Update
We’re still at the dock waiting for a few repairs. But it’s going well and we should hopefully be departing in the next few days!
A Closer Look at Explorers
Since I had half of a day free, I decided to go exploring in Hobart. I stumbled across the Mawson Hut, which was a pleasant surprise. I recently read a book about Dr. Douglas Mawson, and he is an amazing person. And it fits with a “Closer Look” topic about Antarctic Explorers submitted by Dan, no grade listed (we’ll get to Scott and Amundsen later):
Douglas Mawson and the Mawson Hut Museum
Sir Dr. Douglas Mawson was an Australian Geologist and the expedition leader for the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914)—Australia’s first Antarctic Expedition. It occurred during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration (he was there the same time as Scott and Amundsen) and unlike other expeditions that sought the glory of being the first team to the South Pole, Mawson’s focus was scientific exploration and discovery. Mawson and his men conduced scientific studies, collected samples and did a lot of mapping of new areas. They were also the first team to discover and map the magnetic South Pole. Although their goal was scientific, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition is an incredibly heroic story to tell. Mawson, while out on a collecting and mapping trip first lost one member then another member of his three man team. He had to sledge over 100 miles back to base camp by himself… on foot. At one point he fell down a crevasse and had to save himself by climbing up a small rope. Starved and exhausted, he made it back to camp just in time to see the expedition ship leave without him. He had to winter over in Antarctica for a second year, but survived to return home to his wife and daughters (I had to Wikipedia his life story 2/3 of the way through reading the book to make sure he survived… it was so suspenseful).
At the museum, I got to explore a scale replica of the hut where the 18 men, and all the dogs, of the expedition lived, surviving freezing blizzards with winds up to 200 miles per hour for 2 years. The actual hut, preserved by Mawson’s Hut Foundation, sits preserved at Cape Denison in East Antarctica.
If you’d like to learn more about this heroic, undersung, expedition (as well as some interesting history on the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and the basics of the Scott and Amundsen expeditions) I highly recommend the book Mawson: and the ice men of the Heroic age: Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen by Peter Fitzsimons.
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