Ingrid and I along with Mikkelsen are the first.
The swell heaves Braaten up and down and the only place we can land is at a slippery ledge on the mountain. Mikkelsen jumps ashore, slips and nearly ends up in the sea so it looks frightening. He has a line behind him and he calls out, telling me to jump. I did and took the line with me upwards so the others had something to hold on to.
Ingrid came ashore well and the others followed one by one. We had a flag with us which was raised over the depot and there was a sense of ceremony in the air when we bared our heads and I, in a short speech, thanked the people who had allowed this land to bear my name …
… The whole thing was one of life’s big experiences and it was so good that Ingrid and Fie were there on shore too. Every southern trip I’ve dreamed about Ingrid and me setting foot on land, on the very South Pole continent, and today at two in the morning, the 30 January, 1937, we succeeded.
Ingrid Christensen and her three female companions landed on the Antarctic mainland at Klarius Mikkelsen Mountain (now known as Scullin Monolith) on 30 January 1937, with Ingrid being the first ashore.
On the way back to Thorshavn after the landing, it began to snow heavily and the wind and swells increased. Lars described it as being like searching for a needle in a haystack as they shouted into the foghorn for the ship. It was some hours before they found it again. While they were gone, the depth sounder suddenly showed only fifteen metres of water below and the captain said he believed their last hour had come.
In Lars’s diary of the 1937 trip, he’s glued a photograph of their landing. It shows Lars and Ingrid standing in a rock chute in front of a large Norwegian flag. It’s a disappointing shot, slightly blurred, distant and rather underexposed, and one of only a few from the landing (a fact that gave me scope for fictional speculation).
Sir Douglas Mawson landed on the same spot six years earlier, on 13 February 1931, left a depot and named it after the Prime Minister of Australia, James Scullin. In January of that year, a few weeks before Mawson, men from Lars’s fleet had also landed there and named it Mount Klarius Mikkelsen. The highest point of the outcrop is still called Mikkelsen Peak.
Because it is an important and unique seabird breeding site, Scullin Monolith is an Antarctic Specially Protected Area and according to its terms of management, no access is allowed except for compelling scientific or management purposes.
Until now, no one has been aware that the landing site of the first woman to reach the Antarctic mainland lies somewhere there. Ingrid’s landing place is still undiscovered.
The area of coastline where the Mikkelsens landed is still known as Ingrid Christensen Land.
Research sources
I am indebted to the following authors and publications:
Anon. (1929, 6 July). Mawson Antarctic expedition: 25 women applicants. The Times.
Anon. (1937, Saturday 3 April). Women want to go to Pole – 1,300 applications – ‘No,’ says leader. The Argus. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11053800
Antarctic Heritage Trust. The first landing on the Antarctic mainland. Retrieved 8 December 2011 from www.norwaysforgottenexplorer.org/english/first-landing/
Bogen, H. (1957). Main events in the history of Antarctic exploration. Sandefjord: Norwegian Whaling Gazette.
Chipman, E. (1986). Women on the ice: a history of women in the far south. Victoria: Melbourne University Press.
Christensen, L. (1935). Such is the Antarctic (J. EMG, Trans.). Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton.
Christensen, L. (1936–37). Dagbok (‘Logbook’). Unpublished manuscript, Sandefjord.
Christensen, L. (1937). My last expedition to the Antarctic. Oslo: Johan Grundt Tanum.
Ferguson, H. (1932). Harpoon. Oxford: Jonathan Cape.
Norman, I., Gibson, J. A. E., & Burgess, J. S. (1998). Klarius Mikkelsen’s 1935 landing in the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica: some fiction and some facts. Polar Record, 34 (191), 293–304.
Norman, I., Gibson, J. A. E., Jones, R. T., & Burgess, J. S. (2002). Klarius Mikkelsen’s landing site: some further notes on the 1935 Norwegian visit to the Vestfold Hills, East Antarctica. Polar Record, 38 (207), 323–8.
Parker, A. (1977). Is Tryne Island the correct landing site of Karoline Mikkelsen the first woman to land on mainland Antarctica? Unpublished report.
Patterson, D. (1995). The Vestfold Hills: the Norwegian connection. ANARE News, Spring/Summer 1995–96, 43–4.
