Shackleton’s expedition in spotlight at ArtsNational lecture

Incredible photographic images of British explorer Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole were in the spotlight at ArtsNational Narrabri’s August lecture.

Prim Winston-Smith and Annie Lampe.

UK arts historian Mark Cottle presented the latest arts talk A Photographic Odyssey – Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition to a captivated audience at The Crossing Theatre.

Lyn Firth, Nanette Watson, Louise Gett and ArtsNational Narrabri chair Fiona Groeneveld. Photos: Dylan Smith.

Australian photographer Frank Hurley documented Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole in 1914 and captured some of the earliest images of Antarctica’s bleak and beautiful unexplored terrain.

Marie Leculier, Joan Burrell-Melbourne and Coral Marshall.

Shackleton’s ship, HMS Endurance, was trapped by pack ice and slowly succumbed to its crushing pressure – and the expedition’s fate and that of its crew looked bleak. Hundreds of miles from inhabited territory and far from any well-travelled shipping lanes, they wouldn’t be rescued for more than a year and a half.

Helen Dugdale and Kay Durham.

The photographs, in black-and-white, perfectly captured the extreme landscape of the Antarctic as well as the crew’s plight.

ArtsNational Narrabri welcomed Mark Cottle, left, to present the August lecture titled A Photographic Odyssey – Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition. He is pictured with Hume lecturer coordinator Stephen Gow.

Hurley captured not only the desolate polar landscape but the grit and determination of the stranded crew members trying to stay warm in sub-zero temperatures, to stave off starvation and despair, and to pass time on an ice floe as they witnessed the slow-motion destruction of the Endurance, their only refuge. Yet every man survived.