Remembering Antarctica
In 1957, a band of 23 Kiwis arrived at Antarctica under the leadership of Sir Edmund Hillary. Their mission: to build a New Zealand enclave on the ice. The result of their efforts would be Scott Base. Retired scientist Vern Gerard, 87, has published a col
Vern Gerard was a young DSIR scientist when he was chosen to go to the ice. It was 1956, and interest in Antarctica was heating up, with two big projects looming.
New Zealand was keen to get stuck into both and, press its claims to the Ross Sea Dependency.
The first project was International Geophysical year – a worldwide scientific study.
Gerard was appointed base physicist, his task to record changes in the earth’s magnetic field.
The second project was the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
Led by English explorer Sir Vivian Fuchs, it aimed to complete the first overland crossing of Antarctica, via the South Pole.
New Zealand’s role was to support the expedition by setting up Scott Base, and laying food and fuel depots for the British crossing party.
Sir Edmund Hillary was selected to lead both projects.
Fresh from his triumph on Mt Everest, he was a national hero – just the man to lead an irascible bunch of scientists and explorers.
‘‘Some people didn’t like him but I thought he was all right. There was a bit of jealousy,’’ says Gerard.
Hillary had a ‘‘solemn’’ demeanour, but a smile was never too far from the surface.
CHOOSING A SITE
‘‘Some of the mountaineers among us thought they could have climbed Everest if they’d had the chance. Well, that’s fine, but they didn’t get the chance; he did. But he was a big guy. No-one was going to argue with him too much.’’
Hillary’s first move was to pack the party off to the Tasman Glacier for ‘‘polar training’’.
This largely consisted of Hillary’s tall frame powering off into the distance, writes Gerard.
‘‘It was rather like a hypersonic fighter escorting a squadron of World War II bombers.’’
Mountaineering held no allure for Gerard.
‘‘Sir Ed really did love climbing. He thought standing on a peak was the epitome of existence. I hated it!’’
The Trans-Antarctic Expedition sailed from Lyttelton in December 1956.
Americans provided much of the transport, an early sign of the co-operation in Antarctica that continues to this day.
Gerard went south on the icebreaker USS Glacier, a hot noisy craft.
‘‘There was a notice on the wall outside our cabin warning us to ‘avoid VD’. No-one could enlighten us how we could do otherwise than avoid it in the Antarctic.’’ Finding the perfect spot for Base was no easy matter.
It had to be easily accessible from the sea, without too much sea
Scott ice to cross.
A long flat stretch of snow was needed for an airstrip, and a clear sky for scientific observations.
Various spots were considered and discarded, before Sir Ed took matters into his own hands.
After a helicopter reconnaissance he chose Pram Point on volcanic Ross Island, just three kilometres from the American base at McMurdo. For some, that was too close. ‘‘There were a number who felt that we should not, for prestige reasons, be too close to the American base at McMurdo,’’ Gerard writes.
‘‘They feared becoming a suburb of the big city around the corner.’’
But Sir Ed had decided, and building began.
BUILDING SCOTT BASE
Gerard became a scientist turned builder as Scott Base was created in a two-week burst of activity.
First, American bulldozers levelled out the site.
The party slept in tents while they assembled six pre-fabricated huts on railway sleeper foundations.
Not all the scientists were keen The launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite in October 1957, was met with great excitement.
‘‘There was a lot of chatter on the radio, talk that it could be armed with an atomic bomb.’’
Gerard and his mates hatched a plan to send a Kiwi-made rocket into space.
‘‘We proposed that Scott Base should not let Russia . . . be the only country to launch a satellite,’’ he writes.
The plan was to build a multistage rocket, made from Jet Assisted Take Off (JATO) bottles – small rockets which give a boost to heavily laden aircraft.
‘‘It seemed that with a 10-stage rocket composed of something like 1000 bottles, we might have a chance of success.’’
The only way to get JATO bottles was to steal them from the Americans.
‘‘We proposed to do this one dark night, as clearly our need was greater than theirs.’’
However, the days of perpetual daylight were fast approaching, with long stretches of twilight, even at midnight.
The Scott Base satellite project was reluctantly abandoned. Today, just six are alive. Sir Edmund Hillary died in 2008. Another member of the party, Peter Mulgrew, was killed in the Erebus tragedy.
Vern Gerard eyed 87.
He’s been back to Antarctica twice – once was a year after Scott Base was established, and then again in 2000.
Gerard was bitterly disappointed to be left out of another trip in 2007, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the opening of Scott Base.
Asked if he’d go again, he doesn’t hesitate. ‘‘I’d love to. But I don’t know if they’d let me. I’d probably have to take my own doctor.’’
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