George Hubert Wilkins' epic polar flights add to science of climate that fascinated him as South Australian farm boy
George Hubert Wilkins carried out the first aerial explorations of the Antarctic in 1928-29
George Hubert Wilkins, explorer, naturalist, photographer, geographer and climatologist was born at Mount Bryan East in 1888, the 13th child of a farmer. From Wilkins’ experience of drought’s devastation grew an interest in climatic phenomena.
He studied engineering part time at the South Australian School of Mines, and pursued photography and cinematography in Adelaide and Sydney. In 1908, he sailed for England to work for the Gaumont Film Co.
But as a newspaper reporter and cameraman, who learned to fly and try aerial photography, Wilkins’ life turned into an global journey, including being Australian official military photographer on the World War I Western front.
Before that in 1913-16, he was second-in-command on Vilhjalmur Stefansson's Canadian Arctic expedition. Wilkins added to his scientific knowledge and proposed improve weather forecasting with permanent stations at the poles.
In 1920-21 he made his first visit to the Antarctic with J. L. Cope’s unsuccessful voyage to Graham Land. Wilkins was also on Ernest Shackleton's Quest expedition of 1921-22 when he observed ornithology.
While in the Soviet Union in 1922-23 surveying and filming the effects of famine, he was asked by British Museum trustees collect specimens of the rarer native fauna, principally mammals, in tropical Australia. The produced Wilkins’s book, Undiscovered Australia (New York, 1929). When an Antarctic expedition failed through lack of funds in 1926, he began a programme of Arctic exploration by air.
Wilkins carried out the first aerial explorations of the Antarctic in 1928-29 with major influence on future exploration.
The enterprise culminated in his great feat of air navigation: in 1928, with Carl Ben Eielson as pilot, he flew from Point Barrow, Alaska, United States of America, eastward over the Arctic Sea to Spitsbergen (Svalbard), Norway. He was awarded the Patron's medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London and the Samuel Finley Breese Morse medal of the American Geographical Society.
During 1937-38, he played a major role in searching for the Russian aviator Sigismund Levanevsky who disappeared on a flight from Moscow to Fairbanks, Alaska. In these years, Wilkins also advanced techniques of flying by moonlight, made scientific observations and experimented with telepathy.