TITLE: 'DOUGLAS MAWSON AND THE AURORA'
2000 28 X 22 INCHES

DOUGLAS MAWSON:
1882-1958, Australian geologist, explorer, teacher.

"We came to probe its mystery, to reduce this land to terms of science, but
there is always the indefinable which rivets our souls."

Douglas Mawson came to Australia as a boy from Yorkshire, England. He joined
Shackleton’s 1907 Antarctic expedition and was the first to ascend Mount
Erebus, and first to the South Magnetic Pole. He turned down Scott’s invitation
to join him. Instead, he purchased the Aurora for his own expedition to
Commonwealth Bay, 1911-14. His journey alone across King George V Land, after the
death of his two companions, is an epic example of polar heroism. He later
sold the Aurora to Shackleton for £3200 in 1914 for the Ross Sea part of his
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. She was lost with all hands in 1917,
possibly sunk by a German merchant raider. In 1929-31 Mawson led two voyages to
the Antarctic coast. He was the last leader of the "Heroic Age".