Media Release
South Pole Centenary
Deputy Lord Mayor Helen Burnet wants Hobart to celebrate one of the world’s most significant achievements in exploration.
Alderman Burnet successfully moved at last night’s Council meeting that Council look at suitable ways of recognising and celebrating the centenary year of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s reaching the South Pole. Amundsen was the first person to reach the South Pole on December 14 1911.
“Not only did Amundsen announce his achievement to the world from Hobart in March 1912, he stayed at Hadley’s Hotel in Murray Street, went to church at St David’s, and accepted an invitation to join the Derwent Sailing Squadron”, Alderman Burnet said. “We have a special link with this Norwegian national hero”.
“His success, a bitter disappointment for British hopes with the rival doomed Scott expedition, was of great significance for Norway”, Ald Burnet said. “Amundsen’s native land only achieved independence from Sweden in 1905. There is a great deal of special pride by Norwegians in his heroism”, she said.
Ald. Burnet mentioned that one downside of his final two-week stay in Hobart was that he still had 16 of his Siberian huskies on board the Fram.
On quiet nights when it was at anchor, the ladies of Sandy Bay complained that the dogs made too much noise with their barking.
“I encourage everyone interested to come up with ideas for suitable commemorative activities”, Ald Burnet said. “Forging links with his birthplace, inviting Norwegian representatives to Hobart for special ceremonies, better interpretation, permanent markers should all be considered in cooperation with plans by the State Government”, she said.
Background
Roald Amundsen, born in 1872 near Oslo, Norway, left his mark on the Heroic Era as one of the most successful polar explorers ever born. His career of adventure began at the age of 15, originally studying medicine, but dropping out to go to sea where he soon moved his way up to the rank of mate.
Amundsen had hidden a lifelong desire inspired by Fridtjof Nansen’s crossing of Greenland in 1888 and the doomed Franklin expedition of the former Governor of Tasmania.
His first experience in the Antarctic was with Adrien de Gerlache’s 1899 Belgica Expediton. He became the first to travel the Northwest Passage, in his ship Gjoa in 1903-06. After this expedition, plans were assembled to drift across the North Pole in Nansen’s famous Fram, but news arrived of Peary’s successful attainment of the pole which caused Amundsen to make new plans–covert plans–for an expedition to the Antarctic and the subsequent capture of the South Pole. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen and four others stood at the South Pole, a month before Robert Scott. This expedition was an incredible masterpiece of organization.
On his return from the Pole in early March 1912, Amundsen booked into a room at Hadleys. Amundsen may not have looked at his best when he arrived at Hadleys. He noted in his diary that he was given a miserable room and treated like a tramp. Things changed after news got out of his success. He was upgraded to the ‘Amundsen Suite’, Rooms 201 and 202, and he was able to entertain his men to a Hadleys ‘Christmas’ dinner – they’d missed the real Christmas because they’d been returning from the Pole.
After spending 13 days in Hobart, Amundsen headed home to Norway via South America.
He disappeared on June 18, 1928 while flying on a rescue mission looking for missing members of Nobile’s crew, whose new airship Italia had crashed while returning from the North Pole. Afterwards, a wing-float and bottom gasoline tank from the French Latham 47 flying boat he was in, improvised into a replacement wing-float, was found near the Tromsø coast. His body was never found.
Greens Alderman Helen Burnet. Deputy Lord Mayor HCC
