Sometimes unexpected challenges can have a positive outcome, as discovered by the team on the Trust’s 2020 Inspiring Explorers’ Expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula.
Antarctic Heritage Trust’s Inspiring Explorers Expedition™ Mahu Whenua Traverse team met in Queenstown, New Zealand in September to prepare for the expedition they will undertake in winter 2022.
It is with much excitement that we can now announce the team that will be heading to the Antarctic Peninsula next month on our 2020 Inspiring Explorers’ Expedition with Olympic kayaker Mike Dawson!
A film documenting a gruelling New Zealand Arctic expedition.
Watch ‘In Nansen’s Footsteps’ here.
‘In Nansen’s Footsteps’ follows young Antipodeans as they ski 560 kilometres to cross the Greenland icecap towing 60 kilogram sleds.
Keith Parsons Inspiring Explorers’ Expedition 2018
In Nansen’s Footsteps premiered at the prestigious New York The Explorers Club Polar Film Festival on the evening of 24 January 2019.
The Explorers Club is a 114-year-old global network of explorers. Its famed membership has included Sir Edmund Hillary, Tensing Norgay, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Roald Amundsen.
In Nansen’s Footsteps was made as part of the Antarctic Heritage Trust’s third Inspiring Explorers’ Expedition. The film was shot and directed by Australia’s Keith Parsons. He was one of four young people selected for the Antarctic Heritage Trust’s 2018 Inspiring Explorers’ Expedition, along with well-known Kiwis Brando Yelavich and Hollie Woodhouse and fellow Australian Bridget Kruger. Belmont Productions in Christchurch produced the film.
Keith says having the film premiere at such the prestigious Explorers’ Club is an honour and reward for the enormous challenges he faced in making it.
“This was a difficult project. The adventure was unfolding in real time, there were no second takes, no setups … it was all action. I constantly battled to keep the batteries warm and charged and the gear frost-free. It was an unforgettable experience though and I think the film has an authenticity borne out of those limitations.”
Led by Trust Executive Director Nigel Watson and guided by Ousland Explorers master guide Bengt Rotmo, the expedition was in part supported by Australasian outdoors company Kathmandu. The expedition honoured Fridtjof Nansen. A Norwegian polar explorer and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Nansen completed the first crossing of Greenland in 1888.
Nigel Watson says the film captures the highs and lows of the 28-day journey.
“There were times of utter elation with breath-taking sights, but also some very challenging periods including storms and significant snowfall.”
As well as numerous storms, the team pushed on through illness and fatigue … even developing a taste for the pounds of butter they had to eat to maintain their energy levels.
“We had to dig deep (literally at times!) to get through this journey, but it helped deliver on the Antarctic Heritage Trust’s goal of Inspiring Explorers.”
The film includes some incredible drone footage which captures the beauty of an area few viewers are likely to travel to.
“We hope people around the world will see this film, be inspired by Nansen’s story and take the opportunity to get out and explore this amazing world we live in.”
In January 2010 our conservators found five crates encased in ice under Shackleton’s 1908 Antarctic base – three contained Mackinlay’s whisky and two contained brandy.
The three whisky crates were excavated and one crate was flown to New Zealand to be carefully thawed by the Trust in a purpose-built environment and public gallery at Canterbury Museum. Eleven bottles of the 114-year old whisky were revealed, still sheathed in their paper and straw packaging.
After delicate conservation, the then owner of Whyte & Mackay (which owns the Mackinlay brand), flew to New Zealand to see the extraordinary find. Under permit from the New Zealand Government, he transported three bottles to Scotland on his private jet for scientific analysis by Whyte & Mackay and The Scotch Whisky Research Institute.
In a unique opportunity for the whisky world, the bottles were subjected to sensory and chemical analysis to establish the flavour and composition of a product manufactured a century earlier. In April 2011, Whyte & Mackay’s master blender, Richard Paterson, successfully recreated an exact replica of the century-old whisky and Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky was born.
Antarctic Heritage Trust Artefact Programme Manager Lizzie Meek working on the straw bottle covers at Canterbury Museum
Antarctic Heritage Trust Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky
The whisky proved so popular that in late 2012, a second edition, ‘The Journey’, was released. Both editions have resulted in a substantial donation to the Trust’s conservation work in Antarctica.
