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I Do Not Expect to Be Lonely: John Béchervaise on Heard Island
A black and white photograph of 'Atlas Cove—Heard Island in 1929–1931' from the B.A.N.Z. Antarctic Research Expedition photographs by Frank Hurley







Frank Hurley (1885–1962)
Atlas Cove—Heard Is. 1929–1931
album containing 60 gelatin silver photographs; 26.0 x 33.0 cm (album), 19.0 x 25.0 cm (photographs)
In: B.A.N.Z. Antarctic Research Expedition photographs
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an13751629-29

A black and white photograph of 'The Perpetual Mists Blanketing the Ice Covered Slope of Heard Island 1929–1931' from B.A.N.Z. Antarctic Research Expedition photographs by Frank Hurley

Frank Hurley (1885–1962)
The Perpetual Mists Blanketing the Ice Covered Slope of Heard Island 1929–1931
album containing 60 gelatin silver photographs; 26.0 x 33.0 cm (album), 19.0 x 25.0 cm (photographs)
In: B.A.N.Z. Antarctic Research Expedition photographs
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an13751629-28


Bernadette Hince sheds light on the history of Heard Island and describes one visitor’s particular experience

Fifty years ago, in February 1953, a young man called John Béchervaise walked up the gangway of a former Norwegian sealing boat, the Tottan, in the port of Melbourne. He was bound for a remote and inaccessible island that was, and still is, almost unknown. Béchervaise was sailing south to spend 12 months as the new officer in charge of Heard Island, silently annexed by Australia only six years earlier.

Heard Island had been acquired only two years after the end of the Second World War, when small vacant dots in the oceans around Antarctica had briefly become desirable for the harbours they might offer shipping. It was known that some German vessels had used southern islands for shelter and fuel during the two world wars. Britain had urged postwar Australia to declare its sovereignty over Heard Island and to occupy it.

The Australian declaration apparently came also from a desire to forestall attempts by the United States to settle Heard Island. Although such action was unlikely, the island’s first sighting had been by an American, Captain John Heard of the freight ship Oriental. On 25 November 1853, his wife Fidelia provided a description of the island which is published in Heard Island (2003). She wrote:

At 10 o’clock the Captain was walking on deck and saw what he supposed to be an immense iceberg … The sun seemed so dazzling on the water, and the tops of the apparent icebergs covered with snow; the outline was very indistinct. We were all the time nearing the object and on looking again the Captain pronounced it to be land. The Island is not laid down on the chart, neither is it in the Epitome, so we are perhaps the discoverers … I think it must be a twin to Desolation Island, it is certainly a frigid looking place.

A black and white photograph of 'Weathering Out a Gale. Heading Into the Raw Wind and Nestling as Close to the Ground As Possible, the Picture Shows How Penguins on Heard Island Make the Best of the World’s Worst Weather 1929–1931' by Frank Hurley

Frank Hurley (1885–1962)
Weathering Out a Gale. Heading into the Raw Wind and Nestling as Close to the Ground As Possible, the Picture Shows How Penguins on Heard Island Make the Best of the World’s Worst Weather 1929–1931
album containing 153 gelatin silver photographs); sheet 61.0 x 49.0 cm
In: B.A.N.Z. Antarctic Research Expedition photographs
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an10932811-76


It was remarkable that Heard, at 53° south, should have stayed hidden for as long as it did, considering that the island of Kerguelen, only a few days sailing to its north, had been discovered generations earlier, in 1772. At the time of Heard’s discovery, shipowners had only just begun to direct vessels along the newly adopted great circle route, an economical passage taking them further south in more easterly waters of the Indian Ocean. Thus Heard was unveiled.

The normally unoccupied island has been of interest to few. It was a base for whalers and sealers in the nineteenth century, and for voyages of science and exploration such as the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s. After Australia’s claim in 1947, small parties from ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition) lived there continuously until 1955, and since then it has been visited occasionally by mountaineers, sailors, a few visiting national scientific parties and even fewer tourists.

The Challenger’s scientists were commanded by Sir Wyville Thomson, for whom Heard held little beauty. He wrote dryly in his published memoir from the voyage:

We dredged a number of specimens at a depth of 75 fathoms, at the entrance of Corinthian Harbour ... in Heard Island (so far as I am aware the most desolate spot on God’s earth).

