AN ADVENTUROUS CAREER

Evening Star, Issue 19848, 23 April 1928, Page 5

AN ADVENTUROUS CAREER

FROM TROPICS TO POLES Captain George Hubert Wilkins, who is an Australian, born at Mount Biyan East, in South Australia, is a shm and bearded man, with that calculated bravery which led Sir John Moiinsh to describe him as “the most coolly trepid man in the Australian ai my. _ Bv temperament and training \\ dkins is well qualified to undertake such a desperately hazardous exploit, for there is not much about flying or about exE’ ition that he has not learned in the school of experience. He knows most of the races of tho world from Australia’s aborigines Ur the Esquimaux. Soldiers and sailors have been his comrades and friends, and he is equally at homo driving a dog team or nddressing tho Royal Geographical Society. . , , , Wilkins intended, when ho returned after leading a natural history expedition through tho least-known parts of Northern Australia and its islands, to undertake research in the Antarctic, but owing to lack of financial support ho turned Ids lace northwards. Ho knows tho Arctic well, and learned that most valuable of lessons—how to live on tho country—when with Stcfansson in 1913-17

Wilkins lias crammed into the past fifteen years the achievements of a do/,oii tolerably adventurous lifetimes. Ho was tho'first man to take moving pictures of troops in action—a feat ho accomplished when with the Turkish forces in tho Balkan War of 1912. Among other adventures in that campaign ho was arrested, and very narrowly escaped death. Later a balloon exploit in London led to bis being blown out to sea and searched for by destroyers. Then, in 1913, after a visit to tbo West Indies, bo joined Stefansson in tho North. Long afterwards—for_ news travels slowly in those icy regions--ho heard of tho war. Ho hastened back to Australia, gained a commission in the Australian Flying Corps in 1917, and in tho .same year became Australia’s official photographer, in which capacity he obtained by bis daring pictures of iiniqno historic value. He was twice mentioned in despatches, and was awarded tho Military Cross and Bar.

Bored with peace, ho has returned to his exploring. In 1920-21 bo -was second in command of tho British Imperial Antarctic Expedition, and in 1921-22 he accompanied tho Sliackleton-Kowctt Expedition as naturalist.