Book review: 1912 by Chris Turney

SUBTITLED The Year the World Discovered Antarctica, this is the story of the beginning of our knowledge of that vast frozen continent.

SUBTITLED The Year the World Discovered Antarctica, this is the story of the beginning of our knowledge of that vast frozen continent.

And in many ways it is an entirely appropriate date for this sort of adventuring.

Those hardy European souls of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, who endured God knows what privations filling in maps, had almost run out of bits to add.

If you received any sort of education in history, you may recall that the South Pole was claimed first by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, a matter of days before the arrival of Briton Robert Scott.

You may also have encountered the play Fire on the Snow by Douglas Stewart, which dramatises the events of that fateful expedition.

What you wouldn't have come across is the amount of detail and depth of research given to the subject by Chris Turney. There were five different expeditions to Antarctica around 1912, not just the two we were told about.

There was the Australian, well we claim him anyway, Douglas Mawson, a German enterprise that ended in mutiny and disgrace and an exploratory team from Japan.

This is a fascinating book, full of interest and detail but never sinking into gloomy depths of ice-bound depression. Events are placed in their historical and political contexts. It's a joy to read history this well presented.

1912
Chris Turney
Text, $34.99