Wakefield Press the Home of the Blizzard HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 1 14/07/10 2:43 PM Blizzard sir douglas mawson Foreword by ranulph fiennes Sir Dougl as Mawson HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 2 14/07/10 2:43 PM the Home of the Blizzard AN AUSTRALIAN HERO’S CLASSIC TALE OF ANTARCTIC DISCOVERY AND ADVENTURE sir douglas mawson Foreword by ranulph fiennes HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 3 14/07/10 2:43 PM Wakefield Press 1 The Parade West Kent Town South Australia 5067 www.wakefieldpress.com.au First published in two volumes by William Heinemann, London, 1915 “Abridged popular edition” first published by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, London, 1930 This facsimile edition of the text of the abridged popular edition, featuring original images from the Mawson Collection, first published by Wakefield Press, 1996 Reprinted 1996 (four times), 1997, 1998 This edition published 2010 Copyright © The estate of Sir Douglas Mawson, 1930, 1996 Foreword copyright © Sir Ranulph Fiennes, 1988 All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher. The photographs in this book were provided by the Mawson Collection, University of Adelaide, from their collection of original prints and glass-plates. Cover designed by Dean Lahn, Lahn Stafford Design Designed by Clinton Ellicott, Wakefield Press Printed and bound in China for Imago National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Mawson, Douglas, Sir, 1882–1958. Title: The home of the blizzard: an Australian hero’s classic tale of Antarctic discovery and adventure/Sir Douglas Mawson. Edition: Rev. ed. ISBN: 978 1 86254 876 3 (pbk.). Notes: Includes index. Subjects: Mawson, Douglas, Sir, 1882–1958. Australasian Antarctic Expedition, (1911–1914). Antarctica—Discovery and exploration. Dewey Number: 919.8904 HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 4 14/07/10 2:43 PM CONTENTS For eword to the 1998 Edition . vii Sir Ranulph Fiennes Author’s Preface ������������������������������������������������xv Pr efac e ���������������������������������������������������������������xvii Introduction ���������������������������������������������������� xxv 1 Pl an and Prepar ation. 1 2 Th e Voyage to Macquarie Isl and. 13 3 Fr om Macquarie Isl and to Adelie Land. 28 4 New Lands. 46 5 Fir st Days in Adel ie Land. 53 6 Autumn Prospects. 66 7 Th e Bl iz z ar d . 77 8 Tr ogl odyt es. 89 9 Domestic Life . 96 10 Winter Activities. 105 11 Spring Exploits . 120 12 Across King George Land. 136 13 Toil and Tribul ation . 163 14 Al one. 186 15 Southward over the Plateau. 204 (From Bage’s Narrative) 16 Eastward over the Sea-ice . 224 (From Madigan’s Narrative) 17 Across Adelie Land—to East and West . 239 (From Stillwell’s and Bickerton’s Reports) HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 5 14/07/10 2:43 PM 18 The Ship’s Story . 248 (From Captain Davis’s Narrative) 19 A Home on t he Fl oat ing Pack-ice . 259 (Frank Wild’s Narrative) 20 Winter and Spr ing in Queen Mary Land . 269 (Frank Wild’s Narrative) 21 Blocked on the Shelf-ice. 287 (Frank Wild’s Narrative) 22 Linking up with Kaiser Wilhel m Land . 301 (From Dr S.E. Jones’s Narrative) 23 The Second Year . 315 24 Life on Macquarie Isl and. 334 (George F. Ainsworth’s Narrative) 25 A Land of Stor m and Mist . 357 (George F. Ainsworth’s Narrative) 26 Short Commons . 386 (George F. Ainsworth’s Narrative) 27 The Homewar d Cruise . 399 Appendix 1 Th e St af f . 418 Appendix 2 Acknowledgments . 421 Appendix 3 Gl ossar y. 426 Index . 431 HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 6 14/07/10 2:43 PM FOREWORD ANYONE INTERESTED in the history of polar exploration has heard of Robert Peary, Frederick Cook, Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen, but who is Douglas Mawson? His polar exploits and accomplishments easily rank with his better-known colleagues but, because he neither reached nor claimed to reach either of the Geographical Poles, the inter- national media of his day never quite latched onto Mawson as they did to the others. Yet his story is every bit as dramatic, as heroic and tragic, perhaps more so. I am sure you will agree when you have read this remarkable book. On the day Mawson’s expedition ship returned home to Australia, she received the news that Amundsen and his Norwegian team had conquered the great human challenge of reaching the South Pole and not long afterwards banner head- lines all over the world screamed out the tragic news of Scott’s death. The age of “heroic exploration” (coined by romantically inclined