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As spring brings warmer temperatures, preparations begin for the summer exploration season. The Royal Australian Air Force Dakota is made ready for flights into the interior, in support of a ground team travelling in a ‘tractor train’. The Dakota ferries drums of oil and other supplies 800 km south to the southern Prince Charles Mountains, where a small team is exploring uncharted territory, with the aid of dogs and sledges.
Curator’s notes
1960 was the first year in which the Australian bases had an aircraft of this size, but like all aircraft before it, the Dakota was no match for the Antarctic weather. In contrast to the sunny and optimistic scenes we see here, the Dakota, named Ann Cherie, did not fly for the first six months on the ice, due to various difficulties. It was still able to make a valuable contribution in the second half of 1960, but that was short lived. From 8 December 1960, a blizzard that lasted 42 hours destroyed the small DHC Beaver at its mooring on the ice plateau airstrip, 24 kms from Mawson. When the RAAF personnel emerged from their shelter at the strip, the Dakota had disappeared, despite being tied down with two cables that could take 15 tonnes of pressure. One of the Mawson staff found it later that day, 20 km away, blown up neatly against an ice hill near the coast. It was intact, but structurally compromised, and never flew again.
That was a typical story; virtually every aeroplane that the Australians took south from 1947 was wrecked by weather, or damaged so severely that it could only be salvaged for parts. The RAAF personnel made a major contribution to Australia’s Antarctic exploration programs during the 1950s and early ’60s, until commitments in Malaysia and Vietnam put an end to it, in early 1963. After that, the Antarctic Division contracted with Australian aviation companies for any aircraft they needed. The first helicopters from Australia went south to Antarctica on the Magga Dan in 1960, after a test run to Macquarie Island in late 1958. They would become increasingly important to the Australian bases, although they were also vulnerable. The first helicopter crash occurred in February 1960, near Wilkes station, slightly injuring the pilot Peter Ivanoff and his passenger, surveyor David Cook.
