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Clip description
Over aerial shots of Antarctica, narrator John West introduces the story of Douglas Mawson’s first Australian expedition to Antarctica in 1911, on which the official photographer was Frank Hurley. We see some of Hurley’s famous still photographs from that expedition and the 1914–16 Shackleton expedition, as the narrator announces that Hurley has recently died. The recording which follows, of the 75-year-old Hurley at his desk, is the last film in which he participated. Hurley introduces the footage from the 1911 expedition, as the SY Aurora departs Hobart, with an enthusiastic crowd to farewell the ship.
Curator’s notes
Frank Hurley, at 75, was still an active photographer. His landscape books and calendars, illustrated with images made during long road trips across Australia, sold in large numbers. Hurley returned from one of these long and arduous trips late in 1960, a few months before his death. He was a self-taught photographer with a highly developed commercial instinct. Before he joined the Mawson expedition, he was a postcard photographer in Sydney, where he learned that better photographs sold more. During the expedition he was renowned for the pains he would take to make good images. He developed and printed many of his pictures in a small darkroom in a corner of the prefabricated hut erected at Cape Denison, on the coast of Antarctica. Mawson’s Hut is still there, and Hurley’s darkroom chemicals remain undisturbed on the shelves.
Hurley also shot moving images, some of which we see here, although the question of authorship is complicated. Quentin Turnour, chief programmer at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra, has shown that there was more than one cinematographer shooting on the docks as the SY Aurora left Hobart in December 1911. That means that some of these images of the boat departing are probably not by Frank Hurley, but we can be reasonably sure that those on the ice in Antarctica were taken by him, or by another member of the expedition working with him.
The NFSA holds a number of reels relating to the Mawson expedition, representing different assemblies of this original material. When Hurley returned to Australia in 1913, Mawson and seven expeditioners remained behind on the ice, unable to be picked up. Captain John King Davis took the Aurora out of the ice after trying for several days to land a rescue boat; staying longer would risk the ship getting stuck in winter ice. Mawson’s party had to wait another year for the ship’s return. They had a solid hut and enough fuel and food, but the expedition was already in debt. There was no money to pay for the return voyage. One of the hopes was that Hurley’s footage might generate significant income towards those costs, but that did not happen.
In his biography of Hurley, Sydney writer and photographer Alasdair McGregor writes that it is not clear to what extent Hurley was even involved in the first assembly of the footage. Hurley returned to Hobart on the Aurora in March. A finished cut, with inter-titles, was ready by April 1913, but the first public exhibition did not take place until 19 July, in Melbourne. There were screenings in Adelaide a few days later and in Sydney from 4 to 14 August, where the footage was titled Dr Mawson’s Antarctic Film Series, and not Home of the Blizzard, as some of this footage subsequently became known. The Sydney Morning Herald described the screening as ‘over 3500 feet of film – requiring more than an hour to screen’. Hurley would claim later that these screenings were well attended, but McGregor says that the public response was disappointing: ‘Gross receipts for July and August totalled just £242, and at the end of its Perth run in December, only £166n 16s 5d (net of expenses) had been returned to the expedition.’ By contrast, the geologist and Antarctic explorer Professor Edgeworth David raised at least £8000 towards the rescue voyage. Captain John King Davis headed to England in search of other funds.
Back in Australia, Hurley did not devote himself solely to the rescue mission. For some months, he toured Java on assignment for the Royal Dutch Steam Packet Company, shooting photographs to encourage tourism. Nevertheless, he was aboard the Aurora again when it left Hobart on 19 November 1913, on the rescue mission. Percy Correll, a young mechanic who had been the keenest other photographer on the original voyage, also went south. He had volunteered to bring some of the latest photographic equipment and to forego a salary if included. He would assist Hurley with photography on this second journey, which Mawson still hoped would lead to significant financial returns.
In this clip, it is clear that Hurley is reading a text, although its authorship is not clear. It sounds like an excerpt from Hurley’s own writings about the expedition. He recounts a well-worn and inaccurate story of how he got the job with Mawson. In fact, correspondence shows that Mawson was reluctant about appointing him, for several reasons. Hurley had written to Mawson in late September 1911 to apply for the job of expedition photographer. He was heavily in debt as his postcard business had failed. Mawson met him, and considered him a strong candidate until he received a secret letter from Hurley’s mother, Margaret, pleading with Mawson not to take him, because her son had 'a lung complaint’ and would not survive the journey. Mawson interpreted this to mean tuberculosis, an extremely serious disease.
He also had reservations about Hurley’s ability to handle a cinematograph – a movie camera – as well as the various stills cameras. He sent Hurley for training with Gaumont, the leading newsreel company, before he made a final decision. Hurley also had to submit to a full medical exam. He was not finally advised of his appointment till 20 October, on a salary of £300, payable on return in 1913. Copyright in all photographs was to remain with the expedition, as a source of funds 'to meet liabilities’. In fact, Mawson and Hurley would have a long-running dispute after their return about ownership and duties – although it was not serious enough finally to prevent Mawson taking Hurley south again, in 1929, on his first BANZARE expedition.
Note that the soundtrack on this old footage has been added later, as the original film is silent. This was probably done at the Commonwealth Film Unit, as part of the production of Antarctic Pioneers.
