Governor’s Flag At Pole

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30286, 12 November 1963, Page 12

Governor’s Flag At Pole

(N.Z. Press Association) SCOTT BASE, November 11. With frost and drift snow matting his furedged hood and with ice in his moustache the Governor-General (Sir Bernard Fergusson) saw his personal standard hoisted at the South Pole today. Sir Bernard Fergusson flew to the Pole with the American commander, RearAdmiral J. R. Reedy, in a ski-equipped Hercules this morning. Three hours out from McMurdo Sound the Hercules almost had to turn back on its 800 mile track. The visibility on the polar plateau was a quarter of a mile because of fog and a 20-knot wind with blowing snow. In the expert hands of the

Navy’s VX6 Squadron commanding officer, Commander George Kelly, the aircraft landed as the weather cleared slightly. Sir Bernard Fergusson was greeted by 64 degrees of frost when he stepped on to the wind-hummocked snow of the plateau. Puffing like all his party of aides and members of the New Zealand Antarctic party In the thin air of 9300 feet, he walked down a snow tunnel to visit the underground base facilities. One of his first stops was to greet the New Zealanders, Dr. Alex Wilson and Don House, of Victoria University. Sir Bernard Fergusson personally passed on to them the Queen’s greeting received at ■ Scott Base last Friday for all i New Zealanders working in Antarctica. I After sandwiches cut to ' order by the station cook from a cold meat buffet, pineapple upside-down cake, cherry pie and fresh grapes. Sir Bernard Ferguson boarded a drawn open sledge for the South Pole site half i a mile from the station. ,i

His breath froze round the fur on his eiderdown hood and clotted in his moustache to turn to ice during the journey.

Admiral Reedy tied his Excellency’s standard to the pole flag halyard. After a round of movie and still photography by New Zealand Antarctic staff and Navy information staff, the party returned to the waiting Hercules and its crew, anxious to leave in failing visibility. They left his Excellency’s flag flying in a bitter wind. Above the fog and bathed in the polar summer sunshine, the Vice-Regal aircraft had a quick trip home, flown after take-off by the Admiral himself who deftly landed at McMurdo Sound’s airport, Williams Field, at 5.10. Tomorrow his Excellency will visit another United States inland scientific station—Byrd Station, 900 miles from McMurdo, on the Marie Byrd Land plateau ice. On Wednesday he will return to Scott Base for the last few hours of his sevenday Antarctic tour.