Australasian Antarctic Expedition
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition or unofficially Aurora expedition was an Australian scientific expedition, whose members 1911-1914 explored part of Antarctica. It was led by the Australian geologist Douglas Mawson, who was beaten later for his achievements in leading this expedition a knight. 1910 Mawson began planning an expedition to map the two-thousand -kilometer coastline of Antarctica south of Australia. The Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science paid tribute to his plans applause and contributed significantly to finance the expedition. The remaining funds were deposited by support from the public.
The material selected for the expedition team came mainly from Australian and New Zealand universities. Of the men, the man should base on the Antarctic continent, 22 were Australian citizens. Four were New Zealanders, three British and one Swiss. Three of the conductor ( Mawson, Frank Wild and John King Davis) were veterans of previous Antarctic travel.
As the ship seal hunting ship Aurora was provided from Newfoundland, a steam-powered sailing vessel, with a length of almost 50 meters and a displacement of 600 tons. The ship has undergone some modifications for the ride, including the increase of three large tanks for fresh water storage. The captain of the Aurora was John King Davis.
The ship was launched on 2 December 1911 in the direction of Macquarie Island and arrived on December 11, after they had survived stormy weather. A second ship, the Toroa, followed with food and passengers. On December 23, the Aurora left the Macquarie Island and began to explore the coastal areas, where Georg V. Land and Queen Mary Coast were discovered and named.
The men set up their main base or winter quarters Mawson 's Huts at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, where eighteen men spent the winter of 1912 and seven the winter of 1913. Their huts are still today, two intact and two as ruins. They also built quarters on Macquarie Island and West based on the Shackleton Ice Shelf, but these no longer exist today.
The teams of all three bases led by routine scientific and meteorological observations, which were recorded in detail in the voluminous reports, which were first published in 1922-1942. They also overcame months of failures, what equipment and masts were concerned, as they set up the first wireless radio connection Antarctica, which was associated with Hobart.
Sleigh rides on the coast and inland gave the team the opportunity to explore previously uncharted territory. In the second half of 1912 five major trips from the main base and two from the west base have been made.
On such a sleigh ride, which was led by Mawson and Xavier Mertz of the dogs and Belgrave Ninnis were directed, were Ninnis, a team of six dogs and the sledge with the much of the food into a crevasse. The survivors began a brutal journey home to 500 km distant base camp, where they lived on the other dogs. Mertz fell into a delirium, and died on the way back and let Mawson back as the only survivors. He halved his sleigh with a penknife, and then pulled him with geological samples and very little food 160 km far back to the base at Cape Denison. He arrived there on 8 February 1913, a few hours after Davis ' recovery team had gone back on the Aurora, and was nursed back to health, while he remained with six volunteers for another, this time unplanned year. Mawson documented this hard journey in his book "The Home of the Blizzard ".
Other members of the expedition were Frank Hurley as the official photographer, Frank Wild as leader of the West base, Charles Hoadley as a geologist and Cecil Madigan as a meteorologist.