Mawson's Huts: An Antarctic Expedition Journal

In early January 1912, a party of 18 young men landed on a small rocky peninsula on the coast of Antarctica, directly to the south of Australia.

In doing so, they had journeyed past the edge of the then known world. Over the next two years they struggled against appalling winds and cold, yet managed toe explore significant tracts of the ice-bound coast and hinterland in pursuit of scientific knowledge. Their leader was a 30-year-old geologist from Adelaide, Dr. Douglas Mawson. The story of his survival after the death of two companions while far from the expedition's base camp has justly become the stuff of legend.

Nearly 86 years later another party landed on the still remote and wild Cape Denison, the site of Mawson's winter quarters. Their aim was to rescue the huts that Mawson's men sheltered and worked in from the unrelenting assaults of wind, ice and time. In so doing the party ensured that these rare and priceless relics from the heroic era of Antarctic exploration, the age of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton, would survive to their centenary and beyond.

For nearly two months over the summer of 1997-8, 13 members of the AAP Mawson's Huts Foundation work party battled what Mawson dubbed the "home of the blizzard" to complete urgent repairs to the Cape Denison huts. Mawson's Huts: An Antarctic Expedition Journal is artist and photographer Alasdair McGregor's personal account of the trials and triumphs of living and working in the windiest place on earth.

Vivid descriptions of landscape and wildlife are intertwined with reflections on the history and significance of a great Australian and his vision in this rare glimpse of Antarctica, past and present.