Ice adventurer sees small-timer’s victory

Press, 14 March 1984, Page 36

Ice adventurer sees small-timer’s victory

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney Dr David Lewis, a New Zealander, regards his 18month expedition to the Antarctic as a victory for the small-time adventurer and for the environment. The former Auckland medical man returned to Sydney on Sunday with four companions in their 20m ketch Dick Smith Explorer confident that at the age of 66 he has paved the way for future small-scale expeditions, and sure he has become a thorn in the side of bureaucracy. Throughout their sojourn on the ice the main news of their doings has concerned the problems they encountered such as being freed from pack ice by a United States icebreaker, needing to borrow fuel, and the sacking of a team member. But Dr Lewis said the problems had been blown out of proportion by authorities who did not want to see a rash of small-

scale expeditions to Antarctica. “We achieved all the things we set out to do and made tremendous strides,” said Dr Lewis yesterday. “We achieved much more on a shoestring budget onehundredth of the size of the big expeditions to the Ice. “The main purpose was to pioneer the use of a boat deliberately frozen into suitable ice as a base, without the enormous expense of land-based huts, that can be removed at the end of the work without leaving an effect on the environment. “The last major expedition to do that was in 193638.” Dr Lewis said the group also did a lot of valuable work on travelling on the sea ice, using it as a “highway” to sites for other experiments. “There are great dangers involved with this, but we spent four months in the field in tents, manhandling sledges and using a skidoo

to get where we wanted to go“This in itself is a fair breakthrough, and nowhere in the history of Antarctic exploration that I have been able to find have women done this sort of work on the sea ice. “It was very tough work and we were in the field during every month of the year, including through the winter." Dr Lewis’s companions were an American anthropologist, Mimi George, an English geographer, Jill Cracknell, a Danish wildlife expert, Jannik Schou, an Australian engineer, Norman Linton-Smith, and another Australian, the zoologist, Jamie Miller, who left the expedition after personality clashes. Ms George, who was the expedition’s deputy leader, also provided the third notable result of the trip, a detailed study of the interaction of people in a small group confined under trying circumstances for a year and a half. “Conditions were so much harder for us than for the bigger bases because the boat was smaller and less well insulated against the elements, and this brought everything into sharp relief,” said Dr Lewis. The expedition members were picked from 100 applicants after Dr Lewis publicised his plans during a promotional tour of New Zealand two years ago for his book, “The Maori — Heirs of Tamaki.” The applicants travelled to Sydney from all over the world, and Dr Lewis picked the half-dozen to make the trip. The trip was the third to the Ice by Dr Lewis, a former Auckland doctor of medicine who now works with the Australian National University, but his first thrust him into the international limelight when in 1972-74 he sailed round the continent in his tiny boat the Ice Bird which was overturned three times in violent storms.