Mawson honoured in icy ceremony

16 Jan 2012, 8:44 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Australia's Antarctic hero Sir Douglas Mawson and his expeditioners have been honoured in a remembrance ceremony at the huts they built 100 years ago.

Australia's Antarctic hero Sir Douglas Mawson and his fellow expeditioners have been honoured in a simple ceremony at the huts they built on the icy continent 100 years ago.

The Australian flag was raised above the explorer's old base at Commonwealth Bay by a team brought by helicopter from the icebreaker Aurora Australis, standing 20km off the icebound shore.

A time capsule was laid and a plaque placed at Proclamation Hill above the huts to commemorate the landing of Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition at Cape Denison on January 8, 1912.

For three days, low cloud and fog prevented helicopters from flying the commemorative party across sea ice to the huts, but fine weather on Monday morning allowed the transfer to go ahead.

A team of 26 people from the ship gathered for the ceremony as hundreds of Adelie penguins watched from their rookeries on the rocks above the wooden huts, which sit half buried in ice and snow.

Australian Antarctic Division Director Tony Fleming read a statement from Prime Minister Julia Gillard saying Mawson was "a man of generous and intrepid spirit drawn by what he called the passion of a great adventure".

"Mawson and his colleagues undertook their epic journey not for profit or fame but to extend the boundaries of human knowledge and to advance the cause of science," Ms Gillard said.

"Australia owed Mawson and his expeditioners an immense and lasting gratitude."

Dr Fleming said Mawson was a giant figure in the heroic era of Antarctic exploration and his expedition was a defining moment for the newly born Australian federation.

The Adelaide-based geologist, who was knighted in 1914 for his Antarctic feats, was a key figure in placing science at the centre of Antarctica's future and Australia was now at the forefront of that science.

"An entire continent devoted to peace and science - what a wonderful legacy the Australasian Antarctic Expedition has left us," he said.

"We must be ever vigilant to ensure that we can hand this legacy on to our grandchildren."

Dr Fleming said much had been learnt since Mawson's expedition, including an awareness of the extraordinary degree to which Antarctica and the Southern Ocean influenced global climate change.

He paid special tribute to the two men who died on the 1911-1914 expedition - British army officer Belgrave Ninnis, who fell down a crevasse, and Swiss expeditioner Xavier Mertz, who succumbed to illness and exhaustion on a gruelling sledge journey that Mawson only just survived.

Australian National University historian Tom Griffiths said after Mawson and his men came ashore from the steam yacht Aurora, they realised they had decided to build their base in an unusually windy corner of the windiest continent on earth.

"But harbours and bare rock were so precious, and finding this place had been so hard, that they were determined to hang on to their fragile foothold with their canvas and planks and nails."

On January 12, 1912, Mawson pitched his tent, got out the reindeer skin sleeping bags and fired up the Nansen cooker to prepare soup and cocoa for himself and six other men who spent the first night ashore at Cape Denison, Professor Griffiths said.

Thus the Australian occupation of Antarctica began.

The time capsule laid at the cape on Monday contained the prime minister's message and winning entries from Australian students who were asked for their vision of Antarctica in 100 years' time.

In her entry, Grade 7 student Sophie Anderson from Hurstville in NSW predicted that many nations would co-operate to conserve Antarctica and prevent exploitation of the land and wildlife.

"I hope that Antarctica can help us understand how to preserve our planet from climate change," Sophie's note says.

Just as the Antarctic weather delayed the commemorative ceremony, so it held up Mawson's expedition 100 years ago with blizzards delaying the unloading of supplies and the hut timbers from the steam yacht Aurora.

A massive iceberg has iced up Commonwealth Bay for the first time since Mawson was there and has prevented tourist vessels from reaching the huts that sit on one of the few bits of exposed rock around the bay.

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