The National Geographic Channel’s Expedition Whisky documentary and author Neville Peat’s excellent book, Shackleton’s Whisky, have both recorded the whisky’s journey from obscurity to world-wide attention. Meanwhile, whisky lovers the world over are enjoying the replica whisky. They are in good company. The whisky has been gifted to, and by, heads of state and royalty.
In January 2013, the Shackleton whisky story came full circle with New Zealand Prime Minister the Rt Hon. John Key repatriating the three bottles of original whisky to the Trust’s staff in Antarctica. The final stage in a remarkable journey for the world’s best aged and travelled whisky was the return of the original crates to Ernest Shackleton’s 1908 base at Cape Royds.
Antarctic Heritage Trust Shackleton’s Nimrod hut sits on an ice-free area of rock at Cape Royds, next to Pony Lake.
Although my time working around Scott Base has been incredible, the portion of my trip which I was really looking forward to was the 11-day trip camping out in the field. This was divided between Cape Royds – the location of Shackleton’s Nimrod Hut, and Cape Evans – the location of Scott’s Terra Nova Hut.
I had heard many great things about Cape Royds: the hut, the Adélie penguin colony and the possibility of seeing the open sea. I was certainly not disappointed.
Mike Gillies Shackleton’s Nimrod Hut, Cape Royds
Shackleton’s Hut at Cape Royds is set in a stunning location. The hut is a lovely design, with gable ends and open-plan inside. At one end is a beautiful ‘Mrs Sam’ cooking stove which would have created a lovely warm ambience over the long Antarctic winter.
The first day we arrived the sea was open, clear of ice. The water was a very dark royal blue, different to what I’m used to seeing in New Zealand. The next day however, the wind changed and blew the loose pack sea ice back south therefore choking the area of McMurdo Sound around Cape Royds, and removing all signs of open water as far as we could see.
Mike Gillies Looking out to McMurdo Sound from Cape Royds
The hut is situated near an Adélie penguin rookery. The proximity of the rookery to the hut gives the whole area a real sense of life – watching the penguins go about their lives is a constant source of amusement.
During our three days at Cape Royds, Martin, Nicola, Lizzie and I completed a range of maintenance and monitoring tasks including: snow shovelling, timber moisture measurements, hut structure and artefact collection monitoring, and collection of hut environmental data.
Mike Gillies Inside Shackleton’s Hut
Cape Evans was next up on our Antarctic field trip – we spent seven busy days here.
Scott’s Terra Nova Hut is set in a lovely location; under the shadow of Mt Erebus, with a view to the Royal Society mountains in the distance across McMurdo Sound.
Antarctic Heritage Trust The conservation team spent seven days at Cape Evans working on Scott’s Terra Nova Hut
The hut is a large gable-ended structure, with a lean-to off the side, which was the stables for the Expedition’s ponies and mules. The interior of the hut is divided up into different spaces to suit the needs of those on the expedition, including: darkroom, bunks, kitchen, Officer’s dining area, and laboratories for the range of science research done.
We had a range of tasks to do while at Cape Evans, including similar monitoring as with Cape Royds, but also a couple of different jobs such as fixing a leaking flue issue, and re-wrapping and hand stitching the ponies’ fodder bales with new hessian (a great experience for all!).
Mike Gillies Scott’s Terra Nova Hut
When reading Scott’s diaries of his Terra Nova Expedition one gets a real sense of the hive of activity the Cape Evans hut must have been. It’s easy to imagine the men sitting around the table with the acetylene lights illuminating the hut and listening to lectures and discussions on a wide range of topics from each other, or playing football outside during the mid-winter twilight.
Mike Gillies The team – Nicola, Lizzie, Martin and Mike
A large focus for the AHT team over the last couple of weeks has been catching up on jobs associated with the TAE/IGY Hut, also known as Hillary’s Hut. Hillary’s Hut was part of the original Scott Base. It was built under the leadership of Sir Edmund Hillary during the Commonwealth Trans Antarctic Expedition/International Geophysical Year 1956–1957.
This hut was lovingly restored by the team at AHT during the summer of 2016/17. It now serves as an opportunity to experience Scott Base as it was 60 years ago. The hut is filled with artefacts from the early years of the New Zealand Antarctic Programme.
Chris Ansin Hillary’s (TAE/IGY) Hut with the junction box and linkway in the foreground
With the restoration of Hillary’s Hut, the team at AHT also built a replica junction box, which attaches to an original section of corrugated iron linkway, and onto the cold porch of the hut. The recreated junction box and linkway floor was plywood, so this week I was tasked with building duckboard similar to what would have been around back in the original Scott Base.
