ACROSS THE ANTARCTIC

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 138, 15 May 1925, Page 12

ACROSS THE ANTARCTIC

MOTOR TRIP PLANNED. LONDON, May 3. Interest will be aroused in the* latest project for Antarctic exploration, known here as the Bernacchi expedition. It is not connected with the expedition in tho Discovery, which is to be financed by the people of the Falkland Islands to study whales from the scientific and commercial point of view. Under the original arrangement, Captain Frank Hurley, who accompanied Sir Douglas Mawson to the Antarctic in 1911-14, and was on the stall of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition in 191417, was to have been second in command, and to have taken moving pictures.

However, he could not come to terms with the promoters of the expedition, and has been taking films of Zeebrugge and other places. He will shortly return to Australia, probably travelling by a Commonwealth liner. Engineer Rear-Admiral R. W. Skelton, who superintended the construction of the Discovery for the National Antarctic expedition of 1901-4, and scry I as chief engineer under Captain R. Scott in that expedition, is taking great interest in the new venture, hut his Admiralty duties prevent him from taking part in it. The expedition will be led by Mr Louis Charles Bernacchi, a Tasmanian, 48 years of age, who was physicist to the Southern Cross Antarctic expedition of 1898 and to the Discovery expedition. He has also travelled extensively in British Namaqualand, former German South-west Africa, and Peru (the Upper Amazon Basin).

It was Mr Bernacchi who first threw effective doubts on the bonafides of Dr Cook, the American, who claimed to have reached the North Pole, and from whose exposure Sir Philip Gibbs secured much publicity. “All the plans are. prepared for the expedition which I am to command,” said Mr Bernacchi when interviewed. “However, until the financial arrangements are complete, T cannot disclose the details or the date of departure. “We went to Norway and carried out most satisfactory trials with caterpillar motor tractors on snow and ice.

“The expedition will bo topographical. We will endeavour to fill up the geographical gaps in tile Antarctic. It is our intention to cross the Antarctic Continent by mechanical transport, starting operations somewhere south of New Zealand.”