The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning

I visited this exhibition at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney curated by Maggie Patton. Australia is also busy celebrating the Antarctic centenary with some fine explorers, scientists and artists such as Sir Douglas Mawson, Hubert Wilkins and Frank Hurley hailing from this country and contributing to the mapping of this isolated continent, amongst other feats.

“This exhibition focuses on the gradual mapping of Antarctica over the last 2000 years. A selection of maps and charts which illustrate human interaction with Antarctica from concept to reality show the development of a continent with a truly international identity.“ (Exhibition booklet, ISBN 0 7313 7210 7, December 2011)

Highlights for me:

•The fact humans who had never seen or had evidence of this frozen continent actually imagined it more than one thousand years ago.  Or more accurately, they predicted its existence.

•Maps as more than geographic representations.  The Hereford map circa 1300, a UNESCO artifact, shows they are also spiritual and cultural maps, maps of the known and unknown world and traveler’s tales within maps.

•Something was named and mapped before its existence was visible or certain.  Antarctica was first mentioned in a world map drawn by Francesco Rosselli in 1508. Many of us lucky ones have experienced and mapped peace we just need it to appear in more places and with more permanence.

Photos below: Hendrick Hondius Polus Antarcticus 1638

Americae sive novi orbis, nova descriptio, 1579 (Abraham Ortelius)

Captain James Cook’s 1775 chart influenced Antarctic exploration.  He confirmed a landmass south of the Antarctic Circle.

The first significant circumnavigation of Antarctica after Cook was the Russia- sponsored voyage by Faddei Faddevich Bellingshausen (the station we did the clean up on is named after Bellingshausen) from 1819 to 1821 at which time he was possibly the first to sight Antarctica.

The job of magnetician; a person skilled in the science of magnetism, like Eric N. Webb from the Mawson 1911-1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition.

The earth is a huge magnet thought Queen Elizabeth I’s doctor in 1600: the magnetic poles are some distance away from the geographic poles.  Magneticians thought about things like fast streaming particles, the notion that the magnet’s energy is not the magnet itself but the space around it (Faraday), attracting and repelling and the radio.

Concepts in history from this exhibition and some of the intriguing thinking by Australian Antarctic explorer Hubert Wilkins are echoes. We have only begun to explore the human mind while we have gone many places now in the world. How did Ptolemy think in the second century AD about latitude and longitude?  Research begins with exploring our brains.  And the Antarctic side of it also explores human strength and endurance.

The ancient Greeks thought there had to be a southern mass as counterweight to the northern mass in the sphere they considered the world. They explored it in their minds.  Mappers and explorers from many countries followed in the search.  The human inhabitants of or visitors to these counterweight masses learned transferable lessons.  Early Antarctic explorer’s food and their survival depended at times on what they learned from Arctic explorations and specifically how the Inuit and indigenous peoples of other Arctic regions lived and what they ate.

Before scientists were ‘natural philosophers’.

Artist Explorers: Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, 1817-1911

The botany of the Antarctic voyage of H.M. discovery ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839-1843 under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross

 

Men hauling sledges, British Antarctic Expedition, 1907-1909, slides 25

Kooky German 3D Antarctic mapping.

People want to tell and record stories, no matter their location or privation.

This is the first book printed in Antarctica.  It was published at the winter quarters of the British Antarctic Expedition (1907-1909) during the winter months of April, May, June and July 1908. The book was edited by EH Shackleton and the illustrations were produced by George Marston.

Aurora Australis, 1908, Printed at the sign of the Penguins by Joyce and Wild

Happy New Year and happy venturing for whatever you desire to see, do or learn, Carol

http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/exhibitions/2011/finding_antarctica/index.html

January 4, 2012

 

I time-traveled to magnetician Eric Webb’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition January 4, 1911 journal on microfiche. What an archaic cool machine that we can still use to look at documents from history. As Webb’s handwriting with distinctive and sprawling ‘y’ and ‘ing’ word endings scrolled across the white screen I felt I was bringing Eric back to life again from this roll of photography film of his journal stored in this gorgeous library.

Webb was 22 when he wrote with precision and enthusiasm about trekking across Antarctica, observing magnetic fluctuations near the South Magnetic Pole and anticipating his next meal.

“Bob [illegible] out before we were awake and started the hoosh today—his eyes are better …. Surface improved all day tho’ not good even yet. After about 3 ruts the ramps shelved up ahead of us and our ‘bluff’ showed up away to E. Both looked to us much closer than we had expected and the mound which should have been handy was not in evidence. Altered our course to 40 W and went ahead. I think we were too far N&E. Marched on hill got bearing….There should be no difficulty in the morning & we have two full days food yet. It’s a bit exciting & trying-coming into a depot, especially when it hasn’t been up where one expects it.”

It was an equal treat to request and view at the translation, The Voyage of the Why Not in the Antarctic: the Journal of the 2nd French South Polar Expedition, 1911, London, Hodder & Stoughton. Prefatory note by Armitage, Albert B.

It arrived in beautiful archival box.

Inside were these images of the French explorers, scientists and sailors doing masquerade and having a parade. In hard times people still have rituals and celebrations, or maybe even more so to break monotony and lift spirits. I can’t be sure but I kept seeing these images of the French living it up with champagne in Antarctica at the turn of the century and wondered if it made life less arduous by maintaining this apparent lightness.  I have also read of the French explorers serious contribution to mapping and science so clearly it wasn’t all play. They charted 1250 miles of coast, studied and recorded the Adélie penguin population (records proving valuable to document the major drop in their population, attributed to climate change) and brought back 75 crates of scientific samples for research in 1908.

