Mapping

Mawson

LIVE WEBCAM
Courtesy Australian Antarctic Division

untrustable...larger than life.

Jack Ward
Mawson diary, 1955

Mawson, 1998

Photo: Colin Christiansen

Looking at the current webcam from Mawson I note that there have been significant changes since I took that picture in 1998. Rosella is still there but the older workshop, that I knew in 1971, has gone. In its place seems to be a couple of small building, also multicoloured. The large red building to the left is clearly a newer, bigger, vehicle workshop.

Colin Christensan

Sydney, 16 Feb 2008 10:53:28 +1100

The Rosella Building
Mawson, 2001

Photo: John Gillies

...a better photo that I took in 2001 when I visited as ANARE Club Representative. It had changed quite a bit since I last departed the place in 1968.

John Gillies
Melbourne, 2007

Mawson, 1968

Photo: John Gillies

Mawson, 1967

Photo: John Gillies

I have found several old slides. The first taken on my half frame camera (67r) show the vehicle workshop behind the mooring bollard (orange blob amongst the fuel drums). The powerhouse is between the fuel farm and the vehicle workshop.

This makes me think that the remaining rock in the 2001 photo is the large one above the water line although it looks smaller this may be due to the different sizes of the buildings.

The tide gauge was painted on the rocks in the water which seem to have been removed. The large bulk fuel farm has been replaced with much larger capacity tanks a little further away.

The slide taken in 1968 was a full frame with my new camera (and a lot cleaner). The Nella Dan was unloading and the fuel drums were for refueling the DUKWs seen beside the ship.
The mooring bollard is in front of the drums, the tide gauge painted by the 1966 party is in the water the large rock is just in the picture on the left.

The 1968 photo and the 2001 one were taken with the same Minolta STR101, 33 years apart.

John Gillies
Melbourne, 2007

The space around you seems infinite. This is a place so very new, quite without a human history and it has that clean unlived-in feel of an empty new house. Everything is larger than life.

Jack Ward
Mawson diary, 14 March 1955

Fred Elliott, Mawson at end of 1955

NBS Hut was bought from a surplus Norwegian, British, Swedish expedition.

Fred Elliott
Melbourne, 29 March 2007

Mawson, 1954

In 1955 the size of the station was doubled with the new huts being sited in places which were; suitable for their use, not likely to be covered in drift from another up-wind building, doorways free of drift, and, of course,on a site where the building could be easily erected by a mob of mainly amateurs. The buildings in the picture fulfilled these criteria.

Fred Elliott
Melbourne, 10 January 2008