1912 (37 page)

When the
Aurora
returned to Commonwealth Bay, Davis soon became concerned about the Far Eastern Party. Searching
Mawson's correspondence he found hurriedly written instructions that the men were intending to be back by 15 January 1913. They were long overdue.

Davis took immediate control of the situation. The
Aurora
sailed along the coast searching for signs of life; signals were fired; a large kite was flown to attract attention. Nothing. Sending McLean's team out towards Mawson's last known position, he ruminated on board, ‘I am worn out with the constant worry and anxiety…The search party will have had a very bad time. I hope they are safe. It must be hell on the slope. This weather it is bad enough under the cliff.'

By 8 February he could wait no longer. Wild's team was at risk on the ice shelf and no word had been received by wireless, meaning they could already be in trouble. And, unlike those at Cape Denison, Wild's party had no ready access to wildlife to tide them over for another year. Davis's responsibility was clear. Winter was fast approaching and he had to go. Supplies were left at Cape Denison with six volunteers, along with a promise to return next year.

Almost as soon as the
Aurora
left the bay an urgent message arrived: ‘To Capt Davis, Aurora. Arrived safely at hut. Mertz & Ninnis dead. Return & pick up all hands. Sgd Dr Mawson'. With the conditions rapidly worsening, Davis tried to get his vessel back into Commonwealth Bay, but to no avail.

‘Why did they recall us?' Davis fumed in his diary. ‘It simply means that we are going to lose Wild for the sake of taking off a party who are in perfect safety…I am just worn out and a heap of nerves.' Mawson had shelter, food and companionship for another year; Wild and his men were a different matter altogether. Davis had to make the hardest decision of all: he turned the
Aurora
west, and left his leader and friend behind.

Mawson would have to spend another winter in Antarctica. On the day of his return to Cape Denison he wrote in his diary,
‘My internals overthrown—legs swollen, etc'; and, several days on, ‘My legs have now swollen very much.' A few weeks later he acknowledged the psychological effects of the experience for the first time: ‘I find my nerves are in a very serious state, and from the feeling I have in the base of my head I [have the] suspicion that I may go off my rocker very soon. My nerves have evidently had a very great shock. Too much writing today brought this on. I shall take more exercise and less study, hoping for a beneficial turn.'

Weakness, headaches, nervous symptoms, sleep disturbance and urinary problems are all symptoms of chronic vitamin A intoxication. Mawson was dangerously unwell and in urgent need of company—he often followed one of the other men around just to be near someone. He had experienced a series of disasters befitting a Hollywood script. The Everest and Antarctic veteran Sir Edmund Hilary later described it as ‘the greatest survival story in the history of exploration'.

The greatest, true—but the cost was high: two dead and, for Mawson, serious illness and another year away from loved ones. On the ice a cross was erected with a plaque acknowledging ‘the supreme sacrifice made by Lieut. B.E.S. Ninnis and Dr. X. Mertz, in the course of science'.

During his enforced second winter in Antarctica, Mawson learned what the other sledging teams had achieved. Most importantly, Robert Bage had led the Southern Party towards the South Magnetic Pole, along with Webb and Hurley. As they pushed ever further south the men took measurements at every camp and found the compass became more sluggish, just as Edgeworth David had noted in 1909; but, spectacularly, there were also enormous swings in the needle, in one instance
shifting 90° across just twenty kilometres of travel. A wealth of data had been obtained, but the needle stubbornly held off the vertical.

Slowed by bad weather and limited food supplies, the men were forced to turn back when the greatest angle of dip sat at 89°43'. Webb wrote in his diary, ‘So near yet so far.' Desperate for a Christmas celebration on the return journey, the men concocted a vicious alcoholic beverage ‘by boiling 5 raisins in a little of our primus methylated spirit. A drink known as “Tanglefoot” and the recipe of one Bob Bage. It was as distasteful as its appearance, and could only be drunk in gulps by holding the nose and breath.' Their resolve stiffened, the men staggered on. They barely made it. One more day of bad weather and they most probably would have perished. The party had turned back from its furthest south at the last possible moment. In spite of this, Bage stayed the second year and continued the magnetic measurements at Cape Denison.

The other groups had also made significant inroads. The Western Party had given up on the air tractor after it failed fourteen kilometres out from base, but the men had pushed on to discover the first meteorite in Antarctica. The remaining teams had mapped hundreds of kilometres of coastline, collecting geological samples and taking weather observations as they went.

Davis's work with the
Aurora
in the Southern Ocean raised more questions than it answered, but the ship had successfully collected Wild's men in the west and returned to Australia with all on board. Davis was relieved to find the wireless system had never been operational: hence the silence. Cut off, the Far Western Party had succeeded in charting 650 kilometres of coastline, including reaching Kaiser Wilhelm II Land. Alongside these efforts they had made continuous weather and magnetic observations through the year. The Far Western
Party's contributions were especially significant: a picture of Antarctica, continent-wide in scope, was taking shape.

While Mawson had been away the winds at Cape Denison weakened, and a more sturdy wireless mast was erected. With news that a team was staying behind at Cape Denison, the men on Macquarie Island agreed to remain in place as well, allowing messages to be properly relayed between Antarctica and Australia, as originally intended. At last the Adelie Land wireless was working as planned. Mawson could now contact the rest of the world, including his fiancé, Paquita, who was waiting desperately for news. For the first time, an Antarctic explorer could communicate with home in real time.

