Suddenly it seemed possible that we would get there …
16 January 2012
The cloud lifted and the white cliffs of East Antarctic asparkled in the sunlight. The fleck of rock that is Cape Denison beckoned us ashore for a landing just as it did Mawson and his men. Suddenly it seemed possible that we would get there. The wind was slight, the air crystal clear. The penguins – intensively counted and consulted by Colin and Louise over the last two days – have indicated their willingness to share their precious few acres of rock with humans again.
The helicopter lifted us quickly above our tiny orange ship on the edge of the sea ice and took us across the vast snowy plain of frozen seawater towards the coast of the continent. The unusual – indeed, historic – conditions of ice in Common wealth Bay this year have blurred the topography and simplified the colours of Cape Denison. The blue or stormy grey of the waters of Boat Harbour – where the AAE’s motor launch bravely shuttled ashore from the ship – have been replaced by a seamless white apron of ice. We can see the exposed granites of the cape and, a few hundred metres inland, the dark outcrops of the moraine. Brooding above everything is the white brow of the polar plateau that climbs and recedes into a pure infinity against the light blue of the sky. And somewhere in the middle of this small coastal patchwork of white ice, black rock and aerial blue can be seen something else … at first I register it as a different, surprising colour, an organic eye, a pinpoint of warmth. It is the wind-bleached wood of a hut.
Brown is the colour of a colony inAntarctica. Adélie penguins snatch the brief summer moment to colonise bare rock, collect pebbles for their nests and nurture their chicks. Their snowy breasts and the surrounding boulders become stained with the organic brown of their waste. Here at Cape Denison amongst the parenting penguins we find also the sweet, light brown of weathered Baltic pine hunched neatly and modestly in the snow, the signature of another kind of colony. The foundations of Mawson’s Huts are glued to the rock with guano.
From a distance the hut seems like a piece of driftwood scoured pale, lean and delicate by the wind and snagged here between ice and rock. It seems small and vulnerable but also defiantly sturdy. It glows with a fragile lustre. I am immediately struck by its homeliness, even from the outside. Mawson’s book about this place is called, of course, The Home of the Blizzard, which honours (or laments) the ferocious katabatics that are the essence of this bay. But this was home also to those 18 men. This was their cosy, beloved refuge, and one hundred years later it is still an inviting and reassuring presence. The swale in which it sits is also quite intimate, and the men made this their own, too, inscribing it with the daily religious duty of their scientific observations. I am surprised to find that this place feels to me like a part of Australia, not just in a patriotic sense because of its history, but also geographically because this could almost be a winter hut in the Australian Alps amongst familiar granite pinnacles.
The low door of the hut has been dug clear of snow by our advance party and now it stands open. Appropriately, one bows to enter the darkness of this shrine. Inside on this calm day is the Antarctic silence. But more than that, there is stillness. The air smells musty and organic and the walls gleam faintly, illuminated by the skylight. There are half-familiar shapes and structures to discern in the gloom: Frank Hurley’s photographs reconstitute themselves before my eyes in ageing wood, metal and paper, half-encrusted with ice. The stove stands in one corner, the acetylene generator that produced lighting sits on a beam above us, and all around the walls are the beds. The hut was insulated with a two-storey layer of people. I have walked into a boys’ bunkroom! Eighteen men slept here top to toe for a year, and it still feels private, intimate, domestic. Curator and conservator Ian Godfrey reminds us that, in the second year, the remaining men moved from the more exposed southern bunks to the warmer ones near the stove, and this mini-history of migration is recorded on the bunks themselves: JFH [Hoyle] 1912 AJH 1913; PEC 1912 A L McL 1913.
The floor is a hard, undulating topography of ice and many of the walls and beams are bespangled with crystals. Artefacts half-emerge from the floor like nunataks. When Mawson returned toCommonwealthBayon the second of the BANZARE (British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition) voyages in 1931, he was proud to find the hut still standing even though the ice had penetrated it. Inside it was like a ‘fairy cavern’. Over the years, conservators have argued about the safety and practicality of removing the ice, but in recent years it has been gradually and carefully chipped back. Some visitors yearn for an instant, total restoration; others (incredibly) still want the hut returned to Australia; but I like this slow, respectful work-in-progress where the hut is gradually being brought back to life in the place it has most meaning. There is still mystery here, still things we are yet to rediscover.
