SNOWMEN PAST AND PRESENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 38

SNOWMEN PAST AND PRESENT

by

D. W.

McKenzie

. AFTER dinner is the time for the cook’s chief effort. Custom has decreed that he shall amuse the com-pany-sing a song, tell a story, read a composition, or do a stunt of some sort. Songs are generally topical, written for the occasion." Thus says Charles F. Laseron* in giving a personal account of the’ first Australian expedition to Antarctica in 1911, which spent the winter in the appalling conditions of Adelie Land. Eighteen. men lived in a_ single hut throughout the Antarctic winter on a site which has what are probably the worst wind conditions in the world. This re-issue of Laseron’s book has obviously come out because of the interest in the South aroused by the International Geophysical Year, and it gives a very real account of the hardships and dangers of an expedition which had farteaching results, and was an Australian

triumph only over-shadowed by the interest in Scott’s great expedition. One of its particular points of interest is in its account of how the men amused themselves during the confinement of the long night. In this it can be compared with the account of a much more recent expedition given by P. L. Brown of the Australian Antarctic Relief Party to go to Heard Island in 1952** to maintain the meteorological station and do scientific observations. Both authors write well. Laseron’s account is a little more old-fashioned, but none the less convincing. Brown is a much more professional writer, and his book abounds in vivid conversation. The two expeditions are 40 years apart in time, but between them yawns a gulf which it is difficult to think has opened up in so short a time; a profound difference in cultural pattern which is the result of technological change. Both

groups are Australians with one or two exceptions, and their habits are comparable. Mawson’s men in 1911 were part of a pattern of self-amusement. Theirs was the day of drawing-room entertainment, of charades, of topical songs, of home concert-parties; they did not have as we have now constantly in their homes a pattern of entertaining skill which the amateur cannot reach — a_ pattern brought before us by the radio. They were not so frequently at the pictures. And so they relied on their own efforts. This is seen in Laseron’s account of their habits during the Polar night. Every man was expected as a matter of course to be able to write the words of a topical song and sing it. Laseron quotes some of them, and they’re not

bad at all. The men listened to each other telling long stories. They put on an elaborate topical opera, of which the cast seem to have outnumbered the audience. In it was the old scene of the mock operation; this time on the only "woman" in the cast, who for safety’s sake had put an iron plate over "her" vitals so that it could be hit with a hammer. One blow of the hammer missed the plate and made the patient sit up and use language unbecoming to a "lady," effectively stopping the show. They devised elaborate practical jokes-Frank Hurley seems to have been the ringleader-jokes which still seem funny when read about, which is more than one can say for most practical jokes. One of the men was to read a poem of his own about shooting birds, and unfortunately let out beforehand what. it was to be about. Hurley arranged elaborate contrivances which let dead birds fall from the ceiling at critical points in the poem, thus producing the usual hilarity which seems to have been a regular feature of the long winter. Nothing reveals the pattern of selfamusement so much as the fact that regularly one would read aloud to the others, and then the book would be discussed. In the 1952 group of Australians on Heard Island nothing at all like this emerges. They were not, of course, confined to their quarters as much as were (continued on next page)

Mawson’s men, but still the pattern of their amusement is quite different. Once a fortnight they had what they called "Ding Nights." Sometimes they sat and drank beer, and played the gramophone, sometimes they had discussions. Twice a week, though, they had "picture nights," at which their films were shown over and over again. Weekend at the Waldorf had four consecutive showings -surely the badge of men who don’t know what to do to amuse themselves. They too had a local paper, the Heard Island Times, produced and completely written by one man alone. Feelings were ruffled by letters to the editor, and the paper died after the third issue. "A pity," says the author, "for the newspaper had shown such great promise in relieving the winter gloom at Base Camp." But the men were in radio communication with the outside world in a way which would have opened the eyes of Mawson’s men in wonder. Some of them could talk with their wives; they all could hear special programmes broadcast to them from Australia by a glamorous woman announcer. The world was with them in a way which the explorers of 1911 could not have expected. One feels that the men of 1952 wouldn’t have thought that the fooling of 1911\ was funny, that it was too naive. Our pattern of amusement has something of a febrile feel about it, we have too much high pressure entertainment available, we have lost somehow that capacity the Edwardians had for enjoying themselves. Which group would you rather have spent the winter with-the men of 1911 or the men of 1952? At the same time as these two books appear there comes out an excellent piece of journalism by a New Zealander, Norman Kemp,*** who wants to show the British and New Zealand Antarctic Expeditions of the International year in the light of the past exploration of the South, I use the word "journalism" here as a compliment, for this is up-to-the-minute writing at its best. I submitted it to a friend who has just returned from the Antarctic, and he said that its details satisfied his expert eye. The author turns aside to discuss the careers of some of the more interesting of the personalities, notably Sir dmund Hillary, and though these are interesting

' I feel he sometimes goes a little too far-the hobbies of Dr Fuch’s wife are a little irrevelant to the conquest of the Antarctic. If you want to see what our men are now doing in the Antarctic this book will give you the background, and place the work of the expeditions in the framework of the International Geophysical Year. | *SOUTH WITH MAWSON, by Charles F. Laseron; Angus and Robertson, Second Edition, 1957, Australian oy 21/-. **TWELVE CAME BACK, by Peter Lancaster Brown; Robert Hale, English price 18/-. ***THE CONQUEST OF THE ANTARCTIC, by Norman Kemp; Allan Wingate, English price 16/-.