TY  - SOUND
AU  - FitzSimons,Peter
AU  - English,Paul
TI  - Mawson
SN  - 9781742856100
U1  - 998.9 23
PY  - 2011///
CY  - Tullamarine, Vic.
PB  - Bolinda Audio
KW  - Mawson, Douglas
KW  - Explorers
KW  - Australia
KW  - Biography
KW  - Talking books
KW  - Antarctica
KW  - Discovery and exploration
KW  - Australian
N1  - Unabridged; MP3 CD; Bolinda Audio: BAB 111121; Read by Paul English
N2  - Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, was Australia's greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, he led an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. After setting up Main Base at Cape Denision and Western Base on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an extraordinary sledging trek with his companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz. After five weeks, tragedy struck. Ninnis was swallowed whole by a snow-covered crevasse, and Mawson and Mertz realised it was too dangerous to go on. With the scant food and provisions they had left, turning back was almost equally perilous. Their dwindling supplies forced them to kill their dogs to feed the other dogs, at first, and then themselves. Hunger, sickness and despair eventually got the better of Mertz, and he succumbed to madness and then to death. Mawson found himself all alone, 160 miles from safety, with next to no food
ER  -