WRITER’S LIFE WRITER’S LIFE
A\jj\9cXZbX[[\ifeYfXi[ 8?^^cle[jXcc$k\iiX`em\_`Zc\fek_\j\X`Z\ 8lifiX8ljkiXc`j`ek_\j\X`Z\% Falcon Scott to take her on his expedition so XkGcXkZ_X?lke\Xi;Xm`jJkXk`fe% she could look for rocks to prove the theory that the continents had once been linked. BREAKING THE Among the records of Ernest Shackleton, one of the great men from the heroic era of Antarctic exploration, is a letter from three young women, which said, ‘We are ICE CEILING three strong healthy girls, and also gay and bright, and willing to undergo any hardships that you yourself undergo … we do not see why men should have the glory, and women none, especially when there are women just as brave and capable as there are men.’ Twenty-five women applied to Mawson’s expedition in 1929, and the extraordinary a tourist with plenty of money, Leane’s academic study Antarctica in number of 1300 women applied to the or – for a lucky few – an artist with a Fiction is coming out in mid-2012. British Antarctic Expedition proposed project that captures the imagination It took me three attempts to for 1937. of the Australian Antarctic Division convince the Division that my novel Not one of those women made it to (AAD). about Ingrid was more exciting than Antarctica. The only women who managed Writers have been active the various visual arts, music, dance, to get there before the 1940s were those contributors to the Antarctic Arts film and photography projects also who went in association with Ingrid Fellowship program over the years. vying for an arts berth on the and Lars Christensen: Mathilde Wegger, Tim Bowden went as an arts fellow Aurora Australis, the big red icebreaker Lillemor Rachlew, Solveig Wideroe, in 1988–89 and afterwards wrote charged with shuttling AAD Caroline Mikkelsen and Ingrid’s daughter several books and presented a series employees between Hobart and Sofie Christensen. of television and radio documentaries East Antarctica for their half- or I was intrigued by Ingrid and the about Antarctica. Twenty years full-year stints on the continent. C\^\e[Xip8ekXiZk`Z[f^j#d`jj`e^Xik\]XZkj#Zfejg`iXZp forgotten story of her four journeys. All later, in 2008, Tom Griffiths jointly In October 2011 I finally stepped the ingredients were there for a compelling won the Prime Minister’s Prize for on board and began my six-week k_\fi`\jf]\ogcfiXk`feXe[XZfek`e\ekf]]c`d`kjkf]\dXc\j¿ 8;;
=fccfn`e^k_\kiX`cf]k_\]`ijknfdXekfm`j`k8ekXiZk`ZX_Xjc\[ 9C could I write a novel about Antarctica Antarctic history Slicing the Silence own voyages to the same region of <
JJ without going there? after a fellowship voyage. Hazel Antarctica 80 years earlier. <
efm\c`jkXe[8ekXiZk`Z8ikj=\ccfnA
red Hägglunds vehicle. I’m now standing at was the first woman known to have seen took Caroline ashore, and she became ?8 continent’s lexicon. bases (Casey, Davis and Mawson), the top of a hill surrounded by ice and snow, Antarctica, I wanted to know more. (it was believed) the first woman to set foot N Alison Lester kept however, all lie on the other side of FI;
waving a 70-year-old Australian Red Ensign But there was a problem: there was little on Antarctica. =A an online diary for the continent, in a remote location far flag that I’ve unearthed from a rock cairn, and more to be found. I discovered that Ingrid, a What Ingrid thought about being pipped schoolchildren and from most tourist activities. It’s more J8E;< accompanied by a life-sized fibreglass seeing 38-year-old Norwegian, left her six children at the post was never recorded. Although = wrote the children’s than 4500km from Hobart to Davis PF eye dog called Stay. behind and travelled to Antarctica by ship her husband wrote prolifically about their J book One Small Island Station – two weeks’ sailing time It’s one of the more surreal moments of four times with her husband, Lars, in the travels, none of Ingrid’s words have survived, (with Coral Tulloch), each way, through the roaring forties, my Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship, but it 1930s as part of his whaling fleet, taking a if they were ever written down in the first Anthony Eaton furious fifties and screaming sixties typifies several things about the extraordinary female friend or two on each trip. Although place. Her own landing, which took place wrote the novel Into latitudes of the Southern Ocean. <>>
that it helps to have an eccentric obsession if for landing. Antarctica is problematic, as they were J Douglas Mawson was journeys of past years. In 1931, you want to visit. Oh, and if there’s something Before Ingrid could get back to actively, in fact strenuously, excluded from launched in 2011, Ingrid made a six-week voyage from you want to find again – a ship, a flag, a Antarctica a fourth time, a Danish woman, the continent. Women had started applying as was Jo Chandler’s Cape Town on the resupply vessel vehicle – it’s a good idea to make sure it’s red. Caroline Mikkelsen, accompanied her to Antarctic expeditions early in the 1900s.