This was not how John Béchervaise saw Heard Island. He was an outdoor man, an observer of nature and a writer. To him, the island represented a chance to think and write in a bleakly beautiful place. In trying to explain his reasons for the attraction, he wrote to his friends in a letter, now held in the National Library:

A photograph of the Heard Island ANARE Party 1953. Front row: John Béchervaise, OIC; Peter Shaw, meteorologist; Ron Parsons, radio operator; Arthur Gwynn, medical officer.  Behind:  Fred Elliott, Len Welch and Bernie Izabelle, weather observers ; Jack Hughes, diesel mechanic; Dick McNair, cook; Leon Fox, dog attendant; Jim Brooks, geophysicist; Ken Dalziel, radio supervisor; Cec O’Brien, radio operator. The husky is either Frani or her sister Kari. Courtesy of Fred Elliott A photograph of A ‘Dreamy’ Scene at Heard Island. A Family of Young Sea Elephants Snoring Away Peacefully on a Knobbly Bed and Beyond, the ice-ridden heights that border Atlas Cove Heard Island 1929–1931 by Frank Hurley
Frank Hurley (1885–1962)
A ‘Dreamy’ Scene at Heard Island. A Family of Young Sea Elephants Snoring Away Peacefully on a Knobbly Bed and Beyond, theIce-ridden Heights That Border Atlas Cove Heard Island 1929–1931
album (153 gelatin silver photographs);
sheet 61.0 x 49.0 cm
In: B.A.N.Z. Antarctic Research Expedition photographs
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an10932811-69






Fred Elliott
Heard Island ANARE Party 1953
Front row: John Béchervaise, OIC; Peter Shaw, meteorologist; Ron Parsons, radio operator; Arthur Gwynn, medical officer.
Behind:  Fred Elliott, Len Welch and Bernie Izabelle, weather observers ; Jack Hughes, diesel mechanic; Dick McNair, cook; Leon Fox, dog attendant; Jim Brooks, geophysicist; Ken Dalziel, radio supervisor; Cec O’Brien, radio operator.
The husky is either Frani or her sister Kari.
Fred Elliott Papers 1953–59
Manuscript Collection MS9442
Courtesy of Fred Elliott

You might wonder why anyone should want to go to a place like Heard Island. Apart from the bracing climate, the possibilities of some excursions, year-long ski-ing, the interest of the scientific work and the non-scientific pursuits such as are involved in sixty or seventy huskies, sledging operations, cooking, reading, writing and listening (of various kinds), I don’t know whether I can answer that one. In a pleasant little diary that one of my printers left with me at Christmas, there are seventeen pages of miscellaneous information—on postage, telegraphic rates, public holidays, populations and things. I find to my delight that only one page could be of value. For a year money, the post office, telephones, lectures, broadcasts, motor-cars, railways, trams, newspapers, feminine society, even time itself ceases to have much significance. I do not expect to be lonely, there will be plenty of exercise and there should be time to think a little … It will be rather pleasant to be circumscribed by the sea on an island barely twenty miles long.


Bill of Fare

Relish:
Glaciated egg
Atlas Cove anchovies
Soup:
Cream of Mother Carey chicken
Fish:
Balmoral Salmon and Cave Bay cod
Entrée:
Antarctic penguin breast
Station skua
Seal steak ANARE
Joint:
Roast Drygalski mutton
Vegetables:
Potatoes, peas, carrots, parsnips,
snow cured Kerguelen cabbage
Royal mint sauce
Sweets:
Edinburgh pudding with Phillip sauce
Peach Elizabeth
Savouries:
Stuffed Heard penguin pie
Patty of fatted sheathbill liver
Azorella olives Crevassed cheeses
BIG BEN CIGARS
BRANDY WINES LIQUEURS ICED BEER
TOAST

We can all imagine the pleasures of life without cars, money and postage rates, but I wonder exactly how he viewed the impending lack of ‘feminine society’, remembering that at the time Béchervaise had a wife and four young children.

When the island came into sight on Sunday, 22 February 1953, Béchervaise wrote in his diary:

Once Alan Campbell-Drury described the sight, from far out at sea, to be ‘frightening’. I could share his emotion; and everyone of the incoming party was rather silent at the magnificent sight. It didn’t last long and we were then steaming forward into the featureless sea walled round with greyness reaching out unsubstantially to a fading sea at a distance of less than ten miles.

Not only was Béchervaise exceptionally articulate, but he was also assiduous in keeping a diary. His papers in the National Library of Australia, which he himself arranged and annotated for the Library, include detailed diaries for the year on Heard Island. Béchervaise kept these diaries with an eye to his own records, and with an eye to posterity. He typed each day’s entry (making a carbon copy), usually late at night in the biology hut after he had finished supervising the tasks involved in maintaining the base. After the lights went out at midnight—when the station’s generator was turned off—he often lit a lamp and continued his typing by lamplight.

In 1953, 13 men had been sent to replace the previous year’s ANARE party and to winter on Heard Island, with Béchervaise as the officer in charge. The men’s work included creating and maintaining the huts, meteorological observations, regular radiosonde balloon releases, radio communication, feeding and caring for themselves and the dogs, and ‘gash’ (rubbish) runs, all of which left very little time for expeditions or ‘jollies’. Feeding the 50 or more sledge-dogs they had with them on the island was part of the daily rhythm of life. Every few days, the men killed a seal for the dogs, an activity that provided Béchervaise’s earliest memory of the island. He wrote:

I shall not forget my first-footing on Heard Island. A beach of black volcanic sand; the huge dismembered carcase of an elephant seal (killed that morning for the dogs), dozens of energetic black skuas flapping the air and wheeling round the flaccid red remains.

