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Clip description
Tim Jarvis has completed the journey, covering 480 km across the ice – the last third on his own after John Stoukalo left as planned. Clearly exhausted, Jarvis speaks to camera about the experience, acknowledging that what he achieved is not the same as what Mawson did. The team doctor, David Tingay, measures Jarvis’s condition and weight loss. Jarvis speaks frankly about his belief that Mawson could have done the journey without resorting to cannibalism.
Curator’s notes
Tim Jarvis arrived at the end of his journey in considerable discomfort. Two of the toes on his right foot had turned white, a symptom of frostbite, and had been completely without feeling for more than a week when he had his third medical check on the 33rd day. He had been trying to avoid frostbite by immersing the toes in hot water at the end of each day’s march. In the book he wrote to accompany the film, Jarvis says he heated water to below boiling point, but still scalding hot, then immersed his toes each night. Even though the water left a red tide mark on his foot, he felt no sensation. He did not mention the problems with the toes at that medical, in case the doctor decided they were serious enough to halt the journey. By that stage, he had lost 18 kg from his starting weight, but only a couple of kilos since his last medical check. ‘I was quietly ecstatic, as it meant that for now at least I was safe from being stopped on medical grounds, and that I was travelling as efficiently as I could given the circumstances, having slowed the slide towards 25 kg of weight loss’, wrote Jarvis. He actually arrived at the end of the journey a few days ahead of the time that Mawson took to cover the same distance, and in much better health:
Mawson’s health declined, with clumps of his hair falling out, painful digestive complaints, weeping sores and whole rafts of skin coming off his feet, whereas I weakened though to nowhere near the same extent. I experienced foot problems, including the onset of frostbite to the toes on my right foot, severe joint pain and some skin loss, plus rawness around the groin from chafing (which lanolin just managed to keep in check), but I did not suffer as much as Mawson’s diary entries indicate he did. Significantly, my weight did not drop as much as his. Even taking into account the fact that he may have spent longer out in the conditions than I did as he tentatively picked his way through more crevassed terrain – although I added distance to balance this out – other forces were evidently at work. The slow pace of the second half of Mawson’s journey was attributable to his inability to use the wind to its full advantage, his understandable concern about crevasses, the heavy wet snow he encountered on a number of days, and his ill health…
When all is said and done, we both covered our respective distances at almost identical average speeds, although I did not suffer physically to the same extent as Mawson. Undoubtedly, he suffered from the effects of vitaminosis just as Mertz had: the symptoms of hair and skin loss, bleeding gums and aching joints are all consistent with the condition.
The whole point of Jarvis’s expedition was to prove that a man could make that journey with the same amount of food, disproving the suggestion that Mawson would have had to resort to cannibalism in order to survive. Perhaps not surprisingly, Jarvis concludes that Mawson did not seriously consider it:
I think he would have been torn between an overwhelming sense of loyalty towards Mertz and a clear, objective appreciation of how narrow his chance of survival was without more food, while wanting to survive to tell the tale of what had happened. In the end, I think loyalty to Mertz would have prevailed and that he buried him beneath snow blocks, erected a crude cross and turned to meet his fate – whatever it might be – just as he said.
This sequence gives a clear sense of Jarvis’s exhaustion, both mental and physical, at the end of the journey. His face is leaner, more ravaged, and his body considerably lighter than at the start.
