Left in Antarctica

Antarctica – this huge, frozen continent is bitterly cold, inhospitable as Mars and as far from civilization as any place on the planet. Just getting there has been a struggle; staying there has been near impossible. bear mute testimony to mankind’s perseverance in mastering what is literally the last place on Earth. Here are some tangible relics of our presence.


Shackleton’s Hut, UK, Abandoned 1909
Sir Ernest Shackleton participated in a number of Antarctic exploration expeditions in the first two decades of the 20th century, including the 1907-09 ‘Nimrod’ Expedition. Arriving at McMurdo Sound, Shackleton selected a landing site about 20 miles away from Hut Point (established by rival explorer Robert Falcon Scott during the 1901-04 Discovery Expedition).

Though Shackleton pushed to within 97 miles of the South Pole, setting a record, he and his party were forced to turn back. When the expedition departed Antarctica in March of 1909, he left the fully stocked, pre-fab hut behind – where it still stands, not much the worse for wear, to this day

Video tour of Shackleton’s hut at Cape Royds

Scott’s Hut, UK, Abandoned 1913

The heroic yet ultimately doomed Terra Nova Expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1911 was based at Hut Point, the original base set up by Scott when he first arrived in Antarctica. Though Scott and his 4 companions reached the South Pole on January 17th, 1912, to their great disappointment they found that Roald Amundsen of Norway had beat them by nearly a full month.

As history records, Scott and his team (Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans) did not survive the return from the Pole but their hut on Ross Island remains, preserved by frigid cold and low humidity.

Mawson Station, Australia, 1914

The 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) led by Sir Douglas Mawson set a number ofscientific goals including making the first flight over Antarctic territory. Unfortunately Mawson’s flying plans were scuttled when the Vickers Monoplane suffered damage to its wings in transit and was used, wingless, as an air tractor.

Mawson Station was abandoned in 1914 though Mawson returned for short visits in 1929 and 1931. Remains of the Vickers aircraft’s metal frame were discovered on January 2nd, 2010, by a team from the Mawson’s Huts Foundation. The original huts at Mawson’s base at Cape Denison can be seen below, nearly subsumed by decades of snow and ice.

Leningradskaya Base, Soviet Union, Abandoned 1991

The Soviet research station “Leningradskaya” located in Oates Land, was set up in 1971 and abandoned in 1991 in the wake of the fall of communism and the accompanying fiscal crisis that beset the country. The remnants of the station sits at the edge of 100-ft high stone cliff looking out to the desolate Oates Coast of Antarctica.

More abandoned bases at WebUrbanist.

Most remote abandoned

Aahh, Weburbanist has abandoned places in truly far-flung locations, the mystery is less about why they were abandoned – it is how there were people there in the first place. Examples of human stubbornness in the face of extreme environmental conditions, from one temperature extreme to another.

This one is also interesting for the names of the places, the first is St Kilda, no not the Melbourne suburb, but St Kilda, Scotland in the Outer Hebrides

It has been inhabited continuously for 2,000 years – ending in 1930 (even has a lighthouse)

St Kilda ruins

Then there's Ballarat,the second Ballarat near Death Valley in California, named after the Victorian goldrush one, but not faring as well. It used to have about 500 people, now only 2.

To the other extreme - South Georgia in the South Atlantic, was the home to a number of sealing and whaling stations. It was famous for Shackleton's traverse of the island after the Endurance was crushed, he was buried there in 1922.


And finally the Australian entrant - the town of Cook in South Australia. One of numerous towns (named after famous figures in Australian history) established on the Indian-Pacific rail-line. Now with less reliance on local railway gangers maintaining the line, Cook boasts only 4 residents and is the only scheduled stop across the Nullarbor Plain section of the line. All supplies, including fresh water, arrive by train.