A colour photograph of Laurens Peninsula from Abbotsmith Glacier. Courtesy of Fred Elliott A colour photograph of Heard Island Camp in 1953. Courtesy of Fred Elliott
Laurens Peninsula from Abbotsmith Glacier
Fred Elliott Papers 1953–59
Manuscript Collection MS9442
Courtesy of Fred Elliott
Heard Island Camp, 1953
Fred Elliott Papers 1953–59
Manuscript Collection MS9442
Courtesy of Fred Elliott

Since 1955, when the Heard Island base was closed down and ANARE activity moved to continental Antarctica, there have been only occasional periods of occupation at Heard. The most recent was during the summer of 2000–01, when, as an article in the Australian Antarctic Magazine describes, the Australian Antarctic Division sent a total of 55 people over a five-month season to live and work on the island at Atlas Cove, Spit Bay or Brown Glacier. During this time, the old base used by Béchervaise and his party at Atlas Cove was largely dismantled.

One of the most remarkable of the old huts was Admiralty Hut, built in 1929 by the crew of the whaling ship Kildalkey, used for shelter by Douglas Mawson’s British, Australian and New Zealand Research Expedition later in the same year, and enlarged in 1948 with the addition of an old sealing hut from Corinthian Bay, to make a dispensary and store for the men of ANARE. Only one of the older buildings at Atlas Cove, the recreation hut, remains capable of giving shelter today. Was it here that the men celebrated the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953? Among Béchervaise’s papers is the menu for the evening:

SOME EVENTS IN THE SPORADIC HISTORY OF HEARD ISLAND

25 November 1853  American sealing captain John Heard first saw the island which now bears his name.

1850s – 1870s  Sealers visited Heard Island, mainly to harvest elephant seals for their blubber.

1910  An option was granted to a Mr Bogen for an exclusive licence to occupy Heard Island for three years; this did not happen.

1929  French geologist Edgar Aubert de la Rue spent eight days on Heard Island prospecting for minerals.

Douglas Mawson’s British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition spent eight days on the island, leaving emergency rations and a Union Jack.

26 December 1947  Group Captain Stuart Campbell read the declaration of Australian possession on Heard Island.

Dec 1947 – Mar 1955  A small base on Heard Island was manned continuously for scientific work and to establish Australian possession of the island.

1965  An Australia party made the first ascent of the 2745-metre-high, ice-covered volcanic peak of Big Ben.

1969  An American team wintered on Heard Island.

2000–01  In five months, one Australian worker collected an estimated 11/2to 2 tonnes of marine debris, almost all of it in the form of plastics, from his daily patrols of Heard’s north-western beaches.

I have not found Edinburgh pudding in any recipe book so I suspect that, like some of the other dishes, it was christened specially for the occasion, to make it a more ‘Heardian’ celebration. Other uniquely named items include Big Ben cigars, or Azorella, which has nothing to do with olives—it is a robust-looking cushion-forming plant Azorella selago, designed to endure the bitter winds of the Subantarctic.

Even so, some menu items were genuinely indigenous—Kerguelen cabbage, for example, is the native plant Pringlea antiscorbutica, with cabbagy rosettes of leaves that taste something like tough rocket. And we know from journals of exploration that penguin breast is quite palatable. Drygalski mutton was semi-indigenous, being a freshly killed sheep from the small herd unloaded by the Tottan when it landed the men’s supplies. After the sheep were released, they had quickly made off and taken up residence in the vicinity of the Drygalski glacier, which furnished a temporary home until each animal was hunted and shot in turn as the desire for mutton grew stronger. There was meat in abundance, but the Daily Telegraph report of 1947 saying that ‘the men will live on fish, tinned eggs, and meat’ exaggerated the grimness of the island diet.

Life on a small base on a subantarctic island is isolated but far from private. Béchervaise recorded daily happenings with care and in detail. There is surprisingly little record in his diaries of any lack of harmony between the men—perhaps another reflection of his eye to a future audience. Still, what we see includes some personal moments which are almost too frank:

Tuesday, March 3rd., 1953 I don’t remember ever having excreted in public before coming to Heard Island. There are four seats and we sit philosophizing and reading magazines. Not having had army experience, I was at first repelled by the idea of communal excretion. Now it seems normal enough. I used to hold the idea that communal feeding was equally indecent.

Give me communal feeding any day.

BERNADETTE HINCE is doing her PhD on subantarctic islands at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, ANU, Canberra

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