Conversations: Smuggled to Antarctica

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In 1961, an Australian woman named Nell Law snuck onto a Danish ship

that was heading to Antarctica.

Nell's husband was a polar explorer and scientist

and she wanted the chance to see the place he'd been telling her about

for so many years.

Nell was herself a painter and she also knew that there'd be sights

and colours to paint in that vast icy wilderness

that were unlike anything else she'd ever seen.

So she became a stowaway and ended up as the first Australian woman

to set foot on Antarctica.

Rachel Mead has had her own adventures in Antarctica

but she was astonished to discover this forgotten predecessor.

So Rachel has turned Nell's story into a novel called The Art of Breaking Ice.

Hi Rachel. Hi Sarah.

So tell me how on earth did you first hear about this amazing story

of Nell the Stowaway artist?

Well I just came across it by complete accident in a book

that I happened to be reading on Antarctic art and artists

that have been trying to put Antarctica onto the page.

And there was a gorgeous colour plate of a painting that had a huge iceberg

and it was emerald green with these little tiny penguins dotted along it

like Morse code and I was struck by the painting

and then looked down at the caption and in a footnote at the bottom of the page

it just said that this was a painting by Nell Law,

the first Australian woman to go to Antarctica.

And I was just completely floored because I had never heard her name before

and as somebody, I've considered myself a bit of an Antarctic tragic,

I've done a lot of reading and research on Antarctica

and as a feminist I had never heard her name.

How did you begin to try to find something out about her?

Where did you go first off?

Well I immediately just googled her and at that point

there was just a very, very brief few lines on Wikipedia

and it just listed her as the wife of Dr Phillip Law

and gave a little bit about the fact that he'd been the director of ANARI

from 1948 to 1966 and then right at the bottom

it said that she was the first Australian woman to go to Antarctica

and that she'd stowed away to get there

and immediately my writer's antenna started to tingle.

Well before we get to Nell and her extraordinary story

tell me a little bit about the man who was the focus of that Wikipedia entry,

husband Dr Phillip Law, why is he important?

Well I find it really surprising that he's not more famous

because immediately when you think of Australian explorers in Antarctica

we think of Sir Douglas Mawson but Phil Law was actually responsible

for Australia's permanent presence down there.

He was a physicist and so he went down just as a general expeditioner in 1947

and then within 12 months he was the director of ANARI

and he led about 18 years worth of expeditions.

Some years he went down there a couple of times.

Rachel what does the acronym ANARI stand for?

So today we have the Australian Antarctic Division

but before it became the AAD it was ANARI

which is the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition.

And what sort of director was Phil Law?

Basically his vision was responsible for moving Australia's presence in Antarctica

from one of just sort of territorial claims and exploration

into Australia establishing and maintaining a permanent presence down there

in terms of the three stations Mawson, Casey and Davis

and he oversaw Australia move into the situation

with the Antarctic Treaty.

So when the Antarctic Treaty came into force in late 1961

Antarctica became for all of the 12 signatory nations

a place of peace and the free access and trading of scientific information

so basically it became a land of science rather than of sort of territorial claims

by the various nations.

And when you say Rachel that he's not as well known as some of those other explorers

is it because there were no disasters?

Is that the folder thing that went too well?

If people had died on his watch he would be very famous

but no under his leadership all of the expeditions were incredibly successful

and he was responsible for exploring and mapping

a really significant stretch of Antarctic coastline

and also exploring into the interior.

So he's won basically every polar award that is on offer

he's been recognised in Commonwealth Honours lists

and just remarkably well appreciated

but only amongst people who really know about Australian Antarctic history.

So what do you know about Nell and Phil's story?

I mean do you know how they met or when they were married?

They were engaged before the war.

Nell was at university.

She'd won a scholarship to study at Melbourne Uni

and she'd previously been trained and worked as a teacher.

They met at a dance and apparently they were very swiftly

within a few months really they were engaged

but then with the onset of World War II they decided to wait

but then it became clear as the war dragged on

they were going to be waiting a very long time

so they decided not to wait until the war had ended

and Phil was teaching at Melbourne University

and was offered a position going down to do some work

I think he was looking at magnetism and auroras down there

and then very swiftly discovered that that was the career for him

and he moved up the ranks very swiftly.