Ringstad, J. E. (2005). Bjarne Aagaard and his crusade against pelagic whaling in the late 1920s. Paper presented at the second symposium on whaling and history, Sandefjord.
Williams, R. (Writer). (2011). Antarctica, Glossopteris and the sexual revolution [Radio]. In B. Seega (Producer), Ockham’s razor: ABC Radio National.
Wireless from the Discovery. (1931, Saturday 14 March). The Discovery – rich whaling industry – women in Antarctica. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16762092
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) has run an arts fellowship program since the early 1980s, sending artists of all kinds, including writers, poets, filmmakers, photographers, artists, musicians and dancers, to visit Antarctica. It has been an exceptional program resulting in a significant body of creative work over some three decades. I thank the AAD for running this program and for awarding me the 2011–12 Antarctic Arts Fellowship, enabling me to voyage for six weeks on Aurora Australis and visit Ingrid Christensen Land, where Davis Station is located.
AAD marketing and events manager Kristin Raw cheerfully encouraged me to apply for three years running and was most helpful before and after my voyage. I am grateful to Antarctic expeditioner Dave Hoskin, who took me on an unforgettable field trip in Ingrid Christensen Land (including a visit to Caroline Mikkelsen’s landing site) and allowed me to use some of his photographs. Outgoing Davis Station leader Graham Cook was happy to spend hours while we sailed back to Australia discussing conspiracy (and other) theories about where the women landed. Voyage leader Sharon Labudda and deputy leader Leanne Millhouse made the trip a pleasure, along with the friendly crew of Aurora Australis, the expeditioners heading down to Antarctica for the 2011–12 summer, and those hardy souls who had spent the previous winter there and returned on the ship with me. Photographer Tui De Roy was also on the ship and inspired me to improve my photography, as well as allowing me to use some of her images. Thanks to Margie Law and Jane Wasley (AAD scientist) for putting me up in their house in Hobart, which I’m sure felt like the Antarctica halfway hotel by the end of the season.
I wrote Chasing the Light as part of a Doctor of Creative Arts in the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). I am very grateful to the university for supporting my research for three years with a scholarship. Thanks to my supervisor, Gail Jones, who headed me off at the pass when I was going in a wrong direction and saved me a lot of heartache with her wise feedback and warm encouragement. Thanks to staff members Melinda Jewell and Suzanne Gapps, who helped with admin and travel plans, arranged fabulous food at all the group’s events, and organised a brilliant series of seminars and workshops over the three years of my candidature. UWS librarian Susan Robbins went beyond the call of duty in helping me settle in to university life, find a Norwegian translator and track down tricky historical details. Academic staff at the centre and my fellow candidates were encouraging and inspiring – I will miss being part of that group.
In 2011, I travelled to Norway to research Ingrid Christensen in more detail. Thank you to Ingrid Wangen, granddaughter of Ingrid Christensen, who spent several hours talking to me about her grandmother and showing me the diary/photo album from Ingrid’s third voyage.
Thanks to modern-day Norwegian Antarctic adventurer Liv Arnesen (the first woman to ski solo to the South Pole), who put me in touch with Wanda Widerøe and Turi Widerøe, daughters of Solveig Widerøe who went to Antarctica on Ingrid’s final voyage in 1937. I sp
ent a wonderful afternoon with Wanda and her husband, Kaare, eating waffles and strawberries and drinking champagne at their summer house near Sandefjord while discussing women and Antarctica, as well as the mating habits of elk.
Staff at the Sandefjord Whaling Museum in Norway gave me access to Lars Christensen’s diaries and other materials during my visit, and have been most generous with permitting me to use historical photographs from Christensen’s voyages in talks and publications. Thank you to museum curator/historian Jan Erik Ringstad, curator/historian Dag Ingemar Børresen and photo and film consultant Øyvind Thuresson (who introduced me to Ingrid’s granddaughter). Polar researcher Susan Barr from the Fram Museum made time to meet me and answer my questions.
