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Mawson's Remarkable Men
The Personal Stories of the Epic 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition
By David Jensen Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2015 David Jensen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-925266-49-8
CHAPTER 1
Macquarie Island Party
Five expedition members were landed on this sub-Antarctic island to establish and operate a wireless station and to conduct mapping and scientific work. Their base was a small timber hut, sheltered by a huge boulder at the foot of a hill they named Wireless Hill. When Mawson failed to return in time to leave for home as planned at the end of the expedition's second summer, all five men volunteered to remain on the island through the second winter, although one of them, Arthur Sawyer, became ill and had to return early to New Zealand. The Aurora finally collected the Macquarie Island Party and departed for Cape Denison to rescue Mawson and the men who had spent a second year at the main base.
George Ainsworth
Leader and meteorologist
BORN: 2 JUNE 1878, CHARLESTOWN, NEW SOUTH WALES
DIED: 11 OCTOBER 1950, SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES
Teacher, meteorologist, author, intelligence agent, businessman, political organiser, radio broadcaster, gambler and family man: George Frederick Ainsworth embraced all of these roles in his eventful life, during which he served Australia with distinction, contributing in no small way to Australia's formative years as a national entity. A tall, resourceful man with a commanding manner, he enjoyed a challenge but his manner was not always appreciated.
One of fourteen children of Lancashire-born coal miner and teacher, John Ainsworth, and his wife Sarah, née McKean, he was born in the country town of Charlestown, near Newcastle. At the age of fifteen, he joined the Department of Public Instruction as a pupil-teacher, training under his father's instruction at the Lucknow Public School, near Orange, which subsequently led to a long career as a teacher in the New South Wales public school system. But an interest in science saw him transfer to the Commonwealth public service from January 1910, as a meteorologist-in-training with the Central Weather Bureau in Melbourne.
At the age of 33, Ainsworth was recruited by Douglas Mawson to head the AAE's Macquarie Island Party. Slightly older than his four companions, he was also charged with serving as the island's meteorologist. His management style as leader did not sit well with his younger team members at times, and they resented his forthright manner and somewhat inflexible attitude to the rules imposed upon them.
Captain J.K. Davis, captain of the Aurora, commented in his 12 December 1912 diary note on a discussion with Ainsworth upon their arrival on the island:
I had quite a little breeze with Ainsworth ashore last night. We were discussing the best site for a hut and I suggested it would be well to ask the islanders (sealers on the island) their opinion as having lived on the island they would probably know the sheltered spots. This idea was ridiculed by this gentleman who informed me with great dignity that what Ferrel, some meteorologist who had never been to the island, said was good enough for him. Well I'm glad I shall not be with Ainsworth. The man is an ass.
Ainsworth also had numerous disagreements with his companions, sometimes challenging them to fights, with radio operator Arthur Sawyer and biologist Harold Hamilton regularly involved. As early as June 1912, Sawyer wrote in his diary that Ainsworth had clashed with the two sealers who were working on Macquarie Island — despite them being the only other men on the island, and their helpfulness on the expedition's arrival when they assisted in hauling wireless equipment to the top of Wireless Hill:
Our united sympathies are with the sealers — disloyalty it seems — but we have no other option. He [Ainsworth] has certainly treated the sealers very badly. Crosswords at teatime but we let Ainsworth see that we do not approve of his methods. Considering all the sealers have done for us and notwithstanding their idiosyncrasies we can only do all in our power to make their presence welcome. Ainsworth holds the view that they are not on the same social plane as ourselves — granted — but in a community of seven that sentiment should not exist and in my mind shows his gross ignorance.
On 23 April the following year Sawyer was still recording his thoughts on his leader: 'Ainsworth in his customary blaguardly manner wanted to fight, well knowing that Hamilton could not touch the "leader". Ainsworth is an absolute waster and how he even got on the expedition let alone be in charge of this party, is beyond comprehension. He takes delight in doing paltry mean things and as a liar he is unexcelled — I am sure — nowhere.'
Despite the dissent of the party members, under Ainsworth's leadership they achieved significant results and the success of the party's work enhanced Ainsworth's status on his return to Australia. His account of the activities of the AAE's Macquarie Island station covers three chapters in Mawson's The Home of the Blizzard, while the invaluable meteorological data that he compiled on a daily basis over the period January 1912 to November 1913 was eventually published in 1929 in the expedition's official report on Macquarie Island meteorology.
After being a guest at Mawson's wedding to Francisca 'Paquita' Delprat in March 1914, George Ainsworth took three months' leave, during which he travelled around Asia to the Philippines, Hong Kong, China and Japan and visited some of the meteorological observatories in these places. He then returned to his duties at the Central Weather Bureau in Melbourne. In October 1915 he was granted leave without pay for military purposes, received a commission in the 62nd Infantry Battalion, Australian Military Forces, went into camp with the battalion at Broadmeadows and emerged with the rank of second lieutenant.
