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Clip description
Work begins as soon as the ship Thala Dan arrives at Mawson Station, early in 1960. A total of 33 men are to spend a year in Antarctica at Australia’s first two bases, Davis and Mawson. At Mawson, they begin building new huts and a new powerhouse for the diesel generators. The Royal Australian Air Force personnel reassemble a specially modified Dakota DC-3 aeroplane, hurrying to attach the wings before the first major blizzard covers the camp in snow. The aeroplane and all the buildings have to be tied down, to secure them against winds of up to 200 kms per hour.
Curator’s notes
This may be the first film about the Antarctic bases where the filming itself was not supervised by the division’s director, Phillip Law. That is because he was not on this ship. There were two expeditions south in December 1959. The Thala Dan went to Mawson and Davis to resupply the bases there, and the Magga Dan went to the new base at Wilkes, which the Americans had offered on long-term loan to Australia (see main notes). Phillip Law was on the other ship at Wilkes, so he may have had little to do with what Jeffrey Newton chose to film at Mawson. Newton wintered at Mawson during 1960 and much of this film comes from the period after the supply ship had left. As such, it gives us a different view of the station activities. There is less emphasis on the journey of the ship, more on the scientific work at the station and the year’s major activities, such as the spring exploration program.
This was the first year in which the RAAF had used a Dakota on the ice. It was a much bigger aeroplane than the de Havilland Beavers used previously. The Beaver had given great service but it was very vulnerable to weather, like every aeroplane sent to Antarctica in the early years, and it had only one engine. The Dakota had two, and could haul a lot more cargo. Newton’s footage of the attaching of the wings gives a strong sense of how difficult the weather could make even simple tasks like attaching nuts and bolts.
The previous year at Australia’s bases had been tumultuous, with two serious fires at Mawson and a death and a serious psychiatric illness at Wilkes, but there is little sign of that in this film. In this clip we see that a new powerhouse is erected, but the narrator does not tell us why one was needed. The old powerhouse burned down the previous year, during renovations.
Even though much of what we see here is now considered historic footage, the films were not made as history, nor even straight documentary. Like most government filmmaking, they offered a kind of benign propaganda in support of the government’s aims, whether they were for immigration, agriculture, nation-building projects like the Snowy River hydro scheme, or Antarctic exploration.
