Tony Fleming

Tony Fleming, Director of the Australian Antarctic Division, last night had us spellbound with a talk about the Antarctic experiences of his grandfather, Raymond Priestley. Priestley was a member of the British Antarctic Expeditions of both Shackleton (1907-09) and Scott (1910-13) and was a member of the six-man Northern Party that endured one of the most harrowing and inspiring survival stories in Antarctic history. They were marooned from the ship by pack ice and spent 7 months in a tiny snow cave nine feet by twelve feet at Terra Nova Bay. In the spring they walked the long coastline back to the hut at Cape Evans to discover that Scott’s polar party had perished the previous summer. Tony made a pilgrimage last year to the site of the snow cave where remains of the penguins and seals that sustained the six men can still be found. When the surviving men of Scott’s expedition returned home, two of them – Charles Wright and Australian Griffith Taylor – married Priestley’s sisters, so Tony has one helluva polar pedigree, with distinguished Antarctic great-uncles as well! He reminded us that the 8th of January 1912, the date of the Australian landing at Commonwealth Bay, was also the day the six men of Scott’s Northern Party landed at Terra Nova Bay.

Photo: Tom Griffiths, 2012