Antarctica An Exceedingly Beautiful Place”

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28700, 25 September 1958, Page 6

Antarctica An Exceedingly Beautiful Place”

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, September 24. ‘‘lf you get the chance, go, by all means,” was the advice Mr R. Barwick, a former member of the New Zealand Antarctic Expedition. gave Hutt Rotarians today in a talk in which he mentioned Antarctica as a tourist attraction. “It is an exceedingly beautiful place,” he said. “You would never be disappointed.” A lecturer in zoology at Victoria University of Wellington, Mr Barwick was attached to the New Zealand support party for the combined and New Zealand Trans-Antarctic Expedition. As a tourist—for so other members of the party regarded those who did not spend a winter at Scott Base—he said he hoped scientific interest in Antarctica would continue during the next few years. “If you want to establish a sound claim to any spot you have your eye on, the best way to do so is by occupying it,” he said.

"The next best way is to leafn something about it. The returns from scientific work may not be very great, but in time we may look back and be glad we did something about it.” Mr Barwick was at Scott Base when Sir Vivian Fuchs and his party arrived from the Pole in March. He said he had been asked if he would like to comment on "the vicissitudes between the leaders,” as described in a recent book by the English journalist, Noel Barber, who accompanied the expedition. “Sir Vivian Fuchs has said he wasn’t greatly concerned about what Mr Barber thought,” he said. “I would echo that. It gives some idea of the value of the statements made.”

Mr Barwick had some entertaining comments on wild life in Antarctica. Penguins, he said, were “great wee blokes—certainly the comedians of Antarctica.” Emperor penguins came up on to the ice from the sea by “jumping like projectiles—like corks out of champagne bottles.” They then “stooged around, seeing if everything was up to scratch.” Part of his biological research was done in a “dry” valley—free from snow and ice—about 40 miles inland, where his party suffered from sandstorms, “They were the last thing you would expect in the Antarctic. We are used to thinking of deserts as warm affairs, but the Antarctic is in fact a desert. The water is all locked up in the ice.” So strong were the winds that the blown sand cut patterns in the rock. Much of this rock would make beautiful buildin’g stone.

“It’s a pity it’s so far away,” he said.