The story of one of SA’s heroes of the 20th Century, Sir Douglas Mawson, has something for everyone. He was an explorer, a scientist, an educator, a romantic and a family man. With the marking of the 125th anniversary of his birth on Saturday, May 5, LOUISE RUSSELL discovers more human sides than simply Mawson the pragmatic geologist, or the `Boy’s Own’ polar adventurer:THE balaklavas that brothers Alun and Gareth Thomas once wore while fishing off Brighton Jetty, just near their grandparents’ King St home, are now housed with great care in the SA Museum.
Gareth, 58, of College Park, says wearing their grandfather’s iconic headgear is one of the few lasting memories of their grandfather.
``I can remember when we’d go fishing on the jetty at Brighton, we’d wear balaklavas. We’ve still got socks and things left over from the expedition,’’ he also recalls.
Brother Alun jokingly agrees they were the best-equipped children when they went camping at the southern property Spring Mount, Hindmarsh Tiers, right
down to the three-blanketed sleeping bags of Jaeger wool, which had survived numerous Antarctic winters.
``More and more we’re putting those into the collection,’’ Alun, 57, says. Gareth adds: ``It’s good we have the Mawson Collection that we can hand those thing on to. It’s probably a much better place than out fishing.’’ Indeed the personal Mawson Collection, tipped to have more than 100,000 items, forms the core of the Australian Polar Collection at the SA Museum’s Mawson Centre.
Mawson Centre senior collections manager Mark Pharaoh laughs when he hears parts of that collection are quite familiar to Brighton locals, keeping Mawson’s young grandsons warm as they fished.
``The conservators don’t like it so much but it makes them more personal, rather than institutional objects,’’ he chuckles.
Mr Pharoah, while describing a ``polar monopoly’’ held by SA, says the continuing Mawson links in Adelaide are remarkable - particularly considering Mawson
almost never returned here, after barely escaping with his life after falling down a crevasse in the final days of his first journey to Antarctica, (in 1909), and rescued by the ship, the Nimrod.
``At that very moment, where he was hanging in the crevasse trying to pull himself up, it wasn’t just Mawson who was going to survive, there’s quite a large Mawson family that all grew out of the fact he lived,’’ Mr Pharaoh muses. ``Their lives (also) hung in the balance.’‘
This balance was felt most keenly by his fiance, later his wife, Paquita Delprat, who struggled with what she termed the ``everlasting silence’’ of his journeys, particularly betwee 1911-1914, when her ``Dougelly’s’’ letters came in only two batches, delivered 22 months apart.
The love letters between the pair were first published, with the family’s consent, in 2000, after they were collated and edited by Nancy Robinson Flannery.
``This everlasting silence is almost unbearable. I don’t want to doubt you dear but I am afraid of the fascination of the South . . . will a calm life ever satisfy you?’’
Paquita wrote in September, 1913, facing uncertainty over Mawson’s survival and his continued affections.
It was December 26 that year before Mawson replied: ```Everlasting silence’ indeed it has been unbearable . . . I do miss you dreadfully but would not have you here for all that life holds. It is my love that wishes you not here.’‘
Mrs Robinson Flannery was in Adelaide University’s Barr Smith Library, in 1991, when she first read Paquita’s letters to Mawson, which he had kept in a bundle, tied with blue ribbon. They were so beautiful they made her cry.
``Mawson had always been thought of as a fairly austere sort of straight-down-the-middle scientist,’’ she says. ``To see this human, personal side that he had kept her love letters all the time, actually I was very touched by them.
``I thought to myself, `You old beggar Mawson, you’re marshmallow inside.’‘
It was another six years before Mrs Robinson Flannery found Mawson’s letters to Paquita among a pile of the Mawsons’ family papers.
``I found them bit by bit, it was like finding specks of gold, they weren’t all together.’‘
Using these letters, the Mawsons great-granddaughter Emma McEwin also is writing a book on the lovers - and how they both survived the long parting.
``(It’s about) the separation and hardship, she was left here waiting and he nearly died. They battled,’’ Miss McEwin says. ``I thought it was a pretty powerful combination, that the adventure hero, if you want to call him that, with an interesting love life as well.’‘
Later in life Mawson was known for his patience with young people and as a senior lecturer then professor at Adelaide University (1905-1952).
Mrs Robinson Flannery describes her first husband, Dr Alick Whittle, as an incredibly shy mineralogist who ``adored’’ Mawson, and became a senior lecturer in Mawson’s geology department.
``Somehow, at the age of 12, he had the courage on a Saturday morning to ride his bicycle to the University of Adelaide (from Prospect) and found Sir Douglas Mawson and asked, `Please sir, can I learn geology?’
``So the wonderful Mawson took him under his wing.’‘
Alun Thomas says many students would approach Mawson as he strode through the university to inquire about rock specimens.
``One day a student came up with a piece of concrete to ask what it was, and (Mawson) said `This is a piece of impertinence’.’‘
Alun, who went to Cape Denison, in the Antarctic, in 1985, says Mawson was a geologist at heart, who fell into his now famed role as a Polar explorer and adventurer.
``The reason he wanted to go down in the first place was because he’d been down to the south of Adelaide and saw the glaciation on rocks down there and wanted to find a connection to the Antarctic,’’ he said.
``The rocks at Cape Denison are close to those you see at Granite Island.’‘
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