TITLE: DOUGLAS MAWSON REMEMBERS THE VIOLENT WINDS
2000 5 X 7 INCHES

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

"The climate proved to be little more than one continuous blizzard the year
around… We had discovered an accursed country. We had found the Home of the
Blizzard."

When Mawson was thirty years of age, he became the leader of the first
Australian expedition to the Antarctic. He wanted to explore the unknown coast of
Antarctica lying closest to Australia. He sailed his ship through nine hundred
miles of pack ice to reach it. Here they built a hut which the crew named
"Home of the Blizzard" because of the constant 200 mile per hour winds that blew
the men off their feet. They were the most fearsome gales recorded on the
planet.