EXPEDITION TO ANTARCTICA

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28153, 17 December 1956, Page 22

EXPEDITION TO ANTARCTICA

Australian Party Leaves Today (N.Z Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7 p.m.) MELBOURNE, Dec. 15. Australia will launch early next year its most concentrated scientific attack on the Antarctic. Explorers will push farther than any other man has done before into the interior of the Antarctic Continent. They will be members of Australia’s International Geophysical Year expedition. which will leave Melbourne on the polar ship Kista Dan on Monday. Scientists will step up research in meteorology, glaciology and auroral and cosmic ray phenomena. The director of the Antarctic, division o’f the Department of External Affairs, Mr G. Law. said today. “This will be our most important year yet.” Mr Law is going on the trip himself, to help the Australian expedition “settle in,” and to supervise the establishment of a new base in the Vestfold hills. Also on board the 1239-ton Kista Dan will be 22 scientists and technicians, led by 34-year-old atomic physicist, Mr Keith Mather. Seven members of the expedition are already on their way to the Antarctic. The Kista Dan is not big enough to take them all. They flew to New Zealand at the beginning of the month and have joined the United States polar ship North Wind for the trip south. They will join the Kista Dan at the Windmill islands, 1200 miles east of Mawson. While wailing for the Kista Dan. the Australians will set up an automatic weather station at the Windmill islands. Mr Law hopes to have the new station at Vestfold hills, 400 miles east of Mawson. built in 10 days. It will consist of five huts, and will have its own light, power and water. Mr Law will name the station at a special ceremony when it is finished. “But I cannot tell you what we aregoing to call it yet,” he said today. Five men. led by a weather observer. Mr Bob Dingle, a 36-year-old Englishman from Cornwall, who is making his fifth trip to the Antarctic, will carry out meteorological, geological and auroral research from the new station. Parties travelling by snow tractors and sledges would work 300 to 400 miles inland from Mawson; they will' carry out glacial, geological and topographical surveys and take ice-depth measurements. At Mawson, which is to be expanded into a little “town” of more than 30 huts, the men will carry out research on the weather, winds in the upper atmosphere, cosmic rays, the ionosphere, the aurora Australis and the earth's magnetism. Two semi-automatic weather stations will be established; one inland from Mawson, the other on an island five miles out to sea. They will draw a weather pattern 500 miles around the base. Elaborate cameras, set up at Mawson and at a post 30 miles away, will record auroral displays.