But rather than being posted overseas on active service with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), Ainsworth was appointed to the headquarters staff of the 3rd Military District in Melbourne. Promoted to lieutenant and attached to the intelligence section of the General Staff in Victoria where, after two months' experience, he was sent to Brisbane to organise and command the intelligence section of the 1st Military District in Queensland with the rank of captain.
Ainsworth moved from military intelligence to secret intelligence work in August 1917, when he was appointed Queensland chief of the covert Special Intelligence Bureau, the Australian branch of Britain's counterespionage service, MI5. In this role, where he operated in the guise of Commonwealth Traffic Inspector, Ainsworth employed detectives from the Queensland Police Force's Criminal Investigation Branch, undercover agents and other informants to monitor and report to headquarters in Melbourne on the activities of prominent anti-war groups.
Following a briefing in Melbourne in August 1917 on his new role as Commonwealth Traffic Inspector, Ainsworth returned to Brisbane by train and took the opportunity during a stop at Murwillumbah to marry his long-time sweetheart, Mary Agatha Statham, at the local Presbyterian manse. Their union would last 33 years and produce two children, a son named George and a daughter, Beatrice.
Once the war ended, he sought to return to the Bureau of Meteorology, but was instead appointed Inspector-in-Charge of the Investigation Branch of the attorney-general's department in Brisbane in November 1919.
An ardent admirer of Prime Minister William Morris (Billy) Hughes, Ainsworth was invited to head the newly formed Foreign Section of the prime minister's department in Melbourne. He was Hughes's personal choice for this post, despite repeated protests from the Public Service Board that the appointment was contrary to the Public Service Act. Hughes ignored these protests and maintained Ainsworth in this role, which the prime minister himself had created to deal with matters pertaining to Australia's membership of the League of Nations. After Hughes left office in February 1923, Ainsworth stayed on in the Foreign Section and, in September, accompanied the new prime minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce as a member of Australia's delegation to the Imperial Economic Conference in London. On his return to Australia in March 1924, Ainsworth realised that his future in the public sector would be bleak with Stanley Bruce in charge. Bruce made it known that in future he would be opting to have an Australian official inside the Foreign Office in London rather than a Foreign Section operating within his own department in Australia. Ainsworth realised this would make his position redundant. It marked him for transfer back to the Investigation Branch — a situation he was unwilling to accept.
Ainsworth resigned from the public service in December 1924 and looked to begin a new career in the private sector, using his horse-racing connections, especially with well-known grazier, racehorse owner and businessman, Charles Kellow to make a start. According to his family he would later call his resignation a 'cardinal mistake' but, at the time, it seemed like the right thing for him to do. And being a gambler, he was prepared to take a chance. As manager of the Melbourne motor-parts firm Kellow-Falkiner (1925–29), general manager of the Chrysler Corporation in New Zealand (1929–30) and the Barnet Glass Rubber Company in Brisbane (1930–35), he seemed able to cope with the challenges facing business enterprises in those exceptionally hard times.
Ainsworth made another career change in 1935, becoming state organiser of the United Australia Party in Queensland. It was a difficult role for Ainsworth, however, given his disdain for party heavyweight and leadership aspirant Robert Menzies. He also had trouble with gambling debts at this time, amassed from his love of horse racing, which brought about his resignation as UAP organiser in 1937 and a move to Sydney to make a fresh start. He received family assistance to take over a delicatessen at Annandale, Sydney, and also made occasional radio broadcasts giving talks on the Antarctic.
The next year he returned to meteorology as one of a small team at the Bureau of Meteorology's Rose Bay station, which provided weather services for the newly established flying-boat base there. He retired from this position in 1947 due to ill health and died suddenly in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at the age of 72.
Leslie Blake
Cartographer and geologist
BORN: 28 OCTOBER 1890, HAWTHORNE, VICTORIA
DIED: 3 OCTOBER 1918, TINCOURT, FRANCE
One of three AAE members to be awarded the Military Cross during the First World War, Leslie Russell Blake was an outstanding and well-liked member of the Macquarie Island Party who made a significant contribution towards the overall success of this team. Blake's meticulous topographical survey and contour map of the island is still known today as 'Blake's Map'. The detail and accuracy of it is regarded as astonishing by modern-day cartographers. Tragically he died in France after being fatally injured just 39 days before armistice was declared in November 1918.
Born in Melbourne to Thomas Henry Blake and Maria Louisa née Purdy, Blake was the youngest of six children. He had much of his education in Brisbane after both parents died when he was young and he was subsequently brought up by his father's widowed sister, Charlotte Jane Deazeley.
The popular and handsome young Blake, standing 5 feet 7 inches (174 cm) tall with blue eyes and brown hair, attended the Brisbane Technical College. He later joined the Queensland Mines department as a geological surveyor and spent four years from 1907 working mainly in the Gympie Goldfields. Mawson accepted an application from the twenty-year-old and Blake joined the expedition in Hobart travelling via Sydney. He sailed on the Toroa, the second ship Mawson used to ferry supplies, and departed Hobart on 7 December 1911, arriving five days later to unload wireless equipment and supplies for the next year. Blake began his diary within a couple of days and began his survey work in January after building their 'beach front' home and helping transport the wireless equipment to the top of the hill above their base.
