Chch woman to lead Antarctic expedition

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 8

Chch woman to lead Antarctic expedition

A Christchurch woman will lead a party of scientists on a remote Antarctic expedition which will isolate them from the rest of the world for 10 weeks.

Margaret Bradshaw, the geologist at the Canterbury Museum, will lead the fourmember expedition to the Ohio Range of the Horlick Mountains. They will make an open field landing in a Hercules aircraft and travel from there with three motor toboggans and four sledges. Other members of the party are two geologists, Jane Newman, of the University of Canterbury, and Jonathon Aitchison, from the University of Otago, and a field leader and toboggan mechanic, Bill Atkinson.

Three years ago Mrs Bradshaw spent 50 days in the same area with a sledging party with two American geologists and a field leader.

Mrs Bradshaw will leave for the Antarctic on Monday and her party will spend some time at Scott Base preparing for their journey before leaving for the field. While away they will be in daily touch with Scott Base by radio, their only contact with the outside world.

The party will be looking at a series of glacial sediments laid down by an ice cap 270 million years ago. They will be looking at signs of advancing and

retreating. Some work has been done on this in the past but there has been contro-, versy over which way the ice was moving. They will also look at coal deposits and trace fossils at the bottom of sediments.