Many of the men loathed their time on the ice and vowed never to return. The air-tractor engineer Frank Bickerton expressed a common sentiment when he remarked of his sledging journey: ‘This is a dismal rotten country. To think that Regents Street, the New Forest, Bedford River and Dartmoor are in the same world as this hole. Thank goodness they are as far away as it is possible to get.' And, later: ‘These present conditions are nearly enough to cure a man of a desire to poke his nose into the odd corners of the earth.' Webb observed, ‘It is doubtful whether later generations, even of Antarctic explorers, can imagine the physical and psychological discipline imposed…It was a different world.'

In the late 1890s de Gerlache's Belgian expedition imploded while overwintering for the first time in Antarctica. And yet, before 1912, there had been little research into the psychological effects of close confinement with no natural light. Most expeditions followed Shackleton's philosophy of keeping busy. Scott was fully aware of what the return of the summer sun meant for his men, remarking in July 1911, ‘I am glad that the light
is coming, for more than one reason. The gale and consequent inaction not only affected the ponies…the return of the light should cure all ailments physical and mental.' For most, time spent in Antarctica was a learning experience, one that they never forgot; but for one man on the Australasian expedition, it would change his life.

Sydney Jeffryes came south with the
Aurora
as a replacement wireless operator for the Cape Denison base. He was pivotal in telling the world what had happened to Mawson and the rest of his team. Over time, though, there was a noticeable change in his character. Sometimes Jeffryes would behave erratically, concerned people were talking about him; other times he seemed fine. Things changed for the worse on 7 July 1913, as Mawson recorded in his diary:

Last night Jeffryes at the table suddenly asked Madigan to go into the next room (to fight) as he believed that something had been said against him—nothing whatever had…This morning after breakfast Madigan was filling his lamp with kerosene in the gangway and Jeffryes went out, pushing him. Asked him to fight again, danced round in a towering rage, struck Madigan, rough and tumble. Madigan got a clinch on him, then I had to speak to him and others. McLean thinks [Jeffryes] is a bit off his head. I think his touchy temperament is being very hard tested with bad weather and indoor life. A case of polar depression. I trust it will go now.

McLean had worked in a mental hospital for a while and spotted worrying symptoms in Jeffryes. By 10 August, Mawson was at a loss, scribbling: ‘What can be done with him [Jeffryes] I can't imagine, for if I try to get him to keep up to scratch, his miserable temperament is likely to cause trouble in sending [wireless messages]. He takes the crystal out of the setting each evening so that nobody else can use the [wireless] instruments.
I certainly feel like skinning him, but will wait another day and see how things go.'

Things reached a head on 3 September, when Jeffreys was caught hammering out a message very quickly. It was so fast that the rest of the team could not read what was sent. When challenged, Jeffryes admitted he was transmitting in Mawson's name: ‘Five men not well probably Jeffryes and I may have to leave the hut.' Bickerton had some wireless skills and Mawson asked him to send a message to Macquarie Island, advising that Jeffryes was insane. On his return to Australia, Jeffryes was placed in a mental asylum, where he remained until his death.

For all its challenges, wireless operation indirectly opened up another area of research. Because radio messages follow a straight line through the atmosphere, they cannot follow the curved surface of the Earth. Instead, they are reflected off a region of the upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere, more than sixty kilometres above the surface. Here the thin air works like a mirror, reflecting any message and allowing it to travel vast distances over the horizon. Mawson used this to great effect, sending messages from Antarctica, but he soon saw there was a relationship between what could be seen in the atmosphere and the quality of the messages being sent and received.

It had been known for some time that the eerie light displays of the Aurora Australis over Antarctica affected the Earth's magnetic field. But now it seemed to Mawson that they might also affect the wireless signals. The relationship was not clear-cut: somehow the shape, colours and length of the display conspired to disrupt broadcasts.

Even though Mawson had suffered greatly during the previous summer, he was intrigued by the irregular poor radio reception in Antarctica and suspected it was more than just new technology struggling with the windy conditions. The line
would go dead when there was bad static, and this coincided with the light displays of the aurora.

During Shackleton's
Nimrod
expedition Mawson had spotted that the aurora took place at the same time as interruptions to telegraph services across Australia, suggesting the overhead lights may be linked to electrical currents in the atmosphere. On the Australasian expedition detailed descriptions of the frequency and type of aurora were made, and the first reasonable photograph of a display in the south—with a ten-second exposure—was taken.

It was an area of research ripe for analysis, but Mawson was frustrated in his attempts to study it properly. Jeffryes and Bickerton were not interested. ‘I can't get him [Jeffryes] or Bickerton to take the subject up scientifically,' an infuriated Mawson wrote. ‘If I were choosing another staff I would get specialists for each branch, true scientists capable of assisting with sledging.'

Working out what created the aurora was a major line of scientific enquiry in the early twentieth century. Pioneering work in the 1880s and 1890s had showed that some kind of discharge emanated from the sun during times when there were large numbers of spots on its surface. Shortly after, it was found that something similar to an aurora could be mimicked in the lab by exposing a magnet to electrons in a vacuum.