-range Soviet aircraft were making an inaugural flight from Moscow to the Russian Antarctic station at Mirny, via Australia and New Zealand. The Antarctic Division asked for Soviet aid which was willingly given. Pardoe accompanied his critically ill patient on the flight, leaving Mawson on 30 December in a Russian Ilyushin 18 aircraft (not the long-range aircraft that had first been discussed), and
224
1954–1966
flying to Mirny—then on to the Americans at McMurdo, who flew Pardoe and Newman to Christchurch, New Zealand, in a Hercules. Ten days after leaving Mawson Station, Newman was admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, where he was operated on again. Remarkably, he made a complete recovery, apparently suffering no intellectual impairment when he was tested several years later. He went back to work and resumed a normal life. On 1 January 1963 Russel Pardoe was awarded an MBE for his remarkable medical efforts in Antarctica.
No murders have occurred on any Australian stations in half a century of ANARE operations, although records do not reveal whether any were planned. The total isolation of wintering parties in the early years was emphasised by the problem of communication with the outside world. Radio transmissions between ANARE stations and Australia were difficult, due to ionospheric disturbances and auroral activity, and all official correspondence was hand keyed in Morse code. Radio blackouts could occur for some days at a time, and even the Morse transmissions were frequently interrupted. Great care was taken in the selection of the radio operators and communications personnel because the radio shack tended to be a social hub and even though much of the incoming administrative cables came in code, there was always the chance of finding out something from the outside world. George Owens said they tried to select radio operators who were sociable and amenable—but also able to keep their mouths shut and not pass on sensitive or personal material relating to other expeditioners.24 Personal messages to and from Antarctica were transmitted by Morse radiogram through the Overseas Telecommunication Commission’s beam radio stations at special rates. The cost to each expeditioner was subsidised, with a free of charge wordage allocated each month. Messages which exceeded this limit were charged to the expeditioner in Australia. Phil Law quickly realised that the free communications allowance was inadequate, and that winterers would face a heavy financial burden when they returned to Australia:
A N A R E
L I F E
Trevor Heath [ANARE’s first administrative officer] had the idea of using Bentley’s Complete Phrase Code, an international code for cable and radio communications.25
A supplementary code of five-letter words was drawn up specially designed for ANARE, with useful phrases like: YOGIP YASEL YAYIR YIHKE
Please send details of bank account. We’ve just had a blizzard. Fine snow has penetrated through small crevices in the buildings. I have grown a beard which is generally admired.26
Any personal communications were known as ‘Whizzers’, after the much used code grouping WYSSA—‘All my love darling’. While the five-letter code was useful for keeping down cable costs, it was not well suited to intimate communication. Geoff Butterworth wintered at Wilkes in 1963 and at Mawson in 1966. He and his wife Fay prearranged a more personal channel of communications as well as the conventional messages like ‘Kids are well’. The key to this intimacy was the code grouping YOHNA—‘My message is contained in the following quotation’. Fay and Geoff each had a copy of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of Verse: We went through that, and boy, there’s a lot of good stuff in that book of poetry. We really kept ourselves going for the whole year with that. And my husband wasn’t a big poetry reader, but he knew Palgrave by the time he came home.
In 1949, realising how important personal cables were in maintaining morale at ANARE stations, Phil Law appointed Mrs Mynwe McDonald as cables officer to oversee not only communications, but all kinds of personal problems concerning expeditioners and their partners or families in Australia: Mrs Mac, as she was always called, reminded men of their wives’ birthdays, ordered gifts and anniversary flowers (often at her own expense), smoothed out misunderstandings, visited wives in times of family misfortune, and operated on a wide involvement that went far beyond the call of duty. I cannot imagine how we could have managed without her.27
One morning Mrs Mac received a cable from Sydney to be sent on to Antarctica: BY THE TIME YOU RECEIVE THIS I SHALL HAVE
225
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
R
adio Australia’s Mary Adams recalls some difficult diplomatic moments. Once she inadvertently read out a letter from a lover and received an angry phone call from the expeditioner’s wife. Mary believes ‘Calling Antarctica’ broke new ground in radio: I think we broadcast the first ever birth on radio. The wife insisted that the birth be recorded and we took up a good quarter-hour of a program with somebody going ‘UURGH! ERGH!’ and the baby was actually born on Radio Australia. The guys asked for that to be replayed two or three times, so I can only assume it was important to them.
1954–1966
COMMITTED SUICIDE. Law told her to be on the night train to Sydney. Fay Butterworth later wrote: Arriving in Sydney next morning, she hurried out to the address and found the house empty. The occupant, a neighbour informed her, had gone off to work. She settled down to wait. Toward evening a smart young woman came through the front gate and Mrs Mac rose to her feet and introduced herself explaining why she had come. The woman was astounded. Coming all that way! But yes, thank you, she had quite recovered from her attack of midwinter blues.28
Mynwe McDonald ‘mothered’ ANARE expeditioners for nineteen years. In January 1967 Shelagh Robinson took over that role until her retirement in 1981. The Antarctic Division still continues this practice. Since 1987 Mary Mulligan has been the expeditioner training and family liaison officer at the division, which adheres to strict privacy legislation requirements. The only other contact with the outside world (apart from occasional amateur radio transmissions) was via short wave broadcasts from the ABC’s Radio Australia. ‘Calling Antarctica’, a special program for ANARE winterers, was first broadcast in 1948 and ended in the mid 1980s after satellite links revolutionised Antarctic communications and expeditioners could simply pick up the phone and ring home. Always compered by women, ‘Calling Antarctica’ relayed letters, personal messages and request records. The presenters most associated with the program were Jocelyn Terry and Mary Adams, and their voices and personalities were appreciated by communities of lonely men. Mawson OIC John Béchervaise wrote in his diary on 15 April 1955:
226
At a quarter to three, for the first time since our arrival, the Radio Australia program ‘Calling Antarctica’ came in ‘loud and clear’. Jocelyn Terry’s pleasant, youthful voice, gave us news of home, a brief, well made summary of my own press report and two or three ‘request’ records (asked for by men on Macquarie Island).
A N A R E
L I F E
It is good not to take radio for granted. Outside the surgery windows, grey drift ebbed and flowed and with it all vision of other buildings and the world. On the windows, miraculous silver palms were etched in frost. . .and Jocelyn went on talking, thousands of miles beyond the racing drift. . .where it was already night. Little items of news—the arrival in Melbourne of the Italian Opera Company, new parking laws and so on, were laced with personal messages. Men sat down to tea with new and pleasant conversational topics.29
Even in 1960 Phil Law argued that there was some merit in not having too much communication between those wintering in the Antarctic and the home front. At Wilkes Station the United States authorities had a system whereby an expeditioner could make voice contact home through amateur radio enthusiasts: Some men who have spoken directly by radio-telephone to their wives tend to be disturbed and depressed for several days after the initial exhilaration of the personal communication fades. Also there are wives whose regular telephone conversations to their isolated husbands would degenerate into catalogues of petty worries which the husband could just as well do without.30
Only men wintered at ANARE stations until 1976 on Macquarie Island and 1981 on the Antarctic continent. In 1960 Phil Law wrote in his paper ‘Personality Problems in Antarctica’ that ‘little was known of the sexual disturbances and abnormalities caused by the deprivation of women’s company’: In our experience, men seem to accept the absence of any sex life realistically; their attitude can be summed up by the sentence: ‘There is nothing you can do about it, so the less you think of it the better.’31
Law believed this philosophical acceptance of Antarctic celibacy was partly due to the ‘absence of constant sexual stimulants which abound in a civilised environment’—pretty girls, advertisements, sexy magazines and films—and speculated that much sexual energy was sublimated in hard work: Men do miss wives and sweethearts, and at times they miss them desperately—particularly in moments of emotional stress, and particularly when family events at home worry them; but for the greater part of the time the men appear untroubled . One wonders whether the cold climate provides some sedative influence.32
227
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
OUTDOOR CHRISTMAS MAWSON, 1957. SURVEYOR MORRIE
CELEBRATIONS AT
FISHER WAITED NINE MONTHS FOR THE CHANCE TO WEAR HIS DINNER SUIT, WHILE THE BEMUSED PENGUIN IS ALWAYS FORMALLY DRESSED.
