ON MONDAY 4 December 1911 The Mercury reported that a large crowd had gathered on Saturday afternoon at Hobart's Queens Wharf. The occasion was the farewell of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition led by Dr Douglas Mawson, a young lecturer and geologist from the University of Adelaide, and a name destined for greatness in the annals of Antarctic exploration. Feverish activity over the preceding few weeks had seen the expedition's ship the Aurora — a 386t, 35-year-old former Newfoundland sealing vessel that had seen hard service in Arctic waters — loaded down almost to her gunwales. With three separate Antarctic stations planned, and allowing for the chance that the expedition might remain in Antarctica for up to two years, more than 5000 individual items, or upwards of 6oot of stores, were crammed on board. Items that were either unwieldy or hazardous and could not be tucked in the Aurora's hold were lashed on deck — hut-framing timbers, wireless masts, a motorised air-tractor sledge. A large quantity of kerosene and benzine in four-gallon tins, what Mawson called "this dangerously inflammable stuff", was also carried as deck cargo.
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