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Clip description
The chartered Danish ship Kista Dan prepares to leave Melbourne for the 1955 resupply voyage to Antarctica. The new Officer-in-Charge for the coming year at Mawson, John Bechervaise, stows his kit for the long journey ahead. Expedition leader Phillip Law outlines the route on a rough map, as the final essentials are loaded. These include prefabricated huts to be erected at Mawson, over-snow vehicles known as Weasels, a bright red ‘caravan’ for expeditions on the ice, fresh fruit and vegetables and pallets of beer. Family and friends gather on the wharf to farewell the expeditioners.
Curator’s notes
This film dwells much longer on the wharf than films made earlier in the life of the Antarctic Division. The images of men at work, including the wharf labourers and the ship’s crew, are deliberately ennobling. The docks in Australia in the 1950s were a political and cultural battleground. The Waterside Workers’ Federation Film Unit, formed in 1953, was making influential films valorising the role of labour, as the Menzies Government denounced Communist Party infiltration of Australia’s unions. Antarctic Division personnel often had to watch the loading closely – pilfering of the cargo by wharf labourers was a serious problem, especially the alcohol.
This film was scripted to some extent before the ship left port. The shots of John Bechervaise arriving, and the sequence of Phillip Law drawing the route on a map, had to be set up. These shots show the difference between amateur and professional approaches. Most of the films made before this were largely shot by Antarctic Division personnel, chiefly Phillip Law, the director of the division. Antarctic Voyage was shot on 35mm film by a very experienced documentary cameraman, George Lowe, working with Tom Hungerford, himself a distinguished writer. Both men had experienced the Second World War and both worked for the News and Information Bureau of the Department of the Interior – not the Antarctic Division. Nevertheless, Phillip Law treated them as under his control during the voyage. After they returned, and without Law’s knowledge, both men made serious complaints about his behaviour and leadership during the voyage. It is unlikely, given that these shots were made before the tensions arose, that there was any intention at this stage to minimise Phillip Law’s presence in the film. Nevertheless, he is less visible than usual in later sequences of the film.
We see him give an interview to a man with a microphone, but we do not hear his voice. The film was made without direct sound. Alan Anderson, who is credited with the sound, was not on the voyage. Hungerford and/or Lowe may have contributed recordings made on the voyage for Anderson’s use later in a sound studio, but the sound is compiled, rather than recorded live. The film has a rich depth of colour, suggesting it was shot on Kodachrome stock. Colour was relatively new in documentary in 1955. George Lowe was one of the photographers on the first local colour feature shot in Australia (The Queen in Australia, 1954), but the negatives for that film had to be processed in London. Many of the films made in the Antarctic around this time have this rich colour, which gives them a distinctive look. Kodachrome is no longer made.