(+ >FF;I<8;@E>D8I:?)'() NNN%>FF;I<8;@E>D8>8Q@E<%:FD >FF;I<8;@E>D8I:?)'() (, WRITER’S LIFE
East Antarctica. The development of wireless on the mainland at all. It appears that Ingrid for such a historic moment as the landing of communication meant some contact with Christensen was the first woman to land on the first woman they would have made sure home was possible and news reports could Antarctica itself. they were on the mainland. Alan’s theory, be sent back to the papers. Now this kind of hairsplitting about also based on the absence of the artefacts the Eighty years later, in 2011, I made a who landed where and when might seem Mikkelsens left in the cairn, is that this is the six-week voyage on the Division’s resupply ridiculous, but it was an important part wrong site, and that the real landing place vessel carrying fuel, mail, food, personnel and of polar exploration, as evidenced by the hasn’t been found yet. He believes that the equipment from Hobart to Davis Station in still-famous story of Scott and Amundsen’s cairn and flagpole were put there secretly East Antarctica. The development of satellite race to the South Pole 100 years ago. by Norwegian crewmen sneaking off a ship communication meant limited email contact In fact, the first confirmed landing during a 1939 American expedition on the with home was possible, though connecting on Antarctica, by Henryk Bull’s 1894 ship Wyatt Earp with Lincoln Ellsworth and to the internet was not. (With help from a expedition on a ship called Antarctic, shows the Australian explorer Hubert Wilkins. friend I could post to my blog from the ship the lengths to which such competition As an author, I love Alan’s theory. via email). could go. The identity of the first person Norwegian sailors secretly hiding things, I settled in to the strange, insular world ashore was hotly disputed, with the captain, missing artefacts, mistaken identities and of a long ship journey across a wild ocean. a junior seaman and the scientist Carsten the prospect of an undiscovered treasure I slid around in my bunk at night and waltzed Borchgrevink all claiming to have leapt from – Caroline’s real landing site. However, through the corridors, one-two-three, the landing boat before the others. To this although Alan has worked out a location one-two-three in a side-to-side motion day no-one knows the truth of the story. for the Mikkelsens’ landing, based on close to keep my balance. Like Ingrid and her By such slender margins were reputations analysis of the written descriptions, 20 years companions, I braved the chilly air on deck made and histories written. of searching by Davis Station residents has to watch for albatrosses, whales, snow petrels It wasn’t until I got back from our field failed to turn up anything. and the first icebergs. I suffered seasickness, trip that I discovered this discrepancy about Meanwhile, I found that although though unlike them I had an extensive Caroline’s landing has fascinated people people at Davis Station knew quite a lot range of medications to help me through it. living at Davis Station over the years. about Caroline Mikkelsen, none of them I imagine those women were just as fascinated Alan Parker, the Davis Station leader in were familiar with Ingrid Christensen, even and awed by the spectacle of the sea ice and 1977, had a passion for history and for the though the station is located in a region the continent itself as I was. surrounding area. He thought it unlikely named after her. As far as I know, nobody The December 2011 centenary that the Mikkelsen landing party wouldn’t has ever gone searching for Ingrid’s landing celebrations of Mawson’s trip to Antarctica have known they were on an island and that place. I went to Norway last year and had were stymied by the presence of large a section of Ingrid’s husband’s diaries icebergs at Commonwealth Bay, blocking translated, describing their own landing at access to the historic Mawson huts. Scullin Monolith, not far from Mawson Ingrid, who was visiting largely unknown Station. The Christensens also laid down and unmapped territory, also had trouble a depot under a cairn of rocks, and if it finding accessible landing places. JkXp#k_\8ekXiZk`Z[f^# hasn’t been souvenired by passing sailors in I was lucky in that regard, as I was Xe[A\jj\9cXZbX[[\iXk the past 80 years, it’s still there, a heritage choppered off the ship once we were 9Xe[`kj?lke\Xi;Xm`j treasure waiting to be found. close to Davis Station and so my own JkXk`fe% I have a dream of going back to find landing took a matter of minutes. The it – and a plan – but that’s another story. Division turned on the red carpet treatment, sending me out on a three-day Stay, the seeing eye dog, is an Antarctic legend escorted field trip to explore the in her own right. She was kidnapped by a group surrounds of Davis Station, including the of expeditioners from the streets of Hobart in flagpole marking Caroline Mikkelsen’s 1991 for a short visit to Antarctica to provide landing place. some comfort to the men and women mourning And there, on a small hill in the the imminent removal of huskies from Australian middle of an Adélie penguin rookery, bases. But instead of returning to the guide dog I found confirmation of a curious fact organisation full of money as planned, Stay that polar researcher Ian Norman and his embarked on her own Antarctic adventures.
colleagues had noticed when examining She’s been smuggled, liberated, repatriated, @E JB the records of Caroline Mikkelsen’s incarcerated and dognapped all over again. With F landing. Contrary to the map sketched her own Facebook page and passport, she’s ? 8M@; by Caroline’s husband describing their travelled all over Antarctica and even north to ; landing site on the continent, the flagpole Spitsbergen in the high Arctic, by means largely marking the spot is on a small offshore unknown. I was delighted that she accompanied island. Caroline, it seems, never landed us to Caroline Mikkelsen’s landing site. G?FKF>I8G?P1
(- >FF;I<8;@E>D8I:?)'() NNN%>FF;I<8;@E>D8>8Q@E<%:FD