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Big Ben FA - Heard Island - HW Tilman etc

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 Damo 07 Nov 2016
This is a recently released video of the 1965 expedition that made the first ascent of Australia's highest mountain, Mawson Peak (2745m) on Big Ben.

Interesting to see Tilman 'in the flesh', as it was his boat 'Patanela' that they sailed on from Sydney.

There is no sound with it, although audio was recorded at the time it was poor quality and never meshed with the video.

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/adventure/2016/11/50-year-old...

They summit at around 08:45 in the video and the rest after that is wildlife and the return voyage.
 Doug 07 Nov 2016
In reply to Damo:

Thanks for that, especially the shots of Tilman.
OP Damo 07 Nov 2016
In reply to Doug:

I should add a correction that Patanela was not actually Tilman's ship, he was just brought in to skipper it for the team.

 Raymondo 08 Nov 2016
In reply to Damo:

You don't hear to much about Heard Island, even in Australia. (Pun not intended).
I would bet most aussies don't even know where it is, even though it is an Australian Territory.

I know one person who has been, but I believe landing is extremely tightly controlled.
In reply to Raymondo:

Heard Island is controlled by my current employer, the Australian Antarctic Division. You're right that access is pretty strictly controlled, mainly because they're worried about invasive species getting on there on disrupting the bird population. They just finished a long term rat eradication program on Macquarie Island and don't want to go through the same thing again!

I generally think of Australians as being surprisingly knowledgeable about the Antarctic/sub-Antarctic territories, but my view is probably a bit skewed by living in Tassie.

Some of my colleagues were fortunate enough to see Big Ben erupt earlier this year, on an unrelated research cruise:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-01/scientists-witness-big-ben-volcano-er...
OP Damo 08 Nov 2016
In reply to Captain Fastrousers:

> I generally think of Australians as being surprisingly knowledgeable about the Antarctic/sub-Antarctic territories, but my view is probably a bit skewed by living in Tassie.

Nah, most Australians are pretty clueless about it all, unfortunately. We like to make fun of an American's geographical ignorance but we're not much better, and we should be, at least on this issue. Lots of people are amazed when I talk about climbing there because they didn't realise there were any mountains in Antarctica - just all flat. They know the government goes out of Hobart, Mawson got sick eating his dogs, and "we own a bit of it" and that's pretty much all. Oh, and it's melting, isn't it?

AntDiv controls the *permitting* for Heard Island, and to be fair, they're pretty open to visitation by non-government groups, but the logistical access itself is the main issue - having gone partway through this myself - and therefore SAR is virtually impossible, worse than for the Antarctic continent. Sailing there in a yacht is quite dangerous and there is no useful air access/evac. A rescue ship would be days away and then might not be able to land a response team. It really is a serious place and the Australian government doesn't want people getting into trouble there, all on top of the contamination and wildlife issues.

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