• Mawsons Huts
• Sir Douglas Mawson

Mawson’s Huts are a collection of buildings located at Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, in the far eastern sector of the Australian Antarctic Territory, some 3000 km south of Hobart. The buildings were erected and occupied by the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) of 1911 - 1914, led by geologist and explorer Sir Douglas Mawson.

Mawson’s Huts are of national and international heritage significance. They are rare in a world context as one of just six surviving sites from the Heroic Era of Antarctic exploration. The early 1900s was a period of great human adventure, exploration, research and discovery on Antarctica.

The most important building at the site is the winter living quarters, known as Mawson’s Hut. This pyramid-roofed hut was home to the eighteen men of the AAE main base party in 1912, and the seven (including Douglas Mawson) who stayed on for an unplanned second year in 1913. The hut combines two sections - the living quarters and the workshop, prefabricated in Sydney and Melbourne respectively, and shipped to the site for construction in 1912 by the AAE team.

Conservation and heritage recognition

Expeditions undertaken by the Australian government (through the Australian Antarctic Division since the late 1970s) and private non-profit conservation organisations (notably the Mawson’s Huts Foundation since 1997) have carried out conservation work on the huts. In addition to archaeological recording, removal of snow from inside the huts and ongoing maintenance, recent interventions (1998 and 2006) have been to encapsulate the failing timber roofs with new timber over-cladding in order to weatherproof the interiors.

The site is recognised under the Antarctic Treaty as an Historic Site & Monument (since 1972. It is also on Australia’s National Heritage List, Commonwealth Heritage List and Register of the National Estate.

Sir Douglas Mawson

Sir Douglas Mawson was one of Australia’s greatest explorers, noted primarily for his extensive work in Antarctica. His exploration of the continent spanned the years between 1907 and 1931.

The chief objective of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition was to investigate, as far as possible, the stretch of essentially unknown Antarctic coast extending between the fathest west of the Terra Nova Expedition and the fathest east of the Gauss Expedition.

Mawson’s exploration program was carried out by five parties from the Main Base and two from the Western Base. Mawson’s team, which was to trek east, consisted of Xavier Mertz, Lieutenant B.E.S. Ninnis and himself. Mawson and his three-man party left Main Base on November 10, 1912. They got trapped by a blizzard for three days then tried to head back to base camp.

Nearing the end of this team’s trek, Ninnis, his dog team and sledge with most of the provisions fell through a crevasse and were lost.

Mawson and Mertz turned back immediately. Mertz died during the return journey and Mawson continued alone. On one occasion during his return trip to the Main Base, he fell through the lid of a crevasse and was saved only by his sledge wedging itself into the ice above him. When he finally made it back to Cape Denison, the ship Aurora had left only a few hours before. Mawson, and six men who had remained behind to look for him, reconciled themselves to another winter of blizzards and confinement. But, they were well stocked with supplies and the repaired radio antenna survived all the spectacular blizzards.

They wintered a second year until December 1913.

In Mawson’s book, Home of the Blizzard, he describes his experiences. His party, and those at the Western Base, had explored large areas of the Antarctic coast, describing its geology, biology and meteorology, and more closely defining the location of the south magnetic pole.