Hut cans for scrutiny

Press, 25 September 1987, Page 19

Hut cans for scrutiny

Attempting to catalogue thousands of tins which have their labels missing might seem an impossible task. Especially when you consider most of them are about 80 years old and buried under snow in Antarctica. This summer, two Department of Conservation members will travel to the southern continent to count and try to identify tins of food left by the Scott and Shackleton expeditions. Dr Neville Ritchie and Nelson Cross will spend most of their time at the historic hut sites on Ross Island, where the tins are stored in rapidly deteriorating plywood boxes. Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s second expedition in 1911-13 left a hut at Cape Evans, while Sir Ernest Shackleton’s winter-over but was established at Cape Royds in 1907. These huts and other historic ;

sites are now under the protection of the Christchurch-based Antarctic Heritage Trust which plans to restore and preserve the "time capsules.” Dr Ritchie believes the unlabelled tins will be identifiable through their size and shape, and by comparing them with tins inside the huts which still have their labels. “But the identification will not always be 100 per cent,” he says. "For instance, there are tins which we will know are full of meat, but which of the 26 varieties of canned meat it is, we can’t tell.” The meat, fish, jam, cocoa and many other foodstuffs are mostly tinned, although there are some glass jars still intact. “The provisions are in various stages of deterioration,” says Dr Ritchie, and it is important that preservaVtion work begin as soon as

In an attempt to make the work of restoring and preserving the huts more useful, an architect from the Ministry of Works and Development, Chris Cochran, will visit the sites to make assessments and long-term plans.

“In the past, work has been done by volunteers, without proper funding, and without a coherent plan,” says Mr Cochran. He will make recommendations to the heritage trust, which will then decide on action to be taken in future years. Before their excavation in the early 19605, the huts were preserved by snow and ice covering them. Since then, although annual survey and maintenance work has continued, exposure to the atmosphere, especially during the warmer temperatures of the brief Antarctic summer, has caused a gradual deterioration of botiuthe interior and exterior of the Juts.

As Trevor Hatherton, chairman of the Ross Dependency Research Committee says, “The huts have been maintained in the typical Kiwi she’ll-be-right man r ner since they were excavated.” ■ The Antarctic Heritage Trust is chaired by a Christchurch industrialist, Peter Skellerup, and includes the British High Commissioner to New Zealand and the United States Ambassador. The trust set up earlier this year, will raise funds, make policy recommendations, and liaise with other Antarctic organisations. It will look towards private companies, as well as Government agencies, for sponsorship.

"There are over a hundreds firms still in existence whose products are in the huts in Antarctica,” says Mr Hatherton. “It wqijld be great advertising for