Well you say that they didn't want to have to wait too much longer to get married

but there was a lot of waiting from Nell's point of view in their relationship

given the amount of time he would spend down in Antarctica each year

I mean how often was he away from home?

How much time did he spend away from their home together in Antarctica?

Well even though he went down there every year from 1947 to 66

I believe he didn't overwinter

he only stayed down there for the summer months

but over that summer season that would be from basically October to March each year

and when he was often in the Antarctic what was Nell up to?

I like to think of her as reveling in her freedom

but I think that might be a little bit presumptuous

but yeah they didn't have children

but she was a very gifted painter

so in those months of the year she would start to take her painting a bit more seriously

And was she written about in newspapers at the time, Rachel?

It's a bit sad really

she was called Australia's longest suffering Antarctic widow

Oh gosh, I know!

So by the time she went down there

Phil had been down in Antarctica working for 12 summer seasons

so for 12 years, 5 months of the year she was on her own

and that was because back then no women were allowed to work in Antarctica

all of the expeditioners were men

and the ones who would overwinter

they were down there for up to 15 months at a stretch

Phil would return with interesting things from his time spent in Antarctica

What were our Nell and Phil's dinner parties famous for?

Before the mid 90s when the Madrid protocol came in

which was the piece of legislation about the protection of Antarctica

it was really common for expeditioners to sort of supplement their meals

with a bit of Antarctic wildlife

so every year Phil would come back with cuts of meat that were quite astounding

so he would bring bits of seal and penguin back

and then Nell would stage these elaborate Antarctic feasts

So you saw this footnote about this woman

and all of your senses was interested in her and her story

once you'd exhausted what was available in Wikipedia

how did you set out to find out more?

Well I started internet research to begin with

and there wasn't that much

but the few leads that I was able to tease out

led me to the National Library in Canberra

where they have in their special collections

Australian Antarctic history is one of their major categories of interest

so when Phil died in 2010

he acquiesced all of his papers to the National Library

and it turned out that because of his incredible career

there were 100 archive boxes of material

Phil Law's segment of the Australian Antarctic history collection is the largest

so I went to the National Library

and it turned out that one of those 100 archive boxes

contained material on Nell Law

What was it like to come upon that box?

How did you know?

Was it straight away?

Was it labelled?

This is Nell's box or how did you discover it?

No, no, no it was just labelled with this archive category

but I lifted the lid off

and there are these beautiful sort of very clean pristine envelopes in there

sliding them out

it was a very visceral experience

and inside one of those envelopes was Nell's diary

from her Macquarie Island and Antarctic journeys

and it was beautiful

it had this marbled cover

and I flipped it open

and she'd written it all in green biro

and there was her handwriting

and it was a very special experience

Jackbot, did you let out a little squeal?

Did the librarians come running?

Did you react?

Well, there was definite racing heart situation

You never know, really

you read the list of what's meant to be there

and just hope and pray that when you slide everything open

that what you hope is there

is actually there and that it contains

the material that you want to be reading

So you just mentioned Rachel

her trips to Antarctica and to Macquarie Island

tell me about that

She made two journeys as a stowaway

so the very first one was at the end of 1960

and she went to Macquarie Island

which is a really significant time to have gone

because it was only the year before

that Australia had changed its policy

on allowing female scientists to go to Macquarie Island

up until the end of 1959

the only women employed by Inari were secretaries

and administrators at the headquarters

so the policy had changed the previous year

and four female scientists had gone down

Macquarie Island is this remote island

about halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica

So how did she stowaway?