Even with the icicles, frozen floor and slumped, decaying timbers, the cosiness of the hut is palpable. The south-eastern corner of the interior, which became a social centre of this little space, was called Hyde Park Corner (the name is inscribed on a beam) because three of the four men sleeping there were ‘Europeans’, as Madigan put it (Ninnis and Bickerton were from Britain and Mertz from Switzerland). In the middle of the hut was the dining and work table, now gone. Only two men had private spaces. Photographer Frank Hurley had a tiny darkroom behind the stove and you may still read on the wall, above a remaining packet of dry plates, his injunction: ‘Near Enough is Not Good Enough’. And, in the middle of the southern wall, Douglas Mawson had a small cubicle of his own where he slept and worked. There remain his folding wood and canvas chair and his pillow, peppermints and pictures. Mawson was a respected leader but not a warm or beloved personality and this icy den is symbolic of his separateness. But I also remember how, in the days following his return from the tragic sledging journey, Mawson’s men noticed that he followed them around the small hut, keen for the solace of their companionship.
Outside the huts we gather for a ceremony. In number we are similar to that which landed here a hundred years ago. This day in 1912 they were still trying to complete the unloading between the gales. In three days the Aurora would sail and Captain Davis would write: They are a fine party of men but the country is a terrible one to spend a year in. Today, outside the entrance to the huts and surrounded by a voluntary audience of Adélies, the Director of the Australian Antarctic Division, Tony Fleming, called us together for some solemn and thoughtful words about the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. He read a statement by the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard. The names of all the men of the AAE were then read out and honoured: the eighteen who served in Adélie Land, the eight who established the Western Base, the five who maintained the station at Macquarie Island, and the men of the Aurora. Tony reminded us of the pre-eminence of science in the planning and practice of the AAE, and of the foundation it thus laid for a modern Antarctic Treaty System where good science is the currency of influence. ‘I am frequently asked’, explained Tony, ‘what is the enduring legacy of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition? My answer is unequivocal – an entire continent devoted to peace and science, where nations work together in a spirit of collaboration. What a wonderful legacy they have left us!’ Deborah Bourke from the Antarctic Division and David Ellyard, President of the ANARE Club, raised the Australian flag to applause from the people and squawks from the Adelies. I said some words about the original landing and the way it was recorded in the diaries of the expeditioners. The speeches can be found at http://www.antarctica.gov.au/media/news/2012/antarctic-centenary-celebrated-at-mawsons-home-of-the-blizzard
Why would Australians today raise the flag in this international place? There is no doubt that by doing so we are quietly affirming Australian sovereignty over 42% of Antarctica and that the penguins are not the only creatures with a colony here. But this was also a deliberately modest ceremony. No anthem was sung, no proclamation made, no mention of ‘territory’ by the Prime Minister, and the emphasis of the speeches was on the science of the AAE and its continuities with the scientific priorities of the Treaty era. Attention was given to all the young men who were excited by this last frontier, not only Mawson. The two men who died were especially remembered. With typical Australian bashfulness at ceremonies, the formalities were completed quickly and simply. The real commemorative act, we all felt, is in continuing to do science and history inCommonwealthBay– and acrossEast Antarctica– and to help researchers from other nations to do it too.
When speaking internationally and cross-culturally in Antarctica there is no word more powerful for Australians than ‘Mawson’. Uttering that word creates a significant space for us in the conversation. Our international Antarctic colleagues expect us to be the leading researchers and custodians of that history. Curiously, perhaps, the scholarly commemoration of Mawson and his legacy has become a critical part of our international obligation inAntarctica. Nationalism is not contrary to the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty, for national endeavour is the means of contributing to the treaty system and there is national pride in becoming an influential party. Quiet, reflective nationalism is the fabric of Antarctica’s successful international governance.
