Eyewitness account: Mawson's Hut
By: David Killick
| September-8-2009
Sponsored by the AG Society, a team of carpenters went in 2006 to help preserve Mawson's Antarctic Hut.
The crew of the Discovery on Mawson's 1931 expedition to Antarctica. (Photo: National Library of Australia)
ON THE ROOF OF an old wooden
building, in the teeth of a gale, Tasmanian carpenter Mike Staples is
at work, watched by a penguin. Mike struggles to keep his footing as he
checks Baltic-pine planks worn thin by 95 years of Antarctic weather.
The 90 km/h winds trying to knock him off his feet are nothing
remarkable in "the home of the blizzard", where a week-long
hurricane-strength blow is the norm and a still day a rare exception.
"On
a good day, it's a very pretty place," Mike says. "It's not real flash
on a bad day. You want to be indoors on a bad day - well tied down. But
when I go up the hill behind the hut and look down, I sometimes think:
'that's what Mawson would have seen. That's the view he would have
had'."
Expedition leader Ted Bugg, busy on the building near
Mike, sees less to like: "It's just a bastard of a place to live and
work," he says. "It's hard to get around the place; it's difficult to
get water... the novelty wears off really quickly."
After nearly
three decades of thwarted dreams and stubborn effort, the last push to
save Mawson's Hut was under way. As the nation sweltered in the summer of 2006, a
team of four from the Mawson's Huts Foundation headed south to work on
this heritage site in the windiest valley on Earth, at Cape Denison,
eastern Antarctica.
They removed snow and ice from inside the hut,
checked the cladding, secured loose planks and made plans to bolster up
the failing roof with a fresh layer of timber. Without this continuing
conservation work, the hut could be torn apart.
Since our first
issue,
Australian Geographic and its founder Dick Smith have championed
the cause of Mawson's Hut and the need to preserve it. This expedition, partly sponsored
by the Australian Geographic Society, was another step in our long
association with the heritage-listed icon.
CAPE DENISON JUTS
INTO Commonwealth Bay about 2500 km due south of Hobart. Along 1.5 km
of coastline, a few ridges of ice-free rock protrude from the icecap
like the fingers of an outstretched hand. Mawson's Hut sits between the
thumb and index finger.
In summer, tens of thousands of Adélie
penguins rally on the ridgetop rookeries, Weddell seals bask silently
on the ice and delicate snow petrels wheel overhead. East and west of
the cape, jagged ice cliffs curve to the horizon; offshore, the
picturesque Mackellar Islands sit like iced cupcakes on the
foam-flecked sea.
On a rare, windless day, Douglas Mawson chose
this spot as the eastern base of his 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic
Expedition (AAE). "The climate proved to be little more than one
continuous blizzard the year round," he wrote, "a hurricane of wind
roaring for weeks together, pausing for breath only at odd hours."
Gusts
of more than 200 km/h blew men from their feet, scattered equipment and
made travel over even the shortest distances almost impossible. "Anyone
who had been out in it would gladly exchange for hell and chance his
luck," Mawson wrote.
As Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced each
other to the South Pole, Mawson's team quietly made breakthroughs in
Antarctic geology, biology, meteorology, magnetism and oceanography,
sent sledging parties across the uncharted icecap and used radio
successfully for the first time on the continent. It was an expedition
beyond maps, without reliable communications or external support and
with little hope of rescue if something went wrong.
Mawson's
prefabricated Baltic-pine hut, which amazingly still stands after
nearly a century, was modelled on a colonial Australian homestead,
veranda and all: it's a cross between a Queenslander and a pyramid.
Constantly abraded by wind-blown ice, the thinning boards retain the
golden freshness of new wood. Inside, where 18 men made their home
during the AAE's first year, reminders of the expedition adorn the
bunks and shelves.
It was from this building in 1912 that
Mawson set off on the epic 1000 km journey that cost the lives of
Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz. Returning alone and almost dead from
hunger and exhaustion, Mawson dragged a cut-down sledge 160 km across
the icecap, staggering back to the hut just in time to see his ship
disappear over the horizon for another year.
Outside, the
scattered detritus of the expedition spreads downwind from the hut:
tins and boots, dog chains, antenna wires and other rubbish jumbled in
an untidy plume. Other Antarctic hut sites have long been cleaned up,
but Mawson's "artefact scatter" is untouched and remains a valuable
resource for archaeologists. Three outbuildings, two of which are in
ruins, lie nearby.
INSIDE THE MAIN HUT,
Ted is cutting ice with a chainsaw. The tanned 50-year-old - a ranger
at Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park in Tasmania - struggles
in the confined space. Ted is missing his son's second Christmas to
volunteer here. As Ted prises free each 40 kg block of ice, fellow
carpenter Marty Passingham spikes it with an ice-axe and drags it down
a narrow passageway and out through a low door to add to an
ever-growing pile. Passing penguins stop and watch briefly before going
about their business. Ted and Marty work steadily and without talking
beneath the hut's 5 m high ceiling.