Well apparently Phil had sort of raised the question

of taking Nell down as an official passenger

in the past and had been told no

and he was basically thinking

not only is it really unfair that Nell

year after year is left at home

and at that point no one had been down

for as many years in a row as Phil Law

so she really was at that stage

the longest suffering Antarctic widow

but because Phil was the expedition leader

he had a cabin that had two bunks

but he was in there on his own

so he knew that she wasn't going to be taking space

that would otherwise go to an expeditioner

and so he was very keen for Nell to go down

and just see what it was that kept him going back

year after year so that first time

basically he snuck her on board

but because there were other women already going down there

it didn't leak to the papers or anything

they managed to keep it completely on the down low

and Nell absolutely reveled in it

she didn't suffer from a scaric of seasickness or anything

she did lots of work down there

and it was the first time she'd ever left the country

so this was her first sort of overseas trip

and she absolutely adored it

so when they got back

she got back I think in December 1960

and basically said right

I really want to go on the next one

and so together she and Phil sort of hatched the plot

for her to do exactly the same thing

but go to Antarctica

which was a bigger deal because

there was a very strict at that stage

no women allowed policy

Why was that Rachel? Why was there such a strict

no women policy in Antarctica?

What threat did we pose?

It was all of those terrible old assumptions

about not being strong enough

being too emotional

not being able to handle it

and also being too much of a distraction for the men

that there were no facilities down there

they just basically didn't feel that women

were sort of up to the task of being

equal partners in expedition work

and that really didn't change in Australia

Australia didn't amend its policy until 1973

So as you're reading her diaries

of this first voyage to the Southern Ocean

and the plans for this next feat

where she wanted to go all the way to Antarctica

what's the tone like?

What kind of person emerges from her diaries?

Well she was actually quite nervous about it

she wasn't afraid of the journey

she was afraid of heights

and she was a bit nervous I think

about the impact of it on Phil's career as well

she realised that this time

there probably would be ramifications

on his career for going down there

whereas I think Phil by that stage in his career

he had spent so many years

desperately fighting for funding

to bring his vision of Australia

to this world-class scientific facility

into being

and having to justify every decision

and being told that he couldn't have as much money

as he potentially wanted

I think there was a little bit of

rebellion in him that he sort of wanted to

if you won't give me the money

that I really need

then I'm just going to bring Nell

Yeah exactly

so it was a bit of a rebel in him as well

As they're planning or she's thinking through

this attempt to go all the way to Antarctica

what sort of lists is she making in her diaries

about the things that she'll need to bring

what was she packing for such an adventure?

The lists were, yeah

they brought me so much joy

she was really taken with this new fangled

fabric called nylon

and she was very excited about the fact that

it was going to be so quick dry

so she could just do her washing

in the basin and hang it out to dry

she was also banging up against

the fact that the clothes

and provisions that she needed

were not made

there was no such thing as a female

expedition wear back then

so she was having to either wear men's clothes

for the big insulated jackets

and pants and things or sort of make do

there are the photos that I have of her

on the ice, it looks like she's wearing

little sort of Dunlop sneakers

but I do know that she took

golf shoes down there

he was having to advise the

female scientists that were going to

Macquarie Island about there

the gear that they needed to take as well

and so there were no boots

for women for those sorts of extreme

environments so he recommended golf shoes

because they had the little bubbly cleats

on the bottom for a little bit more traction

honestly as somebody who's tried to walk on ice

I cannot imagine trying to make that work

with golf shoes on, oh my goodness

when voyages into the southern oceans

were being made back then in the 1960s

were they on Australian ships Rachel?

No, the Anari basically

chartered Danish ships

and what was Nellan and Phil's plan

I mean were they going to have to let this Danish crew know

that she was coming on board or were they going to try to keep it secret from everybody

Well Phil did leak it to the captain

the captain was in on the plot

and also was open to it

he didn't have any arguments with it

and I'm pretty sure he probably let the crew know

just so that when they're sneaking

all of Nell's baggage on board

in the dead of night that there are no

eyebrows being raised there with the crew

but the expeditioners were certainly in the dark about it

and the other people that they were keen wouldn't find out

were the press and politicians

but how did that go wrong?

How was this secret plan to be a stowaway

discovered before she took off?

