Douglas Mawson died in 1958. Unlike Ernest Shackleton, Mawson was not charismatic, and his descriptions of the Antarctic lack Shackleton’s poetry; unlike Roald Amundsen, he did not reach the South Pole; unlike Robert Scott, he did not perish tragically; but it is no exaggeration to say that the scale and achievements of his Antarctic expeditions dwarf those of his three famous contemporaries.

Mawson was two years old when he arrived in Sydney with his family from England in 1884. As a young man, he studied mining engineering and geology at the University of Sydney. His interest in the glacial geology of South Australia led to his investigation of the highly mineralised Precambrian rocks of the Barrier Range, extending from the northern Flinders Ranges through Broken Hill, work for which Mawson obtained his doctorate from the University of Adelaide in 1909.