Lab built in Antarctic to preserve Mawson relics
Barbara McMahon in Sydney
Wednesday January 30, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
A team of Australians has constructed a laboratory in one of the most inhospitable places on earth as part of efforts to preserve the ice-encrusted hut built by the Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson in 1911.
The laboratory will serve as a base for experts to conserve hundreds of artefacts frozen in ice and snow for nearly a century after being left behind by the young adventurer and his team at the end of their ill-fated expedition.
Lab built in Antarctic to preserve Mawson relics
Letters, books, university medals, whisky bottles, boxes of biscuits and even shriveled potatoes and seal meat were found in the hut at Cape Dennison, Commonwealth Bay, which was Mawson's home for two years.
The relics will undergo conservation treatment and will then be returned to the hut, which is constructed out of timber and embedded in ice. The frozen time capsule is Australia's most precious Antarctic site and the conservation work is being supervised by the Australian Antarctic Division.
A team including builders and an electrician constructed the laboratory over a five-week period, battling 100km/h (62mph) winds and below-freezing temperatures.
More of Mawson's belongings are still being slowly chipped out of the ice which has covered the hut in the years since he abandoned it. Four cubic metres of snow were removed from the inside of the hut during the latest expedition.
Archaelogist Anne McConnell said it was an unusual experience. "Certainly as an archaeologist I'd never excavated snow and ice before," she said.
Her colleague Michelle Berry said many items such as books and bottles were still in good condition, but metal objects such as cans of food were being corroded because of the damp atmosphere inside the hut. Future expeditions, she said, would spend time coating the items with protective liquids in the new laboratory.
Yorkshire-born Mawson was two when his family left for Australia in 1884.
On his trip to Antarctica he mapped out vast coastal areas, but bad weather caused the deaths of two members of his party. In an epic trek, Mawson made it back to expedition headquarters alone.
In later life he completed two more voyages to the frozen continent before retiring to become professor of geology at Adelaide University. He died in 1958.
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