Jean-Baptiste Charcot led two notable French Antarctic expeditions. He was a doctor who sold his famous neurologist father’s Fragonard painting and spent his inheritance to buy a ship and go to the Antarctic. He also was a hell-raiser and had been jailed for practical jokes in his youth. Charcot’s accomplishments are impressive. Sir Douglas Mawson’s too, and those of his Expedition, but Mawson seemed much more serious always, apart from the partially funny telegram he sent his fiancée when he survived in 1913 what is considered the most remarkable story of lone survival. But that’s for another time.

 

“‘Movement always does me a great deal of good,’ Charcot would say. ‘It is definitely the treatment for me… it is a great thing to learn and to enjoy oneself at the same time’”. Charcot of the Antarctic, Author Marthe Oulié. John Murry (1938) Chapter IV, p 21.

Next I requested, fairly randomly, to see the Dovers Family archive (MLMSS 3812) dated 22 June 1912, a collection of letters and telegrams with general reference to Antarctica, not  knowing what I’d discover within.

This I’d never see before, and wonder if I’ll see again, hand printed:

Midwinter Day Dinner, Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911:

Mullgogyawny Soup

Cheese Canopes

Sirloin de veau marin

Potatoes petit fois

Turnips

Plum Pudding & Whiskey sauce

Raspberry & Strawberries in a Jelly

Raisins & almonds Algerienne fruits

Ginger figs & nuts

Cheese Straws

Cigars & cigarettes

Challenger Madiera wine

Tintara Claret

Ropke Port

Whiskey

What do you think Wendy about this feast?

Next were letters documenting parental interference for those trying to go to the Antarctic. Frank Hurley, of whose work and courage I am an unabashed fan, wrote this letter to Douglas Mawson in 1911, imploring him to take him to Antarctica. The rapid-fire series of letters available at Mitchell Library is fantastic (MLMSS 171 / vol. 14).

In short:

-Hurley pitches to Douglas Mawson on 29 Sept. 1911 to join the Australasian expedition to Antarctica, “I am 26 years of age, unmarried and have had a good share of roughing it…I have a large commercial photographic business….and I am prepared to offer my services absolutely free..”

-Hurley’s mother secretly writes to Mawson a week later and says Hurley has lung problems and Mawson would be wrong to take him. “Letter from Mrs M. A. Hurley to Douglas Mawson, 6 Oct. 1911”

-Mawson writes, ‘I have grave doubts about your health and strength being sufficiently strong for the arduous work of the Antarctic’ to Hurley on Oct 12, 1911 and requests him to get a full medical examination.

-On Oct 16, 1911, The Gaumont Co. “Kodak Salon” writes to Mawson saying that Hurley will have received two medical certificates testifying to Hurley’s good health and confirms that Hurley is ‘the right man’ for the expedition.

The rest is history. Hurley died at age 76 in 1962 and was official photographer for Australia during two world wars, not to mention surviving the Mawson Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914 and the Shackleton British Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1916) and making incredible photos, amongst other feats. When I read Hurley’s unpublished journal in the Scott Polar Research Institute archive last year, I also got the feeling he had incredible tenacity and was a leader and morale booster on Elephant Island and in that phenomenal story of survival and rescue of the Endurance crew.

Hurley reportedly also made a mean penguin egg omelette. For more on penguin and other historic and contemporary Antarctic food-inspired stories, please check out our upcoming book, The Antarctic Book of Cooking and Cleaning.

Sandy, the photographer for our project photographed Hurley’s daughters in Australia, Adelie and her identical twin Antoinette. Sandy said when he met these former beauty queens and one a successful photojournalist (Adelie) in their 80s, they said they were very proud of their father. Frank Hurley is something of a war, exploration and photography hero in Australia. But apparently he wasn’t a ‘helicopter parent’ like his mom.

One question Wendy and I have asked ourselves while working on our book is why in the first place did we want to go to the Antarctic? Wendy observed the surprise or unexpected outcome that cooking, a traditional female role (at least at the domestic level), could be a liberating, expansive and adventuresome job, particularly in remote locations.

For me, Antarctica was magnetic. The Antarctic had been in the news because a Canadian company, Marine Expeditions, was taking groups there. A roommate from McGill suggested to me or me to her that we should get jobs there. I went for it and in a round about way got there.  My mom didn’t fight my wish to go the the Antarctic, in fact she signed up at age 59 (same age as John Franklin when he led the Arctic expedition attempting to chart the Northwest Passage) for a pilot of a pilot civilian eco-expedition I arranged to Henryk Arctowski Polish Research Station with the VIEW Foundation in 1995. This was the precursor to the more substantial environmental expedition with the Russian Antarctic Expedition on which our book is based. I sent my mom climbing up a big hill looking over Admiralty Bay and then to haul garbage. I was feeling a bit guilty but she and the other seniors in the group survived to enthusiastically tell about it.

The problems with archives are it is so hard to leave. What other gem or kernel could I have missed? There is much to learn from the Heroic era, and maybe even more this post-Heroic era. We’ll get to that.

I was invigorated and satiated with what I discovered. I had to trust the words of wisdom of Tasmanian historian and author Alison Alexander who I had the pleasure to met at the Scott Polar Archive (she was researching Lady Franklin, the widow of explorer John Franklin who perished in the Arctic). Alison told me to have faith that the book you need just at that moment will find you.

Thanks to Kevin Leamon and staff at the State Library, Mitchell Library, Sir William Dixson Research Library and Dixson Galleries.