A CENTURY ago, Antarctica was a veritable hive of human activity. Perhaps best known from that era is the ill-fated mission of Captain Scott, who made it to the South Pole on 17 January 1912, only to find that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had got there first.
Less well known is that in 1912 there were also German and Japanese expeditions to the South Pole, and an Australian team that surveyed the unexplored area of Adélie Land. Apart from the Norwegians, all faced deprivation and disaster, but all had loftier aims than simply exploration: scientific endeavour. In 1912, geologist