She knew that she wanted to use the opportunity

for art so she went around

and she was collecting all of her art supplies

and this is the height of summer

so she was having to ask for

for winter clothes and art supplies

that wouldn't freeze in the height of summer

and it started to raise eyebrows

and apparently very swiftly

got back to a journalist

that oh Phil Law's wife

is shopping for thermal underwear

you know what's going on here

and so it was her shopping practices that really

unfortunately spilled the beans

and at the very last minute

a journalist contacted

the Department of External Affairs

which was the government department responsible for

Australia in Antarctica

and you know what is your comment on Phil Law's wife

going to Antarctica and they were

oh what that's so unfortunately

just it was hours

before they were due to set sail

now had already snuck

all of her gear on board

in the dead of night beforehand

and pulled all of his clothes

all of Phil's clothes to the front

so that if anyone looked in the

in the cabin that they wouldn't see

any of her underwear

or sort of brightly coloured scarves or anything

it was just by pure chance

that the Minister for External Affairs

happened to be on board the ship

having a tour of it

it was Senator Gorton

who later became Prime Minister

but Phil realised that the cat

was out of the bag

Phil just came to him and said

look this is what's happening

I really want Nell to come with me

she's either going to have to

be bundled off the ship

and it's going to look really bad

or you can give us

please can we have your permission

and he took pity on them

and said yep that's absolutely okay

if anyone asked you can say

that you have my official

approval for it

at the very last minute

they sailed

Senator Gorton gave his approval

and she was allowed to stay

how was that reported on in the press

at the time?

There was a huge controversy about it

she was in

to begin with in blissful ignorance

about all of it because

sailing away that was all

apparently Phil did

receive a few cables to say

there's going to be a bit of

a media storm

when you return

but there was a huge

controversy back home

while she was down on the ice

that and

there were questions to Parliament

and there were news stories

yeah it was

and basically

the people

were very concerned about

you know a woman

being alone on a ship with 70 men

it was all a bit shocking

so was there her safety

or the morality or just it was an improper

thing for a woman to do

was that the

atmosphere of those descriptions

they were quite reserved it was

you know much more conservative time

and even though she was a married woman

it certainly

raised a lot of eyebrows

I think they were concerned about

the impact for the men

like how were they going to cope

with having to with a woman

down there oh my goodness

as you say Nell was blissfully unaware of this

as she's just chugging southwards

on this on this Danish ship

how did she describe

that journey and her first impressions

of this extraordinary continent

she was completely

taken with the

just astounding beauty of the place

and because she was a visual artist

she was

just so aware

of the colours and the

her descriptions were

just delightful really

coming across icebergs

for the first time and her descriptions

of the different forms

that they talk and she was

sort of delighted and appalled

by the wildlife

I think she had a bit of a delicate nose

and felt that penguins and seals

were

they in her words

they reeked so

her journal was

really delightful in that way

and what sort of work did she create there

what sort of drawings or paintings

was she able to do while in Antarctica

oh she did

so much work while she was down there

in every form so there were

pen and ink sketches

and watercolours

and oil paintings

and in situations

where she wasn't able

to work in the

form that she wanted to

say because it is

getting set up

so with watercolours

it was very problematic because

the water freezes and the paint

sort of sticks

your paintbrush to the paper

and oil paints

it's not an easy thing

there's wind

rain and sleet and

so in situations

where the weather wasn't ideal

she would

sketch and then make extensive

notes on colour

and form and then she would work

on those when she got back

so by 1964

she had enough work

for a full solo

exhibition

this is Conversations

with Sarah Konoski

find out more about Conversations

podcast

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Conversations

Rachel I've never been

to Antarctica

but I imagine it as

a world of white

is that what it's like?

Yeah when you're down there

to begin with

it is very

there are only three colours in the world

there's blue and white and black

the black of the mountain

and rock but

after a few days

you start to get

acclimatised to the

strangeness of it all

in a way and then you're able

to see the

variations of shade

within the blue

and within the white

so yeah when you

think about ice it isn't just

white there's like an entire

spectrum of white in a way

that goes all the way from

sort of deep

purpley indigo sort of right through

to

sort of more warmer tones so

yeah it is really surprising

how much colour is down there

How long was

was Nell in Antarctica for?

Well she

stepped onto the Antarctic continent

on the 8th of February

in 1961

and they returned

in late March

What kind of interest was there in her once

she returned to Australia

after making this historic

and slightly forbidden trip?

