Tackling Australia’s highest peak was boys own adventure

The Great White Whale documents an attempt to climb Big Ben on Heard Island: have-a-go Australia in its heyday.

A scene from The Great White Whale

The Australian exploration documentary The Great White Whale is an entertaining reminder that reaching the summit of a mountain is only half the battle. There’s making it to the mountain in the first place and then climbing down from its peak.

Set in the mid-1960s, it’s a refreshing account of can-do Australianism. If your boat has a leak you can moan about it or you can plug it with whatever comes to hand.

The mountain in question is Australia’s highest: Big Ben on Heard Island, located in the inhospitable Southern Ocean midway between Australia and South Africa. It’s a snow-capped volcano standing at 2745m, 500m higher than Mount Kosciuszko on the mainland.

It’s 1964 and a group of Australians set out to climb it. Two of them have tried before and it almost killed them. They nickname the island Moby-Dick, and we all know that white whale didn’t care much for humans.

It’s a grand plan but it’s short of finance. Appeals are made and corporate sponsors sign up, including this newspaper, The Australian, which was then in its infancy.

Kellogg’s was a lifesaver, though perhaps not in a way that the cereal maker would want to advertise. CSR, the sugar company, provided the rum. Big Ben sent in the pies. Rolls Royce checked the engines.

Bill Tilman in Sydney in 1964 aboard the Patanela.

The five explorers, led by Warwick Deacock, a former major in the Australian SAS, set out from Sydney in a sailing boat captained by the celebrated English explorer Bill Tilman. There are four other crew members. They are a motley crew. One can’t swim. When there’s trouble at sea, which is frequent, the taciturn Tilman makes what the others consider a speech: “I’m glad to have such a dependable vessel under our feet.”

That is characteristic of the humour that runs through this account of five men deciding to sail to, and then climb, a mountain on an “island of fire and ice”. We see and hear it all as they took a film camera with them. This real-time footage of the expedition, combined with archival photographs, brings home the audacity and ambition of this boy’s own adventure.

This movie is directed by Australian filmmaker Michael Dillon, whose previous exploration documentaries include Everest Sea to Summit (1990) and Beyond Everest (1999). It’s an agreeable portrait of have-a-go Australia.