Mawson explorer biography poster

Douglas Mawson is probably the best known of Australias Antarctic explorers.
Douglas Mawson became a veteran and hero of Antarctic exploration by the time he was 27 years old.
Born in Penola, South Australia, Mawson was an accomplished geologist and explorer, whose passion for the natural world was ignited during his early years.

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About Douglas Mawson

Douglas Mawson was born on 5 May 1882 at Shipley, Yorkshire, England. The family moved to Australia in 1884 and Douglas was educated at Rooty Hill and at Fort Street Model School in Sydney. At the University of Sydney in 1899-1901 he studied mining engineering, graduating in 1902. In 1905 he took his second degree in geology.

In 1905 he was appointed lecturer in mineralogy and petrology in the University of Adelaide. Here he became interested in the glacial geology of South Australia. Also, continuing his interest in radioactivity, he identified and first described the mineral davidite, containing titanium and uranium, in specimens from the region now known as Radium Hill. That deposit was the first major radioactive ore body discovered in Australia. Mawson named it after Professor Sir Edgeworth Tannant David, his mentor at the University of Sydney. It was his interest in glacial geology that determined him to examine active glaciers and glaciation in progress. The opportunity arose to join Ernest Shackleton's expedition to

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Mawson and the Ice Men of the Heroic Age: Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen

The story of Australia’s most famous polar explorer and the giants from the heroic age of polar exploration: Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton.

Sir Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, remains Australia’s greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, his Australasian Antarctic Expedition left Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below Australia, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. He was on his way to fulfil a national dream he had first conceived three years earlier, while on his first trip to the frozen continent on the Nimrod expedition under the leadership of the charismatic Anglo-Irishman Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Even as Mawson and his men were approaching Antarctica, two other famous Antarctic explorers were already engaged in nothing less than a race to become the first men to reach the South Pole. While Roald Amundsen of Norway, with his small team, was racing with dogs along one route, England’s legendary Scott of the Antarctic, with his far larger

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Mawson: Life and Death in Antarctica

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Not as well structured as it could have been but gets better as it goes on and is still interesting

In 1912 Douglas Mawson set out to explore an area of Antarctica to the south of Australia that at that point had not been charted by anyone. The expedition broke up into five parties of three men, with Mawson's heading East. When they were at the far end of their trek, one of their number fell into a ravine and died taking his dog team, sledge and most of the supplies with him. Mawson and Mertz turned back immediately, knowing that they did not have long to cover hundreds of miles before the ship Aurora left without them. To revisit the ordeal, modern polar explorer Tim Jarvis sets out to repeat the journey with the same equipment.

I woke up today to find that my heating had not come on during the night and it was the freezing conditions in my house that made me decide to watch this film to remind myself that I've still got it good. The story of Mawson's exhibition is not that well known generally as, at the ti