Well they before

they got back to Melbourne

they were very very worried

about the reception

they thought that

the controversy would

keep raging and that

and I think Phil was

really ready to lose his

position as a result of it

but surprisingly

by the time

they'd returned there was

so much interest in

her being on the ship

and to the extent that

I think for the first time

ever it was Nell

who overshadowed Phil

there was

the press were just fascinated

by how she coped

with being the only woman amongst

around 70 men on the ship

yeah so basically

she was the star of the show

and it seems like

she was sort of forgiven by officialdom

as well because they named a ship

an Antarctic ship after her

Yes that's right

another of the sister ships

in that Danish family of ships

the Nella Dan was named after her

So did she make any return visits

Rachel?

No no she didn't

I think they

Nell and Phil sort of decided

they'd pushed it far enough

with that one journey

but she continued to paint Antarctica

and she also

Australia didn't change its policy

on women going to Antarctica

you know for

another 12 years

she did have a legacy

in terms of helping

other women in her situation

so she started

the Antarctic Wives and Kinfolk Association

which was an organisation

that supported

the families of

expeditioners who were doing it

tough for months at a time at home

and that organisation

still exists today

You said that this was her first

trip out of Australia

I mean talk about doing things with a bang

Did she go elsewhere in her later years

her and Phil?

Yes she definitely got the

travel bug after Antarctica

She and Phil went to

places like Mexico

and Norway and while

her health held out

they travelled widely

And I think in a sense

she did return to Antarctica

because where are her ashes?

Yes Nell died

in 1990

and

Phil died in

2010 and together

their ashes have been

taken back down to Mawson Station

and they're

interred down there which is a huge

honour and I think

speaks to the

enormous and important

legacy the laws

have in terms of Australian

Antarctic history

It really is just such a wonderful story

and astonishing that although she was so well

known and celebrated at the time

that it kind of got lost

in the decade since

So I want to know Rachel

about your own experiences

of this wild

place. How did you first get the chance

to go to Antarctica?

I first went down there

Hots nearly 20 years ago

I was working

as an environmental

campaigner and I'd been

fascinated by Antarctica

ever since I was small and reading those

you know those adventure stories

of Scott and Shackleton and

Amidstson and I'd just been fascinated

with Antarctica for a very

long time and

I got the opportunity

to do a course

in Antarctic studies

at the University of Canterbury

in Christchurch

and I just

I'd just got my dream

job working as a climate

campaigner for Greenpeace and it was one

of those oh what do I do

and the

thing that swayed me

was that the course

involved a couple of weeks

going down

being on the ice in Antarctica

and camping on the ice

sheet for a couple of weeks

and so yes

I gave up the dream job and

made the decision to go

and study for

four months in New Zealand

and get the chance to go to Antarctica

So this invitation

to camp out on

the ice, what's

that feel like? What's the air like

in a freezing place like that?

It's very otherworldly

down there it's

so cold that the air

doesn't hold a great deal of moisture

so you can see

so far it's like you're

wearing the world's most incredible

glasses

everything is so bright and

in focus and the air

is very dry

it feels really

silly to way to describe it

but it really does feel like you are

on another planet, it's so different

And were you struck like now was

by the colours and

the intensity of colour?

Well, like I was saying

it took a couple of days

for my eyes to really

get past the

otherworldliness of it and start

to really see it clearly

and every day is a little

bit different as well

And hopefully you had better kit than golf shoes

Oh my goodness, we were so well

kitted out and looking back

now that I've had

both the experience of being in Antarctica

and doing the research about Nell

I cannot help but giggle

about the things that she thought

she would need like perfume

like Nell took a couple of bottles of perfume

and I was like no, deodorant

that's it

So one of the first tasks

that you were set on this course was to build

an emergency ice shelter

Please tell me how to do that

should I ever find myself in that situation

Rachel, what do I do?

