AUSTRALIAN BASE IN ANTARCTIC

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28868, 13 April 1959, Page 9

AUSTRALIAN BASE IN ANTARCTIC

Takaka Man Was Leader (From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, April 12. The New Zealand leader of Australia’s I.G.Y. party in Antarctica believes that New Zealanders are rated very highly as Antarctic explorers. He is Mr lan Adams, aged 33, who was born in Takaka. Mr Adams is making his first visit to New Zealand in nearly five years. He spent the last 14 months in the Antarctic, and only recently returned to his wife and family in Melbourne. He does not expect to go back to the Antarctic for a while, but amongst the work he has to do in Melbourne is the organising of future parties. He intends to write articles in Melbourne on his experiences. Asked how he. received his appointment as head of the Australian expedition, Mr Adams said that he had spent some time as a member of an Australian party on Macquarie Island in 1956. His command during the International Geophysical Year was of a party of 29 men stationed at the Australian base, Mawson. The Australian work was “much the same as what the New Zealanders did,’’ and consisted of operating cosmic ray telescopes, meteor-tracking radar and seismic apparatus, said Mr Adams. The hours were “not more than 16 a day.’’ Mr Adams’s longest inland Antarctic trip was one which lasted nearly four months, and which penetrated 200 miles into the hinterland. Mawson collected scientific data from the Norwegian, Belgian and Japanese stations, and the personnel exchanged numerous visits with the Russians at Mirny.

He expressed the utmost admiration for Sir Edmund Hillary in leading the dash for the Pole. “I have had experience of the type of ground he had to traverse. It is difficult to appreciate just how difficult that trip could be,’’ said Mr Adams. “The only man who could have done it was a man who was purely guts.”