Two people helped me with translations from Norwegian into English. Thanks to Tonje Ackherholt for answering all my questions so promptly, as well as for translating longer documents. Thanks to Eva Ollikainen, cabin mate on my first trip to Antarctica with Aurora Expeditions, who translated the critical ‘Who landed first?’ entry from Lars Christensen’s diary minutes before we flew out of Oslo in different directions.
Ingrid Christensen’s grandson, Thor Egede-Nissen, heard about my project and sent me fascinating documents including the transcript of a journal kept by his mother ‘Bolle’ in 1931 and 1932, in which Bolle wrote about her frustration at Ingrid, with all the vehemence of a rebellious teenage daughter. Thor also advised me that Ingrid’s mother, Alfhild, was committed to an asylum in Ingrid’s youth and spent the rest of her life there.
Thanks to Howard Whelan and Rosy Whelan for encouragement and Antarctic contacts, and to Elizabeth (Elle) Leane of the University of Tasmania for several conversations about women and Antarctica over the course of the writing. Stephen Martin, then the Antarctic specialist at the State Library of NSW, gave me early advice and encouragement. Alice Giles and Arnan Weisel from the School of Music at the Australian National University organised an inspiring conference ‘Antarctica – Music, Sound and Cultural Connections’ in 2011, which was very helpful for my research.
Diana Patterson, one of Australia’s first female station leaders in Antarctica, wrote about Caroline Mikkelsen’s landing site and managed to track down Caroline in Norway before she died. Thanks to Diana for meeting me and talking about the landings. Polar researcher Ian Norman and his colleagues John Gibson, Robert (Bob) Jones and Jim Burgess wrote two fascinating articles in the Polar Record journal analysing where Caroline Mikkelsen landed in Antarctica. Any change to the historical record about the first woman to land on the Antarctic mainland is thanks to their extensive efforts.
I joined a humpback whale research voyage with Wally and Trish Franklin of the Oceania Project in 2009 which helped me understand the impact of 1930s pelagic whaling on creatures in the Southern Ocean.
I have greatly enjoyed meeting and/or corresponding with other Antarctic writers (many of whom travelled south on AAD arts fellowships) including Robyn Mundy, Alison Lester, Hazel Edwards, Favel Parrett, LA Larkin, Tom Griffiths, Karen Viggers, Craig Cormick, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Diana Patterson, Emma McEwin, Elizabeth Leane and Leslie Carol Roberts.
Thanks to my agent, Sophie Hamley, and publisher HarperCollins, particularly Jo Butler, Sue Brockhoff, Kate O’Donnell, Kate Burnitt and Jane Finemore.
The Northern Rivers Writers’ Centre in Byron Bay has been an ongoing support since I moved to Byron Shire more than a decade ago and I thank the centre’s past and current staff.
My writing group read and commented on several drafts of this novel. Thanks to Hayley Katzen, Sarah Armstrong, Amanda Skelton and Emma Ashmere for your friendship, constructive suggestions, delightful humour and title ideas.
Thanks to family and friends for all your support and encouragement, especially Sally, Marg and Aimee who provided a welcoming second home during many of my travels.
And thanks to my partner, Andi Davey, who absolutely hates the cold but has nevertheless supported me with steadfast love and great coffee for the past three years while my mind has been in the snow.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jesse Blackadder lives on the caldera of an extinct volcano in northern New South Wales and is fascinated by landscapes, adventurous women and very cold places. She wrote Chasing the Light: A Novel of Antarctica as part of a Doctor of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney. Jesse was awarded the 2011–12 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship (which allowed her to voyage to Antarctica); and she won the 2012 Guy Morrison Prize for Literary Journalism for her essay ‘The first woman and the last dog in Antarctica’.
See more at jesseblackadder.com
OTHER BOOKS BY JESSE BLACKADDER
After the Party
The Raven’s Heart
COPYRIGHT
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2013
This edition published in 2013
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
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harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Jesse Blackadder 2013
The right of Jesse Blackadder to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Blackadder, Jesse.
Chasing the light : a novel of Antarctica / Jesse Blackadder.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 9604 9 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978 1 7430 9782 3 (epub)
Women – Travel – Antarctica – Fiction.
Antarctica – Fiction.
A823.4
Cover design by Philip Campbell Design
Cover image by Victor Lyagushkin
Chasing the Light Page 37