Well, you need a bit of baggage

so Nell would have been fine

So what you do, you put

all of your baggage into a big pile

and try and

make it as dome shaped as possible

and then you get your shovel

and then you dig madly

furiously piling

ice on top of your

baggage until

you know, until it's a

quite a thick layer of ice

completely covering your

dome of baggage and then you

compress it down

just whack it with the shovel

and stamp on it and

make sure that it's all

as compressed as possible

and then

you dig a little hole

well, a tunnel really

sort of like a very in a shallow

shape and you dig down

under and you come up

hopefully inside

the dome that you've

that you've compacted

and then you start pulling

your luggage

out through the tunnel that you've

just created and then

that hollows it out so you've got

what looks like a very sort of

like a ramshackle igloo

basically

What a great strategy though

I mean that just

seems a brilliant thing to do

a brilliant way to approach it

so you pull out your luggage

and then you've got your little hollow

and what was it like to sleep inside

your ice cave?

Well, that was one of the things

that I think was the

to make sure that we didn't do a half

ass job, part of the training

was that everybody had

to spend a night sleeping

inside their ice shelter

which is interesting because

with we're there in the

over the

not just in summer but we were there

over the longest day so in Antarctica

that means that the sun doesn't set

so you see

the sun sort of do this big lazy

loop in the sky

but that also means that

you've got to try and sleep

when there's light and the light

comes through the ice so you've got to

while you're lying in the ice

shelter you have got to pull

your

beanie down or I use

my neck gaiter

the tube of sort of polar

fleece that you wear around your neck

I put that on my head

pulled it down over my eyes to

try and create a bit of artificial

night so I could sleep

but I still had to use

sunscreen because

sleeping in sunscreen because it's still

so light. That's

extraordinary. What a different environment

to have to sleep in.

Tell me what were you eating while you were

out there on the ice?

Well we were eating

packets of dehydrated food

you know you put water in them

we were using those

old fashioned primus stoves

that they look like something out of the

out of the 1930s

they were sort of very

very old fashioned

made me feel like I was on Mawson's expedition

or something using those stoves

yeah so I think that

exactly the same sorts of dehydrated food

that you use when you're going on a long distance hike

and it was really funny

because you're just

you're so tired

by the end of the day

we were working really hard

expending lots of energy and so we would

make these

rehydrate our food

and I was eating it thinking this is

delicious who knew that this sort

of packet food could be

so

I'm going to tell my partner

about this when we get home

this is ridiculously delicious

and then when I got home

and tried it we're eating it

thinking oh this is disgusting

Why does it have an appetizer of

like slaving away and freezing temperatures

for hours beforehand?

Exactly I remember

reading that other expeditioners

who have done you know

trans-antarctic expeditions

would eat blocks of butter

and find them entirely delicious

so yeah

luckily I didn't get that hungry

One of the things you were expending energy on

was hand digging

a pit

why did you have to do that

and why did you have to do it by hand?

Well the course that we were doing

was basically

trying to give us like a taster

like to do field work in Antarctica

sort of either as scientists

or field assistants

so we were given

a whole

array of different

activities to do

so one of them was to

was to dig a pit

and it was maybe three meters deep

we had to use ladders to get in

and out of it

one of the walls was

a very smooth cross-section

of the ice and so

we were looking at the

stratigraphy sort of the layering

of the ice so

it was basically to give us an understanding

of how through time

the year after year

snow

deposition and compaction

sort of layers up so when you

slice down through it

you can see

there's a bit of evidence about

the different meteorological conditions

how much snow fell in each year

and some of the layers

you could see that there had been

that winds had blown

dirt and dust

over you know because there's

very little dirt or dust

in Antarctica so if you

if you saw a little layer there

that looked like a sort of a pencil line

of graphite you knew that

if you analysed it it could be ash

from fires in Australia

or yeah it was really

it was fascinating

and it was sort of

an analogous to

climatologists doing

ice coring

but those ice cores go down

kilometres

into the polar plateau

and each of those cores

yeah you could

slice them and see

the year after year

the ice and snow

were in a different position

but then the climatologists

also analysed

the air

to see the different percentages

of carbon dioxide and oxygen

and other gases in the

atmosphere so it gives

climate data into

deep time

so this pit was sort of to give us

an understanding of the layering

and stratigraphy

so you were getting up close to ice

the sort of amazing array

of animals and birds

that are there in Antarctica

which stole your heart?

We had to do some

wet or seal

censising so basically

just walking to the edge of the ice sheet

and looking for

wet or seals

Are they easy to spot?