THE SECOND PENGUIN (LEFT) SEEN LEAVING BAR ANTARCTICA IS A NON-DRINKER. (AAD ARCHIVES)
228
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
In 1960 Law wrote that he was not aware of any overt cases of homosexuality in the all-male Antarctic communities, but some incipient tendencies had been noted: For example, one older man could not resist running his fingers through the blond hair of a young, good-looking lad each time he passed him, which finally provoked the youth into threatening to cut his throat if he did it again. I heard that one man—an ex-seaman—did some soliciting on one occasion, but there were no takers.33
The showing of feature films provided some outlet for sexual frustrations. As the plots and stories became well known, winterers would shout bawdy interjections, or turn the sound down completely and provide their own dialogue. Often the most turgid and predictable feature films, newsreels or magazines were re-edited in an unexpected and bizarre manner. Trevior Boyd, who wintered at Macquarie Island in 1950, remembers there was a lot of general talk about women and sex, and at times ‘we used to stop the film and burn the lamps out in the projector to examine women closely’.
A N A R E
L I F E
Sometimes the films had a markedly civilising effect on the community. Pride and Prejudice was the most popular film shown on Macquarie Island in 1950, and the entire station took on the elaborate manners and courtly language of Jane Austen’s genteel nineteenth century England. Trevior Boyd recalls that asking someone to pass the butter at dinner would elicit the invariable response: ‘Such affability, such graciousness—you overwhelm me!’ When Law arrived to relieve the station he was at a loss to account for the quaint mid-Victorian quality of the men’s everyday dialogue until he was told of the profound influence of Pride and Prejudice. All wintering communities were exclusively male for the first 29 years of ANARE. Phil Law said he tried to have a woman sent to Macquarie Island in 1953, when a physicist engaged to carry out auroral observations at Hurd Point on the southern tip of the island asked to take his wife: ‘As he would be spending most of the year isolated in a small hut, I sought permission from my Department, but it was refused.’34 The first women to visit an Australian station officially did so in the summer of 1959–60, at Macquarie Island. Susan Ingham, biology secretary at the Antarctic Division, claims part credit for the breakthrough when she marched into Phil Law’s office and said: ‘I want to go to Macquarie Island on the changeover, please.’ Rather to my surprise, because I thought it might take a long campaign, he said: ‘Well, it might be possible. We’d have to get a cabin of four.’
Other women had applied—Mary Gillham (an English botanist) and Isobel Bennett and Hope Macpherson who were both biologists interested in the geographical distribution of species in coastal tidal zones. Bennett and Macpherson were experienced travellers, used to sailing on coastal vessels in rough seas, getting in and out of small boats and landing on small islands and remote coasts around southern Australia and Bass Strait. The announcement about the women on 24 November 1959 triggered a media flurry of reporters and photographers and a newsreel film crew. Susan Ingham: I did an interview which was rather fun. Later we successfully foiled an attempt by the [Melbourne] Herald to photograph our underwear—saying firmly that it was just ordinary winter stuff. Women’s Weekly came, and Woman’s Day wanted a story on our return. In fact it got to such a point that my bread shop (who didn’t know my name or where I worked) inquired if I was a good sailor and my dentist wrote ‘Bon Voyage’ on a receipted bill.
229
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
THE FIRST WOMEN MEMBERS OF ANARE TO VISIT MACQUARIE ISLAND PREPARE TO SAIL ON THALA DAN IN DECEMBER 1959. FROM LEFT: SUSAN INGHAM, MARY GILLHAM, HOPE MACPHERSON, ISOBEL BENNETT. (COURTESY I BENNETT) NEL LAW, SEEN WATCHING A CHESS GAME AT MAWSON IN FEBRUARY 1961, WAS THE FIRST WOMAN TO VISIT AN
ANARE
CONTINENTAL STATION.
