PICTURES IN ANTARCTICA.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2257, 17 September 1914, Page 9

PICTURES IN ANTARCTICA.

OFF WITH SHACKLETON AN ADVENTUROUS PHOTOGRAPHER MR. HURLEY'S EXPERIENCES. There is probably no photographer in the' Southern Hemisphere whoso work hus taken him so far" beyond tile boundaries of civilisation, so far into t a wilds of unexplored feature, as Mr. Frank Hurloy/the photographer and kinematograpner, who is now in He - lington-en route to Buenos Ayres, where ho is to join the Shackleton Expedition to the Antarctic. Mr. Hurley is a modest, amiable, retiring young ma , who'would sooner do things than talk about them, and whose work 3 P eaks^.™ r itself. He was the official photographer to Sir Douglas Mawson's scientific expedition to the Antarctic, and the expedition for the Ml eighteen months. He describes his work dunn that as nothing' more -than a pleasure, except'when the terrific winds tee along ' the majLrng camera work arduous, to say the test of it.' There is little doubt that Mav.•eon's Base is the moth CT -grpi.nd of all winds that blow on this side of the Globe. It was quit© an ordinary thing to have gales blowing at the rate of 100 miles' per hour, but for all that ;Ir. Hurler was able to secure, for first time on record, kmematograph pictures of blizzards taken with the machme sheltered behind an to pictured will be shown here sh°™y by Sir Douglas Mawson, who is tc> in Wellington .on his experiences. The actinic value of the light on the barrier at mid-summer is about equivalent to that on the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Mr. Hurley's films were developed at the hut, and as 100 gallons of watei tlTlaSTntSd 'in chipping the i?e Lterial did not deteriorate appreciably in the Antarctic temperatures. /Three Months' Blizzard. Mr; Hurley . says : that out of the eighteen'months spent on the ice bonier there were only ten calm days.-andit was'on those days. that most obs •photographic work Au"ust) the eighteen mcn_ at the baS9 camp could not leave the hut owing th,y o ah began to think was I }®' rer ?, S m i at'all. Yet during the whole of that, time not ono nian had a day s . Throughout the experience the whole of the members .of the worked together .in perfect harmony, and there was no. dissension.from fost to last, which is not-usual. , : . From tha Antarctic to the. Tropics. In March last Mr. Hurley , was dispatched on a special mission to do some kinematographic work in the Northern Territory, and Central Queensland, and was away from Sydney for fojir and a half months, having as a companion Mr. Francis Birtles, the overland cyclist. They did the journey by motor-car, making up from New South Wales to Central Queensland, and on to the shores -of the . Gulf of " .Carpentaria.. Strange to say- the roads nearly all the way up were not bad at all —the worst being those wifhiii'l4 - milcsj-'of Sytineyy A Sportsman's Paradise. "It was in the little-known Gulf country that we' came into touch' with 'the heathen in his blindness,'" said Mr. Hurley, "and obtained some splendid pictures of native corroborees, manners, and features.of an.thropological interest. There, too, in one 'coast-belt, where the grass waß lush and the streams plentiful there were natural history subjects in plenty to take. The northern rivers swarmed with alligators and crocodiles, there were plenty of good fish (which, indeed, forms the staple food of the coast .natives), there was plenty of wild 'ducks on the lagoons, and great herds of wallaby and kangaroos on the grassy plains. . It was absolutely a sportsman's paradise. Onco on the Nicholson River ,we had trouble with the natives, and in return gave tLem the scare of their lives:. Thay had been pillaging our. food supplies, and when we found it out we decided to punish them psychologically—as they are all very superstitious. Their village lay below our fcamp, tho stream running through its centre. In the night we emptied a tin of petrol on the surface' > f the stream and . set it alight. You never heard such yells and screams as arose from the aborigines, _ who one and all screeched out, ''Kidichella, kidichella!" (devil, devil) —meaning that the flaming flood was the work of the evil one. We afterwards learned that they attributed the wondrous phenomenon in some curious manner to our bulldog 'Wowser,' of whom they stood in great dread. "They also had a wholesome respect for carbide of calcium—tho- fire stone— and I succeeded in getting hold of a fine collection of native weapons in return for three pieces." Not a White Man's Country. Mr. Hurley does not think the Northern Territory is a suitable place for a permanent settlement of white people. The coast belt is very fertile and interesting, but i 3 lot by any means a sheep .country owing to the spear grass, which becomes, entangled in. the wool, Penetrates the skin, and gets into the esh. On the other hand, it is a great cattle country, and has a big future before it in ihat lespect. Inland—well, the scenery of inland Queensland and the Territory was not beautiful—it was rather weird. In the .interior of both Queensland and the great plains of Central Northern Territory the grass burnt up in the summer, and the unwatered ground became a barren desert. One could go along for hundreds of miles without seeing a human being or trees. Anyone going in for cattleraising roust have enormous areas as the cost of overlanding is high, and fresh pastures have to be found wlien parte of the Territory go • dry. Holdings of 7000 or 8000 square miles are common in the Territory. The country is fairly well roaded between settlements. .In Central Queensland motor traction is rapidly, displacing the old horse and 'bullock teams for all kinds of transport work. Off with Shackleton, Mr. Hurley is leaving for Montevideo by the Remuera next week to join the Shackleton Expedition, with which ho is connected as official photographer. The expedition is to leave Buenos Ayres on October lo by the Endurance. It' is proposed to effect a landing in the Wendell Sea, traverse the Antarctic Continent by way of the South Pole, and come out at tho Ross Sea (the original base of the Shackleton and Scott Expeditions). The period of "Antarticisatidn'-' has been set down as. two years. _________