Serendipity

Thanks to a small piece on AOPA Online (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association), a wonderful insight into a hitherto unheard of organisation and a most charming story.

That organisation is Mawson’s Huts Foundation, an Australian organisation that describes itself as:

The Mawson’s Huts Foundation has been established to conserve in perpetuity for the Australian people the unique, historical buildings known as Mawson’s Huts, base for one of the most significant expeditions in Antarctic history. The Foundation’s website provides a variety of resources concerning current and future efforts to conserve the huts and information about the archaeology and heritage of the site.

Sir Douglas Mawson was an Australian Antarctic explorer and geologist born in 1882.  More background from the Mawson’s Huts website:

Sir Douglas Mawson, a geologist, who led the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911, landed a party of

18 at Cape Denison on Commonwealth Bay in January, 1912, and remained there until December 1913. The site was not visited again until Mawson returned in 1931 with the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition and then not again until the 1950’s. Only a concerted public campaign would save and conserve this historic site for all Australians, and the Mawson’s Huts Foundation was formed in 1996 for this purpose.

Of course the Mawson’s Huts Foundation has a Blog and it is there that one finds more details about the amazing find of the remains of the Vickers aircraft.  As the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported:

“It’s a remarkable find in remarkable circumstances,” chairman of the Mawson’s Huts Foundation David Jensen said.

“We began the search three summers ago and thought we might have a reasonable chance of finding it with all the equipment provided to us by sponsors.”

Nearly a century after it was abandoned by Mawson, the old Vickers was spotted sitting among rocks in a few centimetres of water during one of the lowest tides recorded at Commonwealth Bay.

“They would not have been found had the tide not been so low and the ice cover at Cape Denison at its lowest for several years – it was a fluke find,” Mr Jensen said in a statement.

“The Vickers was an historic aircraft and part of Mawson’s remarkable story of Antarctic exploration.”

The aircraft, built just eight years after the Wright brothers’ first flight and the first produced by the Vickers factory in Britain, was also the first to be taken to a polar region.

It never flew in the Antarctic because its wings had been damaged in a test flight in Adelaide, but Mawson used it as an “air tractor” to tow sledges and abandoned it when he left Cape Denison in 1913.

Mr Jensen said the aircraft was still sitting on the ice in 1931 and was spotted again when ice melted in 1975.

The Foundation have been quick to post a video diary of the find which comes up at about 5 minutes into the video.  But do watch all of it as it is a fascinating and charming insight into the work of these scientists.

By Paul Handover

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