(R MERRICK)
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
Isobel Bennett, one of Australia’s foremost marine scientists, was unamused when she was told during an interview with Phil Law at the Antarctic Division that ‘on our behaviour rested the future of our sex with regard to ANARE voyages’.35 But all the women were aware that the spotlight was on them. The voyage in Thala Dan was unexceptional and the scientists suffered the usual frustrations at Macquarie of weather-interrupted sessions of field work snatched when possible during the unloading and resupply operations. The visit was productive. Between them the first women to accompany an ANARE expedition produced two books on general aspects of the island and a series of scientific papers on various aspects of island biology. Their presence was not immediately noted. Although all male members of the Macquarie Island changeover party were named in a report written for the Polar Record by Phil Law, the women’s contribution was summarised: Four women biologists carried out work in littoral ecology, the effects of nesting sea birds on plants, and the ANARE bird and seal programme.36
The women must have behaved impeccably. Isobel Bennett later wrote:
230
On that initial trip, it behoved the four women to tread warily. We were invaders in a man’s realm and were regarded with some suspicion. . .The venture inevitably made headlines. Today [1971] our presence on a polar ship south-bound for Macquarie does not even warrant a press mention, and we have become an accepted part in the scheme of things—though only for changeover voyages.37
A N A R E
L I F E
The distinction of being the first woman to visit an Australian continental Antarctic station went to Nel Law, Phil Law’s wife, who sailed on Magga Dan to Mawson and Oates Land in February and March 1961. She departed amid some controversy. Mrs Law was invited on Magga Dan as a guest of the Lauritzen Line and the captain, but when the story got into the press there was resentment by journalists who had been denied access to Antarctic resupply voyages due to lack of available berths. The DEA became involved and Ralph Harry, First Assistant Secretary, telephoned Law in Perth on 24 January—the day of sailing: I said I thought we had to consider. . .we had refused facilities to the press and that other personnel on the expedition would not be able to have their wives with them. He said that he supposed that in the circumstances he should not take his wife.38
Senator John Gorton, representing the Minister for External Affairs, came to the rescue at the last moment. He went to the Fremantle docks to farewell Magga Dan and saw Nel Law ‘walking disconsolately up and down the wharf’: Phil Law introduced me to his wife, and I said, ‘Well, you are going, no doubt’. She said she couldn’t go, and I said ‘Why can’t you go?’ She said, ‘[External] Affairs won’t let me’. And I said, ‘Well go. Get on the bloody boat and go now.’
Gorton’s support was needed in the coming weeks when questions were asked in Federal Parliament about ‘the presence of a woman’ aboard Magga Dan. The press had a field day after it was reported Magga Dan was caught in pack ice for eleven days near Chick Island off the coast of Wilkes Land after servicing an automatic weather station there. ICE GRIPS SHIP: WOMAN ABOARD—MP’S TO ASK QUESTIONS trumpeted the Sydney Telegraph.39 On 18 March the Canberra Times reported the ship ‘caught in the jaws of crushing ice’. Then: ‘Magga Dan, which has a woman on board, has freed itself from the perilous massed ice packs off Chick Island’.40 Phil Law’s official voyage report did not mention his wife’s presence on the voyage. An accomplished artist, Nel Law produced a magnificent series of oil and water colour paintings of her Antarctic voyage. Her visit to Antarctica had been a milestone of sorts, but had not ‘broken the ice’ for her sex in ANARE service. Twenty years were to elapse before an Australian woman expeditioner wintered on an Australian continental station. 231
FOURTEEN
FILLING
IN THE MAP
W
hen Australia established its first permanent settlement—Mawson Station—on the Antarctic continent, there was little accurate detail available of the coastline and interior features of Australia’s vast Antarctic claim. During his time as director of the Antarctic Division from 1949 to 1966 Phillip Law oversaw a program of basic exploration to fill in the dotted lines on more than 5000 kilometres of unexplored coastline and to locate and fix the mountain ranges and peaks breaking through the Antarctic ice cap in the interior of the AAT. Law and the surveyors, geologists, pilots and other ANARE expeditioners shared in the delight of raw adventure and discovery during these pioneering years. But exploration had to be fitted in between the essential resupply and changing over of personnel each summer.1 Law called it ‘Hit and Run Exploration’:
232
You’d sail along the coast generally in lousy weather, just praying that when you got to a certain place you’d get that odd spot of one or two days of good weather. You’d hang around until you got it. . .then you’d have everyone on board drilled on what they were to do, with people allocated to various duties. The surveyor would go here and he’d get an astrofix. The geomagnetician would go there and he would take his geomagnetic observations, and you’d have a number of men deputed to make a census of all the birds on the island, the flying birds and the penguins. So the fine day would dawn. We’d anchor the ship immediately. As soon as the anchor dropped the boats would go, and the pontoons full of men and they’d land. Within half an hour everyone would be working
F
I L L I N G
furiously, and they’d work around the clock without stopping for food or anything more than cups of tea and biscuits—no sleep and 24 hours’ daylight—just go for your life until the weather broke.
