Traversing Antarctica - Maritime Museum

Sat 3 Nov 2012 – Sun 24 Feb 2013

9:30am – 5:00pm

WA Maritime Museum

Imagine life in a land of ice and blizzards. What motivates people to venture to a place of such extremes as Antarctica? One word: discovery.

Traversing Antarctica: the Australian experience shows how Australia’s connection with the frozen continent has developed for over 100 years since the 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) led by Douglas Mawson. The exhibition brings together the people, documents, objects, maps, animals and images that make up the fascinating story of Australia in Antarctica. From the iconic material of the AAE, to intriguing official letters; stunning film footage and hands-on activities, Traversing Antarctica is designed to draw visitors in and inspire them to explore further.

Traversing Antarctica: the Australian experience is the product of a collaboration between the National Archives of Australia, the Australian Antarctic Division and the Western Australian Museum.

This exhibition is supported by Visions of Australia, a Commonwealth Government Program.

Traversing Antarctica - Exhibition Introduction

Traversing Antarctica - Live from Antarctica

Transcript: Hi Everybody.
My name’s Graham Cook.
I’m the station leader at Mawson in Antarctica.
Mawson’ s Australia’s oldest research station.
It was established in 1954 and named after Sir Douglas Mawson, an early Australian Antarctic explorer.

As you travel around the exhibition and have a look about, you’ll see photos of Walter Hannam sitting at his communications desk and photos of the mast being put up at Macquarie Island.
Pretty fascinating stuff to have a look at.


Today at Mawson it is about minus 18 and the wind’s blowing at about 35 kilometres an hour. So it’s a reasonably nice day for us.
We’ve had several weeks of blizzards and snow and overcast weather.
So to see the sun we’ve all got a bit of a smile on our face.

---