The International Geophysical Year, 1957-58 (IGY), planned as a scientific study of remote regions including the Antarctic, was the background to it all. It was greeted at the time as one of the most significant undertaking in the history of mankind.
The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition’s five-month timetable
1957
5 October:
Dr Vivian Fuchs’s party leave their Shackleton Base for reconnais sance of route to South Ice.
14 October:
New Zealand tractor party, led by Sir Edmund Hillary, leaves Scott Base
.20–31 October:
Hillary and team pioneer route up Skelton Glacier to Polar Plateau.
15 November:
Fuchs returns to Shackleton Base.
24 November:
Fuchs leaves Shackleton Base for South Pole six weeks after Hillary’s departure from Scott Base.
25 November:
Hillary reaches Depot 480 on the Polar Plateau.
15 December:
Hillary reaches Depot 700, after ‘blazing the trail’ and establishing depots along the Polar Plateau.
20 December:
Hillary leaves Depot 700 hellbent for the South Pole.
22 December:
Fuchs reaches South Ice, again.
25 December:
Fuchs leaves South Ice for South Pole.
4 January:
Hillary and the Old Firm — Mulgrew, Bates, Ellis and Wright — reach the South Pole.
5 January:
Hillary and three team members are flown back to Scott Base, courtesy of Rear Admiral George Dufek, United States Navy.
18 January:
Dufek flies Hillary and small press party to South Pole to meet Fuchs.
20 January:
Fuchs reaches South Pole, meets Hillary.
24 January:
Fuchs leaves South Pole for Scott Base.
7 February:
Fuchs arrives at Depot 700. Hillary flies back from Scott Base in New Zealand aircraft to guide Fuchs’s party.
2 March:
Whole Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition reaches Scott Base
Geoffrey Lee Martin is a journalist, now living in Sydney, who cheerfully practices the old adage that “old journos never die, they just keep boring everybody with their recollections”.
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