I N
T H E
M A P
AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC TERRITORY AND NEARBY NATIONAL CLAIMS.
Each summer Law designated new areas of the AAT coast to be explored. He regarded the investigation of the Oates Land coast—on the extreme eastern end of the AAT close to the TransAntarctic Mountains—as the most rewarding and exciting of his career. On 20 February 1959 Magga Dan reached a large pool of open water 90 kilometres from the Oates Land coast, and an Auster aircraft was lowered
233
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
I
n 1956 Dick Thompson, ANARE’s supply officer from 1950 to 1960, was directing the unloading of equipment from Kista Dan to make scientific observations on Lewis Island, a small lump of rock near Adélie Land. Incoming OIC at Mawson, Bill Bewsher, Law and a New Zealand observer, Harry Ayers, decided to practise some climbing on an ice cliff nearby, across a stretch of open water. They were roped together, but only had two ice axes. Law said he would manage without one. The three men were out of sight of the ship as they began to climb. Ayers (an accomplished alpinist) was leading, followed by Law and Bewsher. Law heard Bewsher call out: Mountaineers are taught that if you fall, you scream immediately to let everyone else know. Luckily Bill called, but I was too busy. I thought, ‘God, I haven’t got an ice axe to belay myself with. The best I can do is squat down in the step that Harry had dug, get the rope around my shoulder and try and belay him.’ Law was plucked from his position and he and Bewsher fell helplessly down the ice cliff which dropped sheer into the sea.
1954–1966
As he fell he analysed the situation: ‘Well, I guess that’s finished it. Harry won’t know we’ve gone, and when he comes out also that’ll be the three of us. We’ll finish in the water, there’s no place to scramble out, and no one knows we’re here and we’ve got five or ten minutes and then we’re gone.’ Bill screamed again [as I fell] and Harry, who was very well used to taking amateurs up Mount Cook, didn’t even look to see what was happening, he just banged his ice axe into the side of the cliff, wound the rope around and lay down on it, and he held the two of us. And then he brought us up one at a time. ‘Doing a Boys’ Own Annual’ was Thompson’s later comment about this escapade, which might well have ended Law’s career then and there and killed his companions. Yet a certain amount of more calculated risk-taking was endemic in Antarctic coastal exploration, which involved taking ships into uncharted waters, landing on areas of exposed rock to fix a position by astronomical determination, and using aircraft to run photographic flights east and west to the limit of the aircraft’s range.
over the side to attempt a coastal reconnaissance and photography flight. The Auster was underpowered at the best of times, particularly when operating on floats. On this occasion they were also 150 kilograms overweight, and the aircraft, piloted by Doug Leckie, broke free from the water only metres from brash ice. The plan was to fly in an equilateral triangle, with each leg 100 kilometres. As they had taken off from a large stretch of open water, neither Law nor Leckie took much notice of distinctive icebergs to act as markers for their return. Law:
234
I remember winding the window down and holding this great clumsy Air Force F24 camera, which is hand-held. You had to crank a handle to turn on each frame.
F
I L L I N G
I N
T H E
M A P
My hands are freezing off holding this out, but at least I’m getting a continuous run of photos of this sixty miles [100 kilometres] of coast, and then thankfully I can put the window up and thaw out my frozen hands and head back to the ship. But when we get back we start looking for the ship and we can’t find it. We’ve got radio contact with the ship but we haven’t got a radio-compass, because this aircraft is too small to fit these refined things into.
