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Douglas Mawson

[maw-suhn]

Sir Douglas Mawson, OBE, FAA, FRS (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was an Australian Antarctic explorer and geologist. With Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, Mawson was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Early work

He was appointed geologist to an expedition to the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1903; his report The geology of the New Hebrides, was one of the first major geological works of Melanesia. Also that year he published a geological paper on Mittagong, New South Wales. His major influences in his geological career were Professor Edgeworth David and Professor Archibald Liversidge. He then became a lecturer in petrology and mineralogy at the University of Adelaide in 1905. He identified and first described the mineral Davidite, named for Edgeworth David.

In 1907, Mawson joined the British Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton as an expedition geologist. With his mentor and fellow geologist, Edgeworth David, he was on the first ascent of Mount Erebus. Later, he was a member of the first team to reach the South Magnetic Pole, assuming the leadership of the party from David on their perilous return.

Mawson's Australian Antarctic Expedition

Mawson turned down an invitation to join Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova Expedition in 1910; Australian geologist Griffith Taylor went instead. Mawson chose to lead his own expedition, the Australian Antarctic Expedition, to King George V Land and Adelie Land, the sector of the Antarctic continent immediately south of Australia, which at the time was almost entirely unexplored. The objectives were to carry out geographical exploration and scientific studies, including visiting the South Magnetic Pole.

The expedition, using the ship Aurora commanded by Captain John King Davis, departed Hobart on 2 December 1911, landed at Cape Denison on Commonwealth Bay on 8 January 1912, and established the Main Base. A second camp was located to the west on the ice shelf in Queen Mary Land. Cape Denison proved to be unrelentingly windy; the average wind speed for the entire year was about 50 mph (80 km/h). They built a hut on the rocky cape and wintered through nearly constant blizzards. On page 133 in The Home of the Blizzard Mawson wrote "... on the evening of May 24, in the form of Herculean gusts ... the momentary velocity of these doubtlessly approached two hundred miles per hour."

Mawson's exploration program was carried out by five parties from the Main Base and two from the Western Base. Mawson's team, which was to trek east, consisted of Xavier Mertz, Lieutenant B. E. S. Ninnis and himself. Nearing the end of this team's trek, Ninnis and his dog team and sledge, with most of the provisions, fell through a crevasse and were lost.

Mawson and Mertz turned back immediately. Mertz died during the return journey and Mawson continued alone. On one occasion during his return trip to the Main Base, he fell through the lid of a crevasse and was saved only by his sledge wedging itself into the ice above him. When he finally made it back to Cape Denison, the ship Aurora had left only a few hours before. Using wireless communication the ship was recalled only to have bad weather thwart the rescue effort. Mawson, and six men who had remained behind to look for him, wintered a second year until December 1913. In Mawson's book, Home of the Blizzard, he describes his experiences. His party, and those at the Western Base, had explored large areas of the Antarctic coast, describing its geology, biology and meteorology, and more closely defining the location of the south magnetic pole.

Dog Livers and Hypervitaminosis

The dogs became a food resource after Ninnis, his dog team and the sledge they were pulling fell into a crevasse and were lost, along with most of the food supply. The liver of one dog contains enough vitamin A to produce the condition called hypervitaminosis A. Mawson did not know this and fed more of the dog livers to Mertz, as the latter was the weaker of the two men, thus causing vitamin A poisoning and facilitating Mertz's demise.

The words of his first rescuer upon finding Mawson were "My God, which one are you?

Home of the Blizzard

In his book, The Home of the Blizzard, Mawson talked of "Herculean gusts" on 24 May 1912 which he learned afterwards "approached two hundred miles per hour, and that the average wind velocity for March was 49 miles per hour; April 51.5 miles per hour and May was 67.7 miles per hour. These winds have been referred to as Katabatic winds: "a wind that carries high density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity".

Later life

On his journey back, he married Paquita Delprat and was knighted, but the public took little interest in his achievements, being completely taken up with the Scott disaster and the outbreak of World War I. Mawson served in the war as a Major in the British Ministry of Munitions. Returning to Adelaide he pursued his academic studies, taking further expeditions abroad, including a joint British, Australian and New Zealand expedition to the Antarctic in 1929–31. The work done by the expedition led to the formation of the Australian Antarctic Territory in 1936. He also spent much of his time researching the geology of the northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia. Upon his retirement from teaching in 1952 he was made Emeritus Professor. He died at his Brighton home on 14 October 1958 from a cerebral haemorrhage. He was 76 years old.

His image appeared from 1984-96 on the Australian paper one hundred dollar note. Mawson Peak (Heard Island), Mount Mawson (Tasmania), Mawson Station (Antarctica), Dorsa Mawson (Mare Fecunditatis), the geology building on the main University of Adelaide campus, suburbs in Canberra and Adelaide, a South Australian TAFE institute, and the main street of Meadows, South Australia are named after him. The Mawson Collection of Antarctic exploration artefacts is on permanent display at the South Australian Museum, including a screening of a recreated version of his journey that was shown on ABC Television on 12 May 2008.

Notes

References

Lennard Bickel, Mawson's Will ISBN 978-1-58642-000-0
Lennard Bickel, This Accursed Land, foreword by Sir Edmund Hillary, ISBN 0 7251 0302 7
F. J. Jacka, ' Mawson, Sir Douglas (1882 - 1958)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, MUP, 1986, pp 454-457.
Mawson, Sir Douglas (no date given) The Home of the Blizzard, being the story of the Australasian Antarctic expedition, 1911-1914 Vol. I, London: Ballantyne Press