Trip Reports
Antarctica and Mawsons Hut
Henrik Lovendahl - Summit Gear Adventure Guru and Aurora Expeditions Guide
Over the past 10 years working for Aurora Expeditions I have done some 30 voyages to the Antarctic Peninsula from Ushuaia in southern Argentina. From there it takes only 2 days to cross the infamous Southern Ocean and you are in Antarctica.
As I am not a very good sailor, I have always been apprehensive about doing the “longer” trips out of Tasmania down to the Australian claim of Antarctica. However it is a part of the continent that I wanted to see and I finally got the opportunity this season. We boarded the Russian ice strengthened ship Marina Svetaeva on Salamanca Wharf in Hobart on a drizzly morning in early December. From there we set sail towards Macquarie Island some 1500km south of Oz. We were hoping to retrace Sir Douglas Mawson’s route south on the SY Aurora in 1911 to Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay.
Macquarie Island is a wildlife paradise home to millions of penguins, thousands of seals and 40 people. It was wonderful hanging out on the beach with thousands of King Penguins and Royal Penguins. It was a constant parade in and out of the water as they return from the sea with food for their hungry chicks. Hauled out along the shores were hundreds of snorting and belching Elephant Seals. The sound reminded me of being back home in the shop…. The young weaner pups were inquisitive, cute and found our bags a comfortable place to have a sleep.
From “Macca” we sailed south another 1500km through the “roaring forties” and “furious fifties” to Commonwealth Bay. Mawson’s Hut located at Cape Denison is known as the windiest place on earth and after two days of blizzard we finally got ashore. The hut is located on a small rocky spit of land with towering ice cliffs on both sides. The polar plateau slopes up behind all the way to the South Pole. It is hard to imagine how it would have been living here for two years. Mawson spent a winter here by himself after his epic journey across the ice where two of his mates died. His ship had left for Oz only days before he crawled back into the hut and was marooned.
Having been abandoned for many years the hut was full of ice and in disrepair but the people from the Mawson’s Hut Foundation have done a great job in restoring the building. They have dug out much of the ice and we can now enter the hut where many historical artefacts remain. Tins of food, bottles and books on shelves, clothing hanging on posts and in Mawson’s room is his bunk, a small table and a rocking chair.
Over the next couple of weeks we visited the French base of Dumont D’Urville. Did helicopter flights amongst the towering icebergs formed by enormous glaciers and landed on the Antarctic Plateau. As we made our way through pack ice we were treated to majestic Emperor Penguins, Adelie Penguins, Weddell Seals and Orcas.
It is impossible to put into words the impressions a place like this leave with you. It is so vast and remote and we only touched a tiny part of it. It is a humbling experience and very addictive. I truly appreciate why these early explorers kept going back despite the hardship they had to endure.
Thanks to the Team at Summit Gear for letting me pursue my passion and keeping me in a job while going away so often.