THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY "Public Service" PROBING THE UNKNOWN

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 59, Issue 4252, 8 March 1950, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY "Public Service" PROBING THE UNKNOWN

Interest in Antanctfe research and-exploration has bean revived to a marked, extent hl tha war period, and many eountriefe have been actively engaged m various scientific undertakings. The work that is being done by British scientists was/perhaps not fully appreciated until world attention was directed to the heroic efforts of the past few months to rescue the scientists stranded on Stingon Island, off Graham Land. Some of these scientists, it was disclosed, had been islodated in the far south for nearly three years, and in that time had made important discoveries. Within a few days of the completion of the rescue efforts, another major expedition has arrived on the Antarctic continent, and its members are now settling down to spend the next two years in the virtually unexplored region of Crown Princess Martha Land, a portion of Queen Maud Land, lying east of the Weddell Sea and on the other side of the continent from New Zealand’s Ross Dependency. This expedition is unique in its international character. It is appropriately known as the Nor-wegian-British-Swedish Antarctic expedition, is organised by the Norwegian Polar Institute and is sailing under the Norwegian flag. The British members are not from the United Kingdom alone, for the scientists inclue Canadians and. Australians, and the ship’s company includes official observers from Australia and South Africa, and a Royal Air Force flight of two aircraft and five men. The wintering party will be limited to 15 men, comprising Norwegians, Britons and Swedes. They have before them an intensive programme of exploration and reiMth, Gie more interesting—and da>-

gerous—because the region to be covered has never before been investigated though a few photographs were taken from the air by a German expedition in 198889. These photographs disclosed a nuinber of remarkable features which suggest that the interior of Queen Maud Land offers unusual scope for important geological and climatological surveys. That is one of the tasks facing the Norwegian-British-Swedish expedition.

In the record of Antarctic research the principal contributions have been made by Britain, the British Commonwealth, Norway, France and the United States, with Britain and Norway strongly in the tead with respect to the number of organised expeditions. It will be recalled that when Ronald Amundsen returned from his discovery of the South Pole he publicly acknowledged that the British were the real trail-blazers—Cook, who provided the first real indication of the nature of Antarctica, Ross, who found the great open sea that enabled ships to approach to within 1000 miles of the South Pole, and Shackleton and Scott who pioneered the overland route across the Ross Shelf Ice, and up the glaciers to the vast alpine plateau where the Pole is located. For many years research was concentrated in the region of the notable British discoveries—the South Pacific and South Indian Ocean sectors—but the combined expedition that has now landed in Queen Maud Land is breaking new ground by probing into the unknown and far less

accessible eastern portion of the South Atlantic sector. Such

enterprise may well lead to a new era of Antarctic discovery.