Antarctic exploration began with Captain James Cook’s circumnavigation of the continent (1772–75) and continued intermittently until the first two decades of the twentieth century. Douglas Mawson’s three expeditions coincided with what has been called the ‘heroic era of Antarctic exploration’, beginning with Robert Falcon Scott’s British National Antarctic Expedition (1901–4) and ending with Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914–17). Four out of the twenty expeditions undertaken in this period stand out: those of Roald Amundsen, Mawson, Shackleton and Scott. However, the present-day polar adventurer Ranulph Fiennes has argued that Mawson did not achieve the fame of the other three, even in Australia, because he survived his explorations and died in old age.

Not only does Emma McEwin, Mawson’s great-granddaughter, wish to counter this relative neglect and to place his achievements within the context of polar exploration, she aims to tell his personal story through the love letters that he and his then fiancée, her great-grandmother Paquita, wrote to each other during his second voyage, the Australian Antarctic Expedition (1911–14).