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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the barren landscape and glaciers of uninhabited Heard Island, which is situated 4,100 km south-west of Western Australia, in 1984. People are shown exploring the terrain and a voice-over describes the harsh climate, the ruggedness of the terrain and the fates of two previous visitors. The camera shows their gravestone and lingers on ice, waterfalls, a glacier and dripping rock crevices. The images and narration are accompanied by music, and a soundtrack of howling winds and crashing water.

Educational value points

• The clip provides footage of one of the least visited places on Earth, Heard Island. The Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI) is a sub-Antarctic island group in the Southern Ocean, located 4,100 km south-west of Perth and 1,000 km north of Antarctica. The islands’ isolation and the harsh weather have ensured that they are virtually unaffected by human activities, thus providing a rich environment for scientific research in such areas as glaciology and seabird populations.

• Bird (mainly penguins) and seal colonies can be found on Heard Island for some of the year but because of low temperatures and blizzards the island is inhospitable to humans. The weather is cold, windy and rainy, with high relative humidity ensuring constant cloud cover. Temperatures range from minus 8 degrees Celsius to around 4 degrees Celsius. Every 3 years or so there are Australian Antarctic science expeditions to the island, during the summer months, but the island is otherwise rarely visited.

• The Australian Antarctic Division’s website states that the first sighting of Heard Island was made by Captain John Heard, in 1853, and that the McDonald Islands, approximately 40 km west, were discovered by Captain William McDonald, in 1854. After its discovery, Heard Island was briefly home to a lucrative trade in elephant seals. From 1854 sealers, primarily from North America, harvested the seals for their oil. By 1877, the seal population on the island had been decimated and the industry collapsed.

• The extreme and dangerous conditions depicted in the clip emphasise the courage of explorers visiting Heard Island and suggest that the financial incentives of the seal-oil trade of the 19th century were high. The images, such as the shots of a gravestone and tiny figures against a towering and barren terrain, together with the soundtrack and descriptions of violent storms and treacherous conditions, combine to highlight the harshness of the environment.

• The clip provides documentary evidence of a 1984 expedition to Heard Island led by Captain Laurie McEwan. The trip was beset by disasters, including the steamship, Cheynes 2, running out of fuel and having to be sailed home, its sails made from old tarpaulins and crossbars made from materials salvaged from Heard Island. The members of the expedition were lucky to survive and the ship was declared a wreck at the end of the journey.

• The documentary footage in the clip was obtained in difficult conditions. Nevertheless, the filmmaker, Ray Sinclair, managed to create an atmospheric portrait of the island. The technical limitations, such as lack of attention to framing, do not detract from the achievement, instead enhancing the sense of an amateur’s adventure.

Images of Heard Island

Narrator ... but Heard Island is not depressing. Its reaches beyond this small ruin are awesome. All 40km of it. Here, the Jacka Glacier flowing from Mount Olsen on the Laurens Peninsula at the west end of Heard Island. Only the sight of two crew members exploring the rocky ground can give some idea of its expanse. These glaciers are visually stunning but physically killers. This is a harsh climate. The terrain is rugged and a lone grave marks the tragedy where one Australian was killed by waves on a beach and his companion died while trying to cross a glacier to safety.

Here on Heard it’s mid-summer which usually doesn’t mean much as temperatures are at zero or lower and winds and violent storms always a threat. But an unusually mild spell has made conditions below pleasant and high on Big Ben increasingly dangerous.