Lost men

Here is the other book on the Aurora's team
The lost men : the harrowing story of Shackleton’s Ross Sea party by Kelly Tyler-Lewis

While the story of Shackleton's crew of the “Endurance” is well known, the fate of his Ross Sea support party has been largely forgotten. Charged with laying supply depots every 60 miles for Shackleton's 1914–1916 Trans-Antarctic trek, the Ross Sea party became stranded with most of their clothing, food, and equipment gone, when its ship “Aurora” tore free of her moorings and disappeared in a gale.
This account of the 10-man party's plight relies on the men's journals, which are amazingly detailed, considering the physical (snow blindness, scurvy, frostbite) and mental (depression, paranoia) problems they faced. The men's decision to lay depots despite the obstacles demonstrates their courage.
The heart of the book lies in the dissection of the men's relationships with one another. As friends are made, alliances formed and resentment festers, humanity is never lost, even amid inhumane conditions. Given the collection of military, civilian, scientific and blue-collar personnel, it's compelling to see how each man deals with his fate. Add in the party sledding 1,300 miles in subzero temperatures with the sociological aspects of being stranded for nearly two years.
Tyler-Lewis, a historian, located the diaries of 16 survivors, found public records and private papers and interviewed the families of the Ross Sea party to build her story.
“The lost men” differs from the other Ross Sea party book – “Shackleton’s forgotten Argonauts”, this is a researched story while “Argonauts was story telling. Both are great reads.
And with these books which include the locations of the supply dumps as recorded by the team in 1915 & 1916, all we need to do is calculate the drift of the Ross Ice Shelf in the intervening years and find them!

Shackleton's Aurora

Further to my last post re Greg Mortimer finding Mawson's food dump, here is a review of one of the books exploring the fate of Shackleton's Ross Sea party.

Shackleton’s forgotten Argonauts by Lennard Bickel
A handful of starving, half frozen wretches, marooned on the ice, made the most horrendous sledge march in polar history in a cause of the highest nobility and the utmost futility. The story of these 10 men and their feats was overshadowed by the saga of the “Endurance”, and their self-sacrifice became a footnote in history.
A local footnote is that the youngest team member was Dick Richards, born at Bendigo he was a teacher at the Ballarat Technical School.
Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition planned to cross the entire Antarctic continent. To achieve this goal, he needed a second party on the other side of the continent to lay supply depots which would be used by his “Endurance” team.

The Minna Bluff Depot, the major supply depot left for Shackleton

This “Aurora” team were committed to laying food depots across the Ross Ice Shelf to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. Due to a blizzard, their supply ship “Aurora”, still with most of the provisions aboard, was swept out to sea and was unable to return. These castaway men had little more than the clothes they wore, were dependent on the discarded supplies from past expeditions, had faulty equipment and poor shelter. Yet they marched almost 2,000 miles and spent 10 months trekking, through 2 winters, on the ice laying supplies weighing thousands of pounds, which they badly needed for their own survival. They suffered the worst privations, and some suffered the ultimate fate.
The cruellest irony is that Shackleton’s team never arrived, so the precious supplies are still there today under the snow – waiting.

Antarctica- now and then

I came across a link to this article from the "Sydney Morning Herald", December 3, 2008, which relates to an interest I'd talked about in a couple of newspaper reviews I did a few years ago (will re-release them in a separate post)

Mawson food store found in Antarctic
A cache of food left by the 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition led by explorer Sir Douglas Mawson has been found after almost a century. The cache of flour and pemmican (a food mix favoured by the AAE on sledging runs)in calico bags and a tin was located at Madigan Nunatak, an exposed rocky peak surrounded by ice about 70km east-south-east of Cape Denison. The discovery was made by a small team of explorers led by Greg Mortimer. "We observed a cairn surmounted by a tin consistent in shape and construction with kerosene tins associated with the AAE. The tin contains at least three calico bags held in place by a rock.” The long bamboo pole which marked the spot for the AAE is still there but now lies on the rocks”. Mortimer left the food store at the site near Cape Denison which was the AAE's base for two years and is now being conserved by the Mawson's Huts Foundation.

Read more: http://news.smh.com.au/national/mawson-food-store-found-in-antarctic-20081231-77wp.html

There was also a reference (indeed it was the key to solving the mystery) to the expedition and Mawson's book "Home of the blizzard" in an episode of the ABC's "New Tricks" a couple of weeks ago.