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The name of Sir Douglas Mawson is
synonymous with Australia's Antarctic history. He was a true pioneer, venturing
into unknown, hostile territory, and almost losing his own life, in the cause
of science.
Born
in Yorkshire, England in 1882, Douglas was just two when his family moved to
Sydney. Educated first at Fort Street Model School and then (from age 16) at
the University of Sydney, Douglas graduated in Engineering and Science. During
this time he came under the influence of Professor Edgeworth David, the leading
Australian geologist of the day. His first published paper was on the Geology
of Mittagong, a work done with his fellow science student and friend T. Griffith
Taylor, later to make his mark in Antarctic science. In 1903, before completing
his science degree, he made a geological survey of the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
and in 1905 produced one of the first major works on the geology of Melanesia.
Mawson became lecturer
in mineralogy and petrology at the University of Adelaide in 1905, describing
radioactive minerals from Radium Hill and undertaking extensive fieldwork in
the Barrier Ranges (including Broken Hill), where he studied past glacial activity.
His work in Broken Hill brought him into
contact with G.D. Delprat, the General Manager of B.H.P., whose daughter
Paquita he would marry in 1914. Mawson's first field trip to the Flinders Ranges,
an area where he would study in detail in later years, took place in February 1906,
in conjunction with Walter Howchin and Griffith Taylor.
In November 1907 Mawson
met Ernest Shackleton in Adelaide with a view to joining Shackleton's proposed
British Antarctic Expedition to study glaciation in action. Shackleton
appointed him physicist for the expedition, departed that summer for the Ross
Sea. Mawson was 26. Also on the expedition was Mawson's mentor, Edgeworth
David.
In March 1908 Mawson was
a member of the team led by David which climbed Mount Erebus, Antarctica's only
active volcano,. The following summer, again in a party led by David, Mawson
journeyed on foot for over 2000 km to the region of the South Magnetic Pole
 and back to
the Ross Sea coast - the first to reach this elusive goal. The expedition
almost ended in disaster, with David crippled by cold and Mawson having to be
rescued from a crevasse.
Back in Australia,
Mawson determined to return to the icy continent to explore the coast to the
west of Cape Adare, due south of Australia. He contacted Robert Scott, who was
planning an attempt to reach the South Pole and invited Mawson to join his
South Pole sledging party. But Mawson the scientist had no interest in such
non-scientific endeavours. He turned to Shackleton, who though interested was
unable to raise the finance needed. Mawson resolved to lead his own expedition.
After a prodigious
fund-raising effort, he raised the capital (about $15m in today's dollar terms)
and put together the equipment, supplies and men for his own 'Australasian
Antarctic Expedition', which departed Hobart aboard the ship Aurora,
captained by John King Davis, in December 1911. On Macquarie Island he left a
small communications crew who would relay the first wireless signals from
Antarctica to the world.
Mawson set up two
Antarctic exploring bases, one on the Shackleton Ice Shelf under Frank Wild and
the main base under his leadership at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, south
of Tasmania. At each base he and his men undertook a series of
carefully-planned scientific investigations, including intensive land
exploration along the coast and into the hinterland. The Commonwealth Bay base
he later called 'The Home of the Blizzard' because of its exceptionally
powerful and persistent katabatic winds.
Mawson himself led the
Far Eastern Sledging Party with Belgrave Ninnis, a Leiutenant of the
Royal Fusiliers, and Xavier Mertz, a swiss Doctor of Law, ski champion and
mountaineer. After five weeks and 500 km out disaster
struck: Ninnis, with one of the two sledges and most of the party's supplies, was
lost down an immense crevasse. Mertz was to die on the return journey, possibly
from Vitamin A poisoning from eating the livers of husky dogs. But Mawson
survived after an epic solo journey of a month, during which he had to haul himself on the
end of a rope out of a deep crevasse. It is one of the great polar stories of
survival.
Mawson returned to the
base only to see his ship Aurora on the horizon on its way to collect
the Western Party under Wild. The ship was unable to return because of the risk
of being beset by ice with the brief summer season nearing its close. Mawson
remained behind with six companions to recover from his ordeal before returning
to Australia the following summer.
 On Mawson's return to
Adelaide, he was treated as a hero by delighted crowds. His great achievement
as an Antarctic leader and scientist were later recognised with a knighthood
bestowed by King George V of England.
 In 1914 Douglas Mawson
married Paquita Delprat, to whom he had been engaged since before his departure
for Antarctica. The 'letters' they wrote to each other during his Antarctic
absence have recently been published. They were to be a close couple and family
(two daughters) throughout their long lives.
 Mawson returned to the
Antarctic twice more, in 1929/1930 and 1930/1931, as leader of the first and second
summer voyages of the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE),
concentrating on oceanography, Antarctic and subantarctic marine biology, and
Antarctic coastal exploration to the west of the Shackleton Ice Shelf. Mawson's ship was Scott's old vessel, Discovery, and the captain on the first voyage was again John King Davis.
Like the Australasian
Antarctic Expedition before it, BANZARE was an immense scientific success,
producing an enormous amount of data about the Southern Ocean to build on the
already-significant Challenger expedition some 60 years earlier. The
territorial exploration also had its rewards. Mawson claimed for Britain all
the land of East Antarctica between longitude 40 deg. E and 160 deg. E with the
exception of the small sliver of Adelie Land, claimed by France. The
territorial claim - 42 percent of all Antarctica with an area the size of
Australia without Queensland - was transferred to Australia in 1935.
Sir Douglas Mawson lived
out his life in Adelaide, working as Professor of Geology at the University of
Adelaide and devoting his leisure time to family, farming and forestry. He
became a dedicated conservationist, arguing forcefully and effectively for the
protection of Macquarie Island wildlife from the depredations of hunters.
He also became a
persistent lobbyist for a permanent Australian presence in the Antarctic. In
1947 his efforts were realised with the dispatch of the first Australian
National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) to Heard and Macquarie Islands.
Mawson joined the ANARE Executive Planning Committee, which he continued to
serve into his old age.
ANARE finally reached
the continent of Antarctica in 1954 where a station was established on
Horseshoe Harbour, Mac Robertson Land. It was named, fittingly, Mawson.
Sir Douglas Mawson died
in 1958 at the age of 76. |