editors) had ended, soon to be replaced by the endless heroes and tragedies of the two World Wars. Mawson’s amazing tale hardly ruffled the surface of international awareness when his original two-volume account was published in 1915. Between the wars, however, his 1930 abridged edition, less expensive and shorn of much scientific data, was a best-seller in America and throughout the Commonwealth countries. This book is a facsimile edition of the popular 1930 issue with the benefit of photographs largely taken by the famous polar photographer Frank Hurley (also responsible for the remarkable photographic record of Shackleton’s Endurance expedition). Mawson was born in Yorkshire in 1882 and had moved to Australia two years later with his family at a time when many British emigrants were heading for the colonies to set up new lives in sunnier climes. The young Mawson became a geologist and had enjoyed many tough journeys into the outback by the v i i HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 7 14/07/10 2:43 PM v i i i FOREWORD time he was approached by both Scott and Shackleton as a prospective member of their respective teams that were trying to reach the South Pole. Mawson ended up on Shackleton’s team, not for the main polar attempt, but in 1908, as part of the first successful ascent of Mount Erebus, the only active volcano in Antarctica and, in 1909, with two other Australians, in the first journey to the South Magnetic Pole. This incredible unsupported journey of 1,260 miles later prompted its notable leader, Professor Edgar David, to say of Mawson, “In him we had an Australian [Fridtjov] Nansen, a man of infinite resources, splendid spirit, marvelous physique and an indifference to frost and cold that was astonishing—all the attributes of a great explorer.” Mawson himself was bitten by the polar bug and wrote of the terrain they had crossed: “we came to probe its mystery, to reduce this land to terms of science but there is always the indefinable which holds aloof yet which rivets our souls.” He was hooked and immediately made plans to lead his own ventures as soon as he feasibly could. Mawson went to London where he asked if Scott would take an Australian team on his ship in 1910 to complete exploration work during the main South Pole attempt. Scott demurred but offered Mawson a place on his South Pole team. Mawson, taking Shackleton’s advice, turned down the offer and pressed forward with his own plans to investigate the great quadrant of Antarctica lying adjacent to his motherland Australia. He set about raising funds from wealthy Australians living in London. The expedition was ready to go by the polar spring of 1911. Because Scott’s preparations for his final fated journey were based on Ross Island, Mawson’s intended base site, Mawson was forced to set up a base further west in an unknown region. This region turned out to be riven with year-long windstorms of unprecedented ferocity. That he persevered with all his plans in this uniquely hellish territory was, in itself, a testament to the quality of the team and to his personal leadership. This book, which tells the story of Mawson’s expedition, has become one of the greatest accounts of polar survival in history. By the time Mawson left Antarctica, he and his men had added more to the maps of the world’s sixth continent than any HOME OF THE BLIZZARD.indb 8 14/07/10 2:43 PM FOREWORD i x one else of their time. Though he loved adventure and was proud of his Australian identity, scientific curiosity was Mawson’s driving force. He was openly derisive of Pole-hunting for its own sake. When Mawson returned to Australia in 1913 his expedition had explored and mapped some 2,000 miles of the unknown coastline of Earth’s last unmapped continent and added a huge amount of data to our scientific knowledge of this forbidding place. In the 1980s and 1990s I led a series of expeditions to the North and South Poles. A Canadian magazine recently stated that these endeavors had no scientific value, so I sued them for libel and won. Though I am not a scientist, many of my colleagues are. Like Mawson, our journeys combined the two elements of adven- ture and scientific research, and this dedication to science may be one explanation of why Mawson is not as well known as many of his contemporaries. In 1979 I led a team of three across another vast chunk of unexplored Antarctica on the opposite side of the continent and mapped it for the first time using aneroid barometers. That was a mere sixty-six years after Mawson’s epic journey yet, at the time, I knew little or nothing of Mawson’s feats.