From then until the group was collected by the Aurora in December 1913, Blake traversed Macquarie Island by dinghy and on foot to carry out his main tasks of meticulously surveying and mapping the entire island and describing its geology. He did this accompanied at all times by his faithful dog Mac, which had wandered on board the Aurora in Hobart. Studying the area's geology involved putting together a large collection of rock specimens — one of the foundations for later research into the island's unique geology that led to its nomination as a World Heritage area. But Blake's surveying and mapping of the island was his major achievement. With just three years' prior experience in field surveying, he completed a topographic survey of the island's rugged 65 square miles (170 sq km) by land and sea using a tiny dinghy, with the help of Hamilton.
Historian Herbert Dartnall published a biography on Blake titled Lost in the Mists. In it he used Blake's diary of his time on Macquarie Island to tell his story, interspersed with excerpts from diaries kept by other members of the party. Blake's diary entries were generally brief and to the point. His entry for Sunday 3 August 1912 was longer than most:
Wind NNW to NW blowing about 20 miles [32 km/h] this morning. Left hut at 9 a.m. Ascended hills but owing to increase in wind did very little topographical work. Mainly employed in geological work — collected several specimens from the Till. Mac caught one rabbit. Wind reached 62 miles [100 km/h] and was pretty constant about 60 miles [97 km/h] for some time. Had a terrible passage along the beach coming home, wind very strong could make no headway at times, blown over several times, one had to sit down for a spell every 20 yards [18 m]. It took me an hour to do one mile [1.6 km]. Wind somewhat abated tonight.
Thursday 20 October was also longer than usual and recorded a personal disaster:
Wind NW almost a dead calm. Packed camera and set off for Sandy Bay. On turning the last point I noticed to my surprise that the tussock grass had been burnt and on getting closer that the hut was burnt to the ground. The wood was still smouldering in one place and the ground and stones were quite warm; should think the fire had occurred within the last 24 hours. Property lost consisted of sextant, blankets, sleeping bag, tent fly, boots, boat's compass, underclothes, sox and a host of other things. The worst loss to my mind is my specimens, all that I've collected this season. However, I will pack them away. But they will be useless for museum specimens.
Starting with a survey baseline on the northern plateau on 17 January 1912, Blake set up sighting poles on all prominent features of the entire island. The end result was a detailed map of the island with contours at 100-foot (61 m) intervals. For some unknown reason Mawson did not mention Blake's name when publishing the report titled Geology of Macquarie Island in 1943.
At the completion of the expedition, Blake returned to the Queensland outback and continued to write up his report for Mawson with whom he corresponded regularly, mostly seeking reimbursement for his costs and his insurance policy, which was never located. He was invited to join Sir Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–16 but declined, believing he should serve his country in the First World War. Blake made several efforts to enlist but surprisingly was declared medically unfit. After a brief spell in hospital he was finally declared fit.
Before enlisting in the artillery in August 1915, Blake became engaged to his childhood sweetheart Frances Eileen Elliott, however they agreed not to marry until the war was over.
Before sailing to the Middle East, Blake was offered the rank of sergeant, but he declined as it would have meant delaying his departure overseas. However, by March 1916 he was a second lieutenant, and was in Cairo waiting for deployment to France. By July his company was in the front lines near the village of Pozières. Blake's courage and initiative by surveying under fire the actual lines held by Australian and British troops earned him a Military Cross, the second highest military award for valour. He was slightly wounded but never mentioned it.
According to Australian war records the original citation stated: 'Lt Leslie Russell Blake, 105 Howitzer Battery 5th Field Artillery Brigade showed conspicuous and continual gallantry during the Pozières operations. On 21.8.16 this Officer made a complete survey of the actual line held by our troops from NE Pozières to Mouquet Farm. This information was necessary for artillery barrage purposes. He supplied excellent reports and continually volunteered for this work, which he often performed under heavy fire.' Blake was later recommended for a Bar to his Military Cross during the Battle of the Somme but this was downgraded to a Mention in Despatches.
The story of King George conferring Blake's Military Cross at Buckingham Palace illustrates Blake's typical modesty. Blake family lore suggests that when King George noticed Blake's Polar Medal he began questioning the young man: 'Did you serve with Captain Scott?' 'No your Majesty.' 'Sir Ernest Shackleton?' 'No your Majesty.' 'No. Ah! It must be Sir Douglas Mawson. And where were you based?' The story goes that this discussion lasted some twenty minutes before Blake excused himself, explaining he had an urgent dental appointment. It is a good tale whether precisely accurate or not.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Mawson's Remarkable Men by David Jensen. Copyright © 2015 David Jensen. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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