Opening the junction box front door for the first time and experiencing the small space of the linkway with its low passageway and dim lighting really gives the visitor insight into a different world, and is a great entrance into the hut itself.
Mike Gillies Linkway at Scott Base
The original Scott Base was a series of prefabricated ‘huts’ separate from one another, but joined together with covered linkways. The linkways consisted of corrugated iron passageways, with square plywood junction boxes wherever two linkways met.
Mike Gillies Junction box plywood floor before installation of new duckboard
There were multiple reasons for these covered linkways: they allowed Scott Base personnel to walk between buildings without being exposed to the Antarctic weather; in the event of a fire separate buildings with non-combustible passageways meant a fire could be contained to one hut only; and they allowed services e.g., electricity and communications, to be run between different huts. However, because Scott Base is built on scoria, personnel needed a flooring of sorts to walk on between buildings when travelling through the linkways. Walking on scoria all the time is no fun.
The solution: duckboard!
Kim Westerkov, Antarctica New Zealand Pictorial Collection Before: The original linkway duckboard
Using historical photos of the duckboard in the original Scott Base such as the one above as reference, we scaled the measurements, selected matching timber and confirmed how it was constructed.
Mike Gillies After: The linkway after the installation of new duckboard
The end result – a nice new walkway in the entrance to the hut, in keeping with the original linkway duckboard.
Antarctic Heritage Trust is delighted to have their ‘Still Life’, which is a unique audio-visual immersive experience that allows you to ‘step inside’ the historic huts of the British Antarctic explorers, open as part of the Korea National Maritime Museum’s new Antarctic exhibition.
Complementing the experience are Jane Ussher’s large scale photographs. The exhibition runs at the museum in Busan until March 2019.
Jane Ussher Visitors enjoy the Still Life audio-visual immersive experience
Jane Ussher Artefacts on display in the Still Life Exhibition at the Korean National Maritime Museum
Still Life was originally developed by Antarctic Heritage Trust and Jane Ussher in conjunction with the Christchurch City Council, New Zealand.
The ribbon cutting ceremony marks the opening of ‘Still Life’
Jane Ussher The Still Life audio-visual immersive experience includes photographer Jane Ussher’s large-scale photographs
Ardi Barnard – Deputy Head of Mission NZ Embassy Seoul, PHotographer Jane Ussher, Trust Executive Director Nigel Watson, and Scott Davis – Spyglass
Jane Ussher A visitor enjoys the large-scale ‘Still Life’ photographs
Carbs, fatty protein, sugar, fat, a bit more sugar – sound like a recipe for happiness or hospitalisation? The diet of the sledging man in the early 1900’s revolved around a pretty limited menu. Here’s what Campbell’s Northern Party were eating in 1911:
| Food | Oz/per person per day | grams |
| Biscuit | 17 | 482 |
| Pemmican | 8 | 227 |
| Chocolate | 3.14 | 89 |
| Sugar | 2.16 | 61 |
| Cheese | 1.5 | 43 |
| Raisins | 1.5 | 43 |
| Cocoa | 0.7 | 19.9 |
Antarctic Heritage Trust Heritage carpenter Martin conserves a sledge box
That’s only around 960g of food per day. Per day! When you are hauling your share of an 1163lb (1/2 a tonne, or 528kg) sled for at least eight hours a day. To put it another way, your breakfast and lunch and dinner combined is an 8oz wodge of meat with a 25% fat to meat ratio; a couple of chunky sized Cadbury’s chocolate bars, a couple of packets of crackers, a quarter cup of sugar and one of those small boxes of raisins you used to pack in your school lunchbox. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day, over and over again.
Antarctic Heritage Trust Sugar was a particular treat on the Ice in the early 1900’s
Sugar was a highly prized commodity, and it was served out in lumps. For a special treat on your birthday, you might get an extra six lumps of sugar and another serving of chocolate. In the AHT conservation lab this week we have been working on some worn and weathered boxes of Tate sugar, and wondering if they ate the six lumps in one go or saved them up for a morale booster during the long hours of sledging. We know what we’d do, how about you?
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Antarctic Heritage Trust
7 Ron Guthrey Road, Christchurch 8053, New Zealand
Private Bag 4745, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
Antarctic Heritage Trust
7 Ron Guthrey Road, Christchurch 8053, New Zealand
Private Bag 4745, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
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Alasdair Turner