After the ceremony outside the huts, we walked across ice and granite scree to the small eminence of Proclamation Hill for another ritual – this time the laying of a time capsule with the visions of Australian schoolchildren about Antarctica in 100 years time. Thus our commemoration turned to the future – and we wonder, as the children do, about how the southern ice cap will fare in a warming world. This hill was so named when Mawson returned to Commonwealth Bay in 1931, raised the flag again and asserted British sovereignty on 5 January. Almost 20 years after the AAE, Mawson had already become a tourist to his own history. When his group of BANZARE expeditioners anchored in Commonwealth Bay and came ashore, they investigated the hut they had heard so much about and then made tea outside. They could have lit their billy fire with wood, for there were plenty of dry planks lying about, but the hut was already historic and so was the timber. In any case, Mawson insisted on firing up the Nansen Cooker because that’s what real explorers did and ‘nobody knew how to work them but himself’. When expedition members had their group photo taken, Mawson insisted that they ‘all dress up for it and make it look cold’. ‘He loves a bit of effect like that’, observed expeditioner Stuart Campbell. That’s when Mawson donned his famous balaclava – and that theatrical photo taken in 1931 has become the enduring portrait we know from banknotes, stamps and now even the AAE centenary literature and insignia. One experienced expeditioner on the 1931 visit lived with one hand constantly on Mawson’s book, The Home of the Blizzard, ‘ready to produce the answer to any question at a moment’s notice’. ‘These old explorers die hard’, reflectedCampbell. ‘I wonder if we’ll all live in the past like this in the years to come. I hope not.’ But we all do. The present is only ever a fleeting conciliation of past and future.
After the ceremonies, I climb Azimuth Hill just west of the huts where the memorial cross to Ninnis and Mertz stands clearly on the skyline, surrounded by penguin colonies. Beyond it, the ice cliffs of Commonwealth Bay take your breath away. Belgrave Ninnis was swallowed by a crevasse on 14 December 1912 and Xavier Mertz died very early on 8 January 1913 in the sleeping bag next to Mawson during their desperate return journey. In November 1913, after their unexpected second winter at Cape Denison, Mawson and the six other remaining men solemnly erected this wooden cross to the memory of their dead friends and their ‘supreme sacrifice … to the cause of science’. As I sit here amongst the nesting Adélies, gazing out across the sea ice to the tiny black dot on the horizon which is our ship, I am moved by this choice of words etched in wood which seems so emblematic of how the men of the AAE saw their endeavour. Their friends died not for ‘the glory of empire’ or for ‘pride of nation’, but in ‘the cause of science’.
Are these mere words or do their actions support them? As I reflect beneath the cross, I find that they ring true. Ninnis and Mertz died on a crazy, unheroic but earnest quest to understand more about Antarctic geography. And the last year of their lives, like those of their companions, was devoted to the daily discipline of survival and scientific recording. The priorities of the AAE were clear. No sooner had the huts been built and a ‘House warming feast’ held on 30 January 1912 than daily meteorological recording began – on 1 February. Ninnis and Mertz built two Stevenson screens to house the recording instruments, work began on the construction of the Absolute Magnetic Hut and Magnetograph House (which I can still see from this hill), a tide gauge was installed, biological and geological work begun, and seals and penguins were butchered for winter stores of meat and blubber. On 6 February, Stillwell recorded that Bickerton spent the afternoon erecting a 5′ flag pole on top of the main hut and it gives a nice swanky appearance to the homestead. But it was not until the summer was almost over, not until the scientific infrastructure was in place, not until 25 February that Mawson set aside the time to raise a flag on that pole above the hut.
And what the men most remembered was not the flag or the proclamation but the church service that Mawson nervously held in the hut and the celebratory dinner that followed – and the speech that Mawson gave. What did he say on what Archie McLean called this day of days in so far as the history of our stay in this place is concerned? Cecil Madigan recorded: He said we were snug & comfortable etc. – we were in a much worse place than any Antarctic expedition had ever landed in – the weather was far worse – it looked as if these winds were constant and sledging would be most difficult. No other expedition had been game to land here. Perhaps it was a terrible region – we were going to prove it. The meteorological results would be very valuable – the magnetic work – the biological work – but of more practical value at present was the geographical work – we must explore.
In my speech at the ceremony today, I described the AAE as the most earnestly scientific expedition of the ‘heroic era’ of Antarctic history and finished by quoting the words of Belgrave Ninnis who, in the final year of his short life, reflected on time and history in Antarctica:
From the creation, the silence here has been unbroken by man, and now we, a very prosaic crowd of fellows, are here for an infinitely small space of time, for a short time we shall litter the land with tins, scrap timber, refuse and impedimenta, for a short time we shall be travelling over the great plateau, trying to draw the veil from a fractional part of this unknown land; then the ship will return for us and we shall leave the place to its eternal silence and loneliness, a silence that may never again be broken by a human voice.
But Ninnis is not forgotten, and Xavier Mertz is not forgotten, and not only have human voices sounded in this hut again and again, but the voices of the original expeditioners resonate in our hearts and minds with growing power, and their vision continues to inspire us. We are still trying to draw the veil from a fractional part of this unknown land.