The natural world beauty of Antarctica
I was lucky enough recently to spend a morning with Antarctic legend, Syd Kirkby and his lovely wife Jude, who has also done a number of trips to Antarctica (and not your usual trips either).
Syd was a surveyor in the early days of Australia’s Antarctic exploration from the 50’s through to the 70’s and 80’s and it has been said that he explored more of Antarctica than Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton combined, which is not so surprising when you realise that the Australian territory in Antarctica takes up around a third of the continent, and Syd surveyed a lot of it.
He was awarded an MBE, AO and Polar Medal for his work in Antarctica and was the station chief at Mawson Base for three years. He was also awarded the Australian Geographic Society Gold Medal as Adventurer of the Year (1997) and was nominated by The Australian newspaper in 1999 as one of the ten greatest Australian adventurers of the 20th century.
So it was an honour and a great privilege to spend time with Syd and his wife at their home on the sunshine coast. It was a great morning and while I tapped Syd’s extensive knowledge on a whole range of Antarctic subjects, my wife and I enjoyed Jude’s wonderful banana cake :-).
One of the questions I asked Syd was whether he had encountered any unusual sights while in Antarctica and he describes those experiences in the short video below (Syd mentions ice flowers and you can see what they look like here http://bit.ly/2XxybBb)
This is Syd’s video interview: