Sculpted by Antarctica

Yesterday, in a second-hand bookshop in Melbourne, I found a book by Phil Law and John Bechervaise: ANARE – Australia’s Antarctic Outposts, Oxford University Press, 1957.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Law and Bechervaise led successful expeditions to Australian Antarctic territories. Their writing expresses a worldview balanced between scientific observation and aesthetic response.

Here they explain how the strong winds on Heard Island shape some appealing artifacts – rocks that “symbolizes this wild, blizzard-swept outpost.”

Winds here are funneled from the opposing bays and, bearing powerful streams of pumice and grit, they have worn fantastic knife-edges and adzes by their constant attrition. Each boulder causes a logical deflection so that the pattern of wind-power is complex and difficult to interpret, though an occasional isolated rock will show clear evidence of predominant winds from several directions. Occasionally a tripple-faced form in found, its faces orientated to Corinthian and South-West Bays and Atlas Cove.

Another powerful factor in rock-sculpture is frost. Smaller stones are frequently found split into several parallel layers, the fragments widely scattered by subsequent wind action or winter ice drift.

These stones, shaped like giant artifacts and often brilliantly lichened, possess considerable aesthetic appeal and perfect hand specimens are in demand amongst expedition members. Few souvenirs of Heard Island can more graphically symbolize this wild, blizzard-swept outpost.

(p. 83)

I recognize this balanced view in Jack Ward and Fred Elliott, who were part of John Bechervaise’s Mawson Party in 1955. Both men reveal Antarctica as they understood and sensed it.

In his 1955 Mawson Diary, Ward describes changes in the Antarctic environment through a year.

Elliott’s drawings depict ice and rock that he traversed, and made-made environments he helped build and maintain.

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Posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008