Captain H M Pedersen radioed the unwelcome news that the lake of open water they had taken off from was no longer there—the pack ice had moved back in. Law asked them to make smoke, but a diesel engine can produce very little. Leckie reported fuel was running low. They were looking for a small ship among innumerable ice floes. Even if they found it, Law said, there was nowhere to land on floats: Even if we did survive a crash the ship couldn’t possibly find us, they wouldn’t know whether to turn the ship to go north, south, east or west and if we couldn’t find the ship from the air, how could they find a little plane from the surface? So by this time things are getting desperate; then I had an idea which to this day I think was one of my brighter ideas. I said, ‘Get every pair of binoculars on the ship, issue one to each individual man, send the men up on to the monkey island (which is the flat space of top of the bridge), divide the sky into sectors and give each man a sector to scan with binoculars’. And some bloke scanned his sector of the sky and found us as a little spot and they talked us back to the ship.
Bruce Coombes, an engineer from the Department of Civil Aviation, was the man who spotted them as a speck against an iceberg about 50 kilometres to the east and gave them the correct bearing to return. With no open water available, the only hope of getting down was to have Magga Dan steam full speed ahead into the pack, and use the thrashing propeller to push back the ice floes to try to create enough open water for a very hazardous landing. All that could be managed was a pool about 40 metres long: Luckily in a float plane the drag of the floats acts like very severe braking and you stop very quickly. But it needed a very good pilot with a lot of courage to land in that 40 metres of water, because it really meant you had to aim the plane right up the tail of the ship and put it down exactly on the edge of that ice. We did that and finished with the propeller still rotating just practically touching the stern of the ship.
Law said later he thought that was a good example of modern hazards in a modern era, and ‘about as hairy as anything you can get in the old literature’.
235
E
S T A B L I S H M E N T
A N D
E X P L O R A T I O N
1954–1966
P
hillip Law regards the ‘cracking’ of Oates Land—on the eastern extremity of the AAT—as the pinnacle of his summer ‘hit and run’ exploration programs. His first attempt in 1958 (with Thala Dan and Captain K Hindberg) had to be abandoned because of heavy ice conditions. But in 1959 with Captain H Moller Pedersen in Magga Dan, successful photographic flights and a landing were achieved and the Australian flag raised on 21 February 1959 near a mountain which Law named Magga Peak. A return visit and further pioneering exploration in 1960 had to be abandoned because of a shortage of food on board Thala Dan —a costly mistake by the ship’s steward.2 He was back in the summer of 1961 with Magga Dan (Captain Vilhelm Pedersen), a Beaver aircraft and two helicopters. Law named one impressive peak Mount Gorton, after Senator John Gorton, then Minister Assisting the Minister for External Affairs on Antarctic matters. Further work was done in February 1962 with Thala Dan (again with the Beaver aircraft and two helicopters), this time voyaging further east into the New Zealand sector of Oates Land, naming features and mapping the coast. (Law raised the New Zealand flag as a courtesy.) Surveyor Syd Kirkby remembers the 1961 and 1962 voyages to Oates Land as two of the finest and most economical exercises in basic exploration he experienced with ANARE: It’s always been the source of some satisfaction to me that I have the easternmost Australian astrofix near Cape North in the New Zealand sector, just outside the AAT, and I have the westernmost Australian astrofix
‘HIT AND RUN EXPLORATION.’ BELL 47-G HELICOPTER AT GREGORY BLUFFS, OATES LAND, 1962. (P LAW) GRAVITY READINGS BEING TAKEN ON THALA ISLAND, OATES LAND, 1962. (P LAW)
on the other end, near where the Japanese built Syowa station. Oates Land is marvellous country—the mountains go up out of the sea for ever and ever. . .as far as you can see inland, there are just snowcapped mountains.
F
I L L I N G
I N
T H E
M A P
There were hazards to the coastal exploration of Antarctica not associated with ice, blizzards or uncharted rocks. On 1 February 1958, Thala Dan put in to the Russian station at Mirny which Law had first visited in January 1956, when it was being constructed. The first meeting between the Australians and the Russians, led by Mikhail Somov, was friendly but restrained. Since then it had become apparent that the ‘c