"It really takes it out of
you because you're constantly wet from perspiration and the spray that
comes up over your body and up your sleeves and down your neck and
melts and becomes cold," Ted says. "And the chainsaw is potentially
pretty unforgiving. Fortunately I haven't ever had a close shave, so to
speak - I'm mindful of the fact that we're a long way from help. Having
a chainsaw wound in Antarctica would not be a good look."
The
Mawson's Huts Foundation has mounted four expeditions to Cape Denison
- in 1997, 2000, 2002 and this one. Foundation chairman
David Jensen says that one more expedition should secure the hut's
future to its centenary and beyond. "The main work to be done is the
recladding of the roof of the main building and the removal of more ice
and snow," he says. "We need about $300,000 for the expedition this
coming summer - then we plan to launch a $2 million fundraising
campaign to give us all we require in the future for ongoing
maintenance."
Ted Bugg joined the project for the first trip in
1997 after seeing a newspaper advertisement seeking carpenters. He and
35-year-old Marty met while building a hut on Tasmania's Overland Track
in the winter of 2001 and the next year Marty, too, sailed south. Mike
Staples signed up after taking part in other heritage projects for the
Australian Antarctic Division.
An average of just 40 tourists
make it to Cape Denison each year - the wind makes landings tricky and
uncertain and it's a long way from the attractions of the Antarctic
Peninsula. Australian Geographic Society trustee and Aurora Expeditions
chief Greg Mortimer says those lucky enough to visit the site are
changed by the experience.
"They're brought to their knees and
silenced," he says. "They're very much awed by the vigour of the place
of course, but the combination of elements and the tiny human toehold
there, that has a nice impact on people. It's a great place for getting
a sense of human frailty."
Tourist Eric Kelly, from Melbourne, who
saved for nearly 40 years to fulfil his schoolboy dream of seeing
Mawson's Hut, says the experience had left him in awe of Mawson and his
men. "I expected something a bit bigger - I couldn't believe that 18
people could live in that small area for so long. The thing that stood
out the most was the fragility of it more than anything. And yet it
still stands."
An eye-witness accountON THE EVENING OF 4 January 1931, the research vessel
Discovery rounded Cape Denison and limped into Commonwealth Bay after weathering a hurricane and the heaving, frenzied, grinding ice masses of the berg-strewn Durville Sea.
Discovery was hosting the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE), led by a man who knew Commonwealth Bay as well as any: Sir Douglas Mawson, scientist, explorer and leader of the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition (AAE).
Among those aboard with Mawson were two fellow AAE -veterans, photographer Frank Hurley and magnetician Alec Kennedy, and BANZARE's 24-year-old chemist and hydrologist, Alf Howard.
Not long before his 100th birthday last April, Dr Alf Howard AM - BANZARE's longest surviving member, and a previous winner of the Australian Geographic Society's
Lifetime of Adventure award - still vividly recalled
Discovery's voyage to Anna Bemrose.
On the morning of 5 January 1931, Alf joined Mawson and other scientists in the motor launch heading ashore at Commonwealth Bay. It was sunny and the wind had dropped.
"As we approached shore Sir Douglas, Hurley and Kennedy couldn't wait to view their old living quarters, which they had not seen for 17 years," said Alf. "Boots and shattered fragments of wireless masts were scattered outside the hut. The only way to enter was from the roof. [We] lowered ourselves carefully through a skylight and landed on a carpet of solid ice.
"Conscious that Hurley wanted to photograph inside, we were careful not to touch anything. The ice formations were unbelievable. The old hut was festooned with bulbous, crystal-like stalagmites and stalactites of ice. We came across a cubicle tightly filled with snow and hard ice, which turned out to be Sir Douglas's. Only the bunk was ice-free. I recall that it was relatively easy to move around the main living area, though the main entrance was choked with snow and ice. It was silent and eerie inside - signs of the 1911-14 expedition were everywhere.
"We could just make out some of Hurley's old photographic equipment in the darkroom. I remember there were tinned foods, slabs of chocolate and a couple of bottles of Russian stout, which were brought back to the ship and later consumed with relish in the wardroom."
The hut needed to be reinforced, but
Discovery lacked spare materials for the task, so the Commonwealth Bay visit became a relaxing stopover. "Besides a bit of magnetic work we were more or less tourists," Alf said. "It was unusually warm and we soon began to doff much of our heavy clobber. Some of us were badly sunburnt. Much time was spent observing the antics of the Adélie penguins with their young chicks and the Weddell seals, which thickly populated the -surrounding ice flats. I can remember sort of going a few hundred yards up a slope and then sliding down on my hands and coming a cropper.
"The following day many of us were desperately tired as no-one had slept much. Shortly after 5.30 p.m. on 6 January 1931 the
Discovery heaved anchor and steered west."
Source: Australian Geographic Issue 83 (July - Sep 2006)