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Clip description
After seven years, the Australian research station at Heard Island is closing, its resources redirected toward the Antarctic continent. The expedition members, some of whom worked hard to establish Heard Island, now have to dismantle most of the camp. Loading is difficult because of the island’s notoriously bad weather. The amphibious army ducks (DUKWs) make the task easier. Everyone works long hours in difficult conditions to complete the task. The ship then heads south into the Antarctic Circle, maintaining a constant watch for icebergs.
Curator’s notes
The closing of Heard Island was an emotional experience for many in the Antarctic Division. The weather on the island is so bad that those who had wintered during the previous seven years held strong feelings about the place. Some of these were negative, a lot were positive, because working for a year on Heard Island took courage and endurance. The base provided valuable meteorological data for Australian weather forecasters, so closing the station was problematic. Phillip Law, director of the Antarctic Division, agreed only after the French Government established a weather station at nearby Kerguelen Island, from which Australia could share data. Australia already had Macquarie Island Station, which was much closer to Australia and a particularly rich research site for biology. Law was intent on setting up a second research station on the Antarctic continent. The government decided to close Heard Island as the price for expansion of operations in Antarctica.
This clip gives some idea of the difficulties of the place, which is 4000 kms south-west of Australia in the Indian Ocean. Even in Atlas Cove, the most protected harbour, the ship rocks and rolls, making loading and unloading extremely difficult. The weather can change in minutes. As the narration points out, this kind of work with heavy loads can be extremely dangerous. For the previous four years this was also the breeding base for huskies. We see the last huskies from this program loaded onto the ship, to join other dogs already in Antarctica, working from Mawson Base. The dog teams, hauling sledges, were an important part of operations in the Australian bases from 1954 till 1993. They were able to go where motorised vehicles sometimes could not, and they rarely broke down or ran out of fuel. The last Australian huskies were removed from Antarctica in 1993, after the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection of Antarctica banned all introduced species – except humans (see The Last Husky, 1993).
