DUNEDIN RESIDENT’S UNUSUAL LINK WITH ANTARCTIC SURVIVOR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27166, 23 August 1949, Page 9

DUNEDIN RESIDENT’S UNUSUAL LINK WITH ANTARCTIC SURVIVOR

Memories of old associations have been revived for many people by the film, “ Scott of the Antarctic,” but an unusual postcript to the story of the expedition and its New Zealand links has been written for the Daily Times by Mr George L. Nelson, of Dunedin. He tells the story of Dimitri Gerof, a Russian with an Oxford accent, who played an important part in the expedition, and with whom he was associated in Siberia at a time when the ill-fated Antarctic expedition was still recent history rather than the near-legend of courage it has become to-day.

Dimitri Gerof was born in a convict settlement on Sakalin Island, which is located off the coast of Eastern Siberia opposite the mouth of the Amur River and separated from the mainland by the narrow Tatarski Strait. As a youth Dimitri drove the mail dog team sledge across the frozen strait between the island and the fortress town of Nickolievsk “ on Amur,” and during the summer was employed as messenger by the RussoChinese bank in that town. When Captain Scott organised the British Antarctic expedition, 1910, he decided, as a result of experience gained in Discovery days, to rely on Siberian dogs and ponies to lay the depots on the trail to the pole. Meares was detailed to proceed to Nicolievsk to purchase the dogs and Dimitri was engaged as dog driver. They duly arrived at Lyttelton with 34 dogs after many transhipments and difficulties. Those familiar with the story will recall the good service given by Dimitri and his dogs. The most outstanding episode was undoubtedly that when Cherry-Garrard and Dimitri waited six days over the time arranged, in a temperature of 40deg below and with rapidly diminishing dog rations, in the hope that the polar party (which, ironically, was only 40 miles away at that time) would reach One Ton Camp. Their nightmare journey back to base with ravenous dog teams and appalling conditions may be well imagined. Returning with the expedition to Lyttelton. Dimitri was persuaded by the agents. Kinsey and Co., to take a job in charge of quarantine animals on Quail Island, Lyttelton Harbour, where he remained until the outbreak of the 1914 war. With all his friends joining the forces he became homesick and decided to return to Siberia to fight for Russia, arriving early in 1915 in Nickolievsk with his Antarctic savings in golden sovereigns. However, the law of Russia in those days —and it was as the law of the Medes arid the Persians—was that no person born in a convict settlement could become a soldier of the Czar. My friend Pavloff or the bank advised Dimitri that there was a New Zealander now operating a gold mine inland from the Okotsk Sea. (OU( oiqEiuissnp y 'ah aqj mgao He arrived on the mine, looking for work, dressed in expedition summer wind -clothing and speaking English with an Oxford accent. He had a pleasing and unassuming manner, and I established him in charge of the mine dog teams during the winter and my fast gold transport horses during the summer. The Kolchan mining concession produced phenomenal gold returns, and as a result was a highly--organised mine, and my activities were directed to investigating other pro-

perties in this isolated region. On these journeys Dimitri was most useful and did not lack courage. « During the summers of 1915 and 1916 we filled our ice-houses with ducks returning from their nesting grounds on the Chantar Islands, ptarmigan and forest grouse, and during the winters of 1916 and i 917 we Hunted the rare sea otter, elk, fox, bear, and sable, and fished sturgeon. In March, 1917, came the outbreak of the Social Revolution, and Kerensky abolished discipline in the army. Prison establishments were thrown open, and the villainous riff-raff of all Russia roamed the country, the Government officials taking their place in the prisons and never being heard of again. During that 1917 summer, transporting gold out, and mine currency in, was extremely dangerous. Inflation mounted steadily, and the mine ceased operations in October with the Bolshevik seizure of power. All was chaos with Denin in control and new decrees steadily filtering through. During this time workers’ committees were being established to control the mine, and in a constantlychanging situation Dimitri was most useful in obtaining information, chiefly from the womenfolk who remembered years of good treatment from the company. About this time a tall, bare-footed, well-built woman named Anna Pokrovsky appeared at the mine office in Nickolievsk. claiming to be Dimitri’s mother and demanding his wages. When informed that she needed his authority, she became abusive. and threatened me with the law of Russia. It was obvious from whom Dimitri had inherited his courage. In March. 1918. it was time to get out. Dimitri and his ponies took me to Nickolievsk, and I faced the grim sledge journey of 650 miles, with 42 changes of horses, to Kharbarovsk alone. Time was short, as transport would soon be immobilised by the great spring thaw. Travelling was difficult, as the deserters from Kerensky’s army were drifting back to their villages, repeating “ Neit, neit” (‘‘No. no”), like M. Gromyko in the United Nations Assembly—but that is another story. One cannot help pondering on the turn of fortune’s wheel. Had Dimitri remained in New Zealand, with its hospitable four-season climate, how different his life must have been from that in a land where one has to work the clock round, with an average of 18 hours’ a day sunshine for five months of the year, to provide food and fodder for the seven months of winter—a fact- which the 14 men of the Kremlin, with all their power, cannot alter. It is during the long winter that the Russian flair for talking fantastic nonsense flourishes. Does Dimitri still drive a dog-team, or is he a Commissar of the USSR?