OUR STORY
National Heritage
Scientific collections & data: Science and the Australasian Antarctic Expedition
In 1911, before Dr Douglas Mawson addressed an audience of potential supporters, he listed the reasons for organising the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. It included the usual reasons for support of an Antarctic expedition; territory, economy, national pride and science, and the unusual: the potential for tourism and for sanatoria. Mawson shifted the points around, adjusting their priority in the talk, but always left science at the top of the list, writing:
The expedition is an Australasian scientific effort, it will advance and stimulate science throughout Australia.
Science’s utilitarian potential is often used to attract support for Antarctic work and Mawson’s list included many examples; meteorology, he wrote would be ‘of value in weather predictions in Australia’, adding that ‘oceanographic and magnetic surveys will be of direct, practical benefit to shipping in Australian waters.’ One significant and ultimately successful object of the expedition was the use of wireless operations from Antarctica to land and shipping to the north. Mawson had earlier secured the support of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science and he listed this as evidence of widespread support for his expedition.
Mawson deliberately chose a team of experienced men and younger university graduates. Of the 37 staff, 20 were science graduates, representing general science, and more specifically engineering, geology, medicine, and biology. Others were trained as collectors or as wireless operators. Two, Mawson and Frank Wild had Antarctic experience and others such as Murphy and Mertz, had Arctic or extensive snow and ice experience.
A range of scientific equipment was purchased or borrowed and additional advice concerning the program of scientific work was provided by Professor T. W. Edgeworth David (Geology) Professor W. A. Haswell (Biology) and H. A. Hunt (Meteorology).
Magnetician Eric Webb who was to take part in the successful Southern party trip to the South Magnetic Pole region in 1912–13, was excited by the new opportunities. Fifty years later, he ironically recalled the working conditions:
… it was a different world. There were – NO radio, NO mechanical transport, NO aircraft, NO radar, NO flashlights, NO plastics, NO electric light, NO oil heating, NO vitamins, NO sound film, NO computers, NO magnetic tape or equivalent, NO electronics, NO television, NO seismic nor echo sounding, little concentrated food, NO modern compact type cameras, only primitive colour photography, NO prefabricated buildings, NO modern conveniences, and many instruments regarded today as obsolete and archaic. Faced with such a vacuum, the average science student today would not know where or how to begin.
The men studied many aspects of the south, including the life of the sea and the shape of the sea floor. As the expedition vessel, the Aurora, made its way across the Southern Ocean on several voyages, it stopped frequently to take sea temperatures and to take samples of the sea life. On December 28, 1913, for example, it stopped off the ice cliffs of Commonwealth Bay, made trawls and found creatures that later turned out to be new species.
They established a base and wireless station on Macquarie Island and two bases on the continent, one at Cape Denison, the other at Western Base on the Shackleton Ice Shelf. As soon as possible after landings at these places, the men settled into the routines of observation and taking regular readings from equipment set up near the huts. Checking these became a chore, particularly in extreme weather, but in another sense the practice became a comforting routine. Some practices were not so comforting. In January 1913, Morton Moyes of the Western Base wrote of his experiences skinning a penguin in the confines of a hut:
A mile further on I came across a penguin, which I slew hip and thigh … [later in hut] I go on with the Penguin when at the Hut & the place looks like the Government Abattoirs at present. The skin may be all right …
A full account of the scientific work is not possible here, but one example of the work, that of assessments of the Aurora Australis, is illuminating.
Throughout the expedition, records of the Aurora and its intensity were made. It was widely known that Auroral manifestations interrupted radio signals, and the studies were to examine atmospherics and the strength of signals in connection with the wireless communication from Macquarie Island to Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica, and magnetic storms as measured by the Eschenlagen Magnetograph. Like a lot of the scientific work of the expedition, it also had its benefits and the beauties of the Aurora were not lost on the men as the following quote from Archibald MacLean indicates:
8 June 1912 – At 11pm there was the first auroral display we had yet seen. Great curtains hung suspended from the sky, extending from the east to the west and travelling upwards to the zenith. With an indescribable rippling motion the curtain rays moved, and several times there was a rosy and green colouring to the nebulous pallour. A great arc of vibrant light curved across at the base of the curtains. The wind howled by with drifting clouds of snow, as two of us sat on the roof and watched the luminous curtains.
The results of the expedition’s Auroral work were eventually published in 1925 and 1929, in two large reports. (Series B Vol II) as part of the reports on Terrestrial Magnetism and related observations. These reports, which included some marvellous charcoal and watercolour sketches of auroral features, are a good example of the gradual combination of information concerning the auroral manifestations of the south. Mawson, who prepared the first volume, Aurora Polaris, wrote:
An added interest is given to these results on account of the geographic position of the stations. The Main Antarctic Base was in an entirely new sphere. Also it was on the opposite side of the Magnetic Pole to the McMurdo Sound region, where the bulk of previous Antarctic records of the kind had been secured. Finally, it was very suitably spaced in relation to a Western Base (Queen Mary Land) and a Subantarctic Base (Macquarie Island); also to Captain Scott’s bases at Cape Adare and Cape Evans, which were contemporaneously occupied for a portion of the time.
Another example of this analysis is meteorology. In 1947 New Zealand meteorologist Edward Kidson published the results of his work as Meteorology, Daily Weather Charts extending from Australia and New Zealand to the Antarctic continent. (Series B Vol VII). Three hundred and sixty-five charts show the results of observations from Mawson’s expedition, Scott’s expedition and from weather stations in Australia and New Zealand. For perhaps the first time, the influence of Antarctic weather on that of its northern neighbours was mapped and published.
Mawson and the final party returned to Adelaide in February 1914. There followed a long and tedious process of analysing the work of the expedition and publishing the results. In one case, Birds, (Series B volume 2) finally completed by R Falla in 1937, the AAE results were combined with those of another, much later expedition, the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition of 1929- 1931.
The reasons for this delay are many, money being the most significant, but Mawson was also beset by slow responses to requests for final work and by organisational difficulties. Finally, Mawson signed an agreement with the New South Wales Government, which ensured that the papers were published by the NSW Government Printer. In return Mawson gave the ‘assets of the expedition’ including negatives, maps, organisational papers and Copyright, to the New South Wales Government.
Many of these are now permanently housed in the State Library of New South Wales, where they are preserved. The science of the expedition was great and influential. The planned and careful collection of information bore fruit in over 90 published Reports. The work is still valuable. For example, the details of tide gauge measurements, available at the State Library of New South Wales have been added to a worldwide database of historic tide measurements. Notes of whale and other mammal sightings published in the Reports are useful for long term understanding of Southern Ocean life. And measurements of the temperatures and humidity in Mawson’s Hut 1911- 1914, are now used in studies relating to the long-term conservation of this historic site.
In 1964 Eric Webb wrote about the struggle and boredom of dragging sledges across the ice. But there were motivations:
Where and when man has enough spiritual inspiration, he can indeed move mountains and does survive and surmount incredible conditions. Admittedly we were keyed to face the unknown, the unique, in the spirit and by the rules of adventure; but our only aid in the inspiration category was scientific search.
It’s an interesting point to make and one that surely sustained many of the men while pursuing their work. With a conscious and deliberate plan of scientific work and the perseverance of men like Webb, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition was well served by its scientists.
Stephen Martin
[Stephen is an occasional visitor to Antarctica is the writer of A history of Antarctica and the curator of several exhibitions about the southern continent, including Lines on the Ice: Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911–14.]
Slightly edited version from The Sceptic Vol 22, No 3 Spring 2002, Roseville, NSW. Pp 42–44.