Well they're pretty big yes

and when they're on

the ice it's because

they've just returned

from feeding

and often travelling

quite deep and great distances

to feed

so they're having a bit of a rest

and they're really not interested in humans

and they have

they're very very sweet

you've probably seen photographs of them

and they're the ones that

they have a sort of resting smile face

basically

their eyes are shut

their sweet dreamy little grin

on their faces there

So how did that first trip

to Antarctica

change you do you think?

Well it was

while I was down there

that I met a writer

from New Zealand

a novelist Lawrence Fernley

she was down there as

an Antarctic Arts Fellow

and Australia has a similar

arts program

and over time

I'd started

writing a little bit of poetry

just as a hobby

and not taking it very seriously

at all

but it was Lawrence who

she gave me a book

by Stephen Fry

that owed less travelled

and because I had been wanting to try

and write about it

but finding it really challenging and difficult

so she gave me this book as a way

encouraged me to write a bit more poetry

and use poetry as a way

of turning

my experiences into

creativity

and I really just

took to it like a duck to water

and I kept writing once I was home

so yeah

that was a really potent connection

to make down there and eventually

sort of had

a big impact on changing

the trajectory of my career

really. You made a second trip

to Antarctica in 2013

this time on the Polar Pioneer

and this time you were

heading to western Antarctica

which means you had to go

across the infamous Drake Passage

what was that like?

I was so seasick

that this is so

embarrassing I had to be sedated

you poor thing

was that a surprise

or did you know that you you know

these are not your thing?

Well I knew that I had

a tendency to

seasickness. Our family

story is of my grandfather

who apparently could get seasick

standing on the end of a jetty

but I was a bit taken aback by

how

extreme my seasickness was

it was quite embarrassing

my husband cast

iron gut he did not have

so while I was just

out for the count on the bunk

he was enjoying

every moment of it so thankfully

I have photos of all the things

that he saw but I have

no memory of that crossing

whatsoever. Well you were

a hold up in your cabin so once you were

well enough to actually come outside

what do you remember seeing

what struck you about that part of the continent?

Oh well it was

the phenomenal

wildlife and the diversity

of wildlife so lots

of different species of whales

seals

leopard seals and

what else seals and crabby

seals and penguins

so many different species

of penguins. If you want to see

wildlife then going by sea

to the west Antarctic peninsula

is my recommendation.

And there's also this sort of incredible

human stories around this part

of Antarctica too isn't this

where Shackleton was stranded?

Yes well the journey

the voyage that I was

doing was meant to be

following in his footsteps.

So you'd made these

two mammoth journeys

really to Antarctica

but once you found out about Nell's

story Rachel did that give

you a different sense

of the place or a different sense

of human experience

of Antarctica how has her story

been knowing it shifted your views

of Antarctica?

Well it made me very appreciative

of the immense privilege

of going to Antarctica

considering that

in my mother's lifetime

Australian women

have been able to go there

and the vast

the vast changes

when you look at

the different stations

that are there now basically

within half a century

looking at the

world class facilities

that are down there now.

What do you think Nell and Phil Law

would make of the novel

that you've written about them?

Oh

Well I think Phil

appreciated how

trailblazing

his wife was

he was definitely proud of her

and the fact that she was the first Australian

woman there. He was very keen

for her diaries

to be published

was very proud of

the phenomenal artwork that she did

down there so I would hope

that they would

be pleased that

I was shedding a light

on the life of an

extraordinary and important woman

in our history.

Do you think you'll go back?

I would love to go back

without a question

in a heartbeat I would love to go back

I'm also very

aware that

it's a vulnerable place

it may not be for the best for Antarctica

if I go back

I would need a very good reason

to do so so I just need to

work on coming up with one.

I hope you get to bring a copy of your novel

and kind of show it to

the place that Nell and Phil's ashes are in turn

I think that would be only fitting

oh that would be lovely

It's been really fascinating to learn

about Nell and to hear your story too

Rachel thank you for being my guest

on Conversations

Oh thanks so much Sarah

it's been an honour

You've been listening to a podcast

of Conversations with Sarah Kanoski

For more Conversations

interviews head to the website

abc.net.au

slash Conversations

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.