Most Australians who sail to Antarctica will never set foot in the part their country claims. It lies far to the south of Australia, along a coast few ships ever reach. And yet the Australian story travels with them. It waits inside a volcano in the South Shetlands, beside a grave on South Georgia, on a pebble beach at the edge of the Ross Sea. Once you know where to look, you find it everywhere.
In short
Australia claims about 42 per cent of Antarctica, the Australian Antarctic Territory, though the Antarctic Treaty sets every claim aside. The places where Australians made Antarctic history lie right around the continent: Deception Island, where the first flight took off; the Weddell Sea and Elephant Island, which Frank Hurley photographed; Grytviken, where Shackleton is buried; Cape Adare and Cape Royds in the Ross Sea; and Mawson's Huts at Commonwealth Bay. Each one belongs to a different voyage.
What is the Australian Antarctic Territory?
Start with the map. The Australian Antarctic Territory covers nearly 5.9 million square kilometres of East Antarctica: about 42 per cent of the continent, close to 80 per cent of the size of Australia, and the largest claim made by any nation. It is broken only by a narrow French sector, Adélie Land.
The claim grew out of exploration. Douglas Mawson charted much of this coast on two expeditions, from 1911 to 1914 and from 1929 to 1931, and in 1933 Britain placed the territory under Australian authority. Today the Australian Antarctic Division runs three year-round research stations there, Mawson, Davis and Casey. Mawson, opened in 1954, is the oldest continuously operating station south of the Antarctic Circle.
Who owns Antarctica?
No single country. Seven nations claim parts of the continent, Australia among them. The Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959 by twelve nations including Australia, sets those claims aside and keeps the whole continent for peace and science.
1. Deception Island: the first flight in Antarctica
The approach sets the tone. Ships slip through Neptune's Bellows, a narrow gap in the wall of a flooded volcano, and anchor inside the crater. Ashore at Whalers Bay, steam can drift off the black sand, and the rusting tanks and boilers of an old whaling station line the beach.
In November 1928, that station was home to Hubert Wilkins, a farmer's son from Mount Bryan East in South Australia, who had already flown across the Arctic that April. On 16 November his pilot, Carl Ben Eielson, lifted their Lockheed Vega off a rough strip of shore and circled the island for twenty minutes. It was the first powered flight in Antarctica. A month later the two flew far down the Peninsula, Wilkins sketching and photographing land no one had seen before.
He stayed an explorer to the end. When Wilkins died in 1958, his ashes were carried by submarine to the North Pole and scattered there.
Getting there: Deception Island lies in the South Shetland Islands, often part of Antarctic Peninsula cruises such as Emblematic Antarctica. Each day's landings depend on the weather and the ice.
2. Elephant Island and the Weddell Sea: Frank Hurley's photographs
Picture the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, and you are almost certainly seeing a Frank Hurley photograph. Born in Glebe, Sydney, in 1885, he sailed as official photographer with Mawson in 1911, then joined Ernest Shackleton aboard the Endurance in 1914.
When the Weddell Sea ice closed around the ship, Hurley kept working. He photographed the Endurance held fast, then broken. When everything had to be hauled across the ice, he chose 120 glass plates to keep and smashed about 400 others. The 28 men reached Elephant Island in April 1916. Shackleton sailed on for help, and 22 stayed behind at Point Wild, sheltering under two upturned boats for more than four months, until the Chilean tug Yelcho reached them on 30 August.
The Endurance was found in 2022, about 3,000 metres down, and is now a protected historic site. What you sail through is the sea that held her: the pack ice, the tabular icebergs, the flat silver light of Hurley's plates.
Getting there: Elephant Island's surf makes landings rare, though ships often sail close beneath its cliffs. The mythical Weddell Sea, aboard the polar exploration vessel Le Commandant Charcot, sails deep into the ice that held the Endurance. Our Weddell Sea cruise guide explains how each season shapes it.
3. Grytviken, South Georgia: Shackleton's grave
Two Australians stood here with Shackleton, seven years apart. Hurley was here in late 1914, as the Endurance took on supplies for the south. Hubert Wilkins arrived in January 1922 as naturalist on the Quest, Shackleton's last expedition.
On 5 January 1922, Shackleton died aboard the Quest in this harbour. He was buried in the whalers' cemetery, and his companions later raised a memorial cairn on the headland above the bay. Frank Wild, who held the men together at Point Wild, has rested beside him since 2011. Today guests walk up past the old whaling station to the grave, and many raise a small glass to the Boss, as tradition asks.
Getting there: In Shackleton's Footsteps spends 18 nights between the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula.
4. Cape Adare, Cape Royds and Mount Erebus: the first Australian ashore
At Cape Adare, on the Ross Sea, two small timber huts stand on a shingle spit among the Adélie penguins. They are the first buildings ever raised on the Antarctic continent. In 1899, ten men of Carsten Borchgrevink's Southern Cross expedition, which had sailed from Hobart, became the first to winter on the Antarctic mainland inside them. One was Louis Bernacchi, a physicist who grew up on Tasmania's Maria Island, and the first Australian to land on the continent.
Further south on Ross Island, Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds is where two more Australians set out. In March 1908, Edgeworth David, professor of geology at the University of Sydney and nearly fifty years old, led the first ascent of Mount Erebus, the active volcano that rises over the island. A young Douglas Mawson climbed with him. The following summer David, Mawson and Alistair Mackay walked to the South Magnetic Pole, reaching it on 16 January 1909.
Getting there: Ross Sea cruises leave from New Zealand or Tasmania, and hut visits depend on ice and permits. Entire Antarctica arrives another way: a month from Ushuaia to Dunedin, with eight days in the Ross Sea.
5. Mawson's Huts, Commonwealth Bay: where Australian Antarctica began
Cape Denison, in Commonwealth Bay, is the windiest place on Earth at sea level. In May 1912 the gusts reached 322 kilometres an hour. Mawson's Australasian Antarctic Expedition had arrived that January and built its huts on the rocks.
That summer Mawson set out east with Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz. Ninnis vanished into a crevasse with most of the food, and Mertz died a few weeks later. Mawson walked the last 160 kilometres alone and reached the huts on 8 February 1913, in time to see the Aurora sailing away. He spent a second winter at Cape Denison. The coast he charted became the heart of the Australian Antarctic Territory, and the huts still stand, protected and cared for by the Mawson's Huts Foundation.
Getting there: this is the rarest landing of the five. Only a handful of voyages from Hobart attempt it, and the sea ice decides. If Mawson's Huts are the reason you want to go, tell us at the very start, and we will be clear about what each season allows.
Mawson's Huts Replica Museum in Hobart
For most of us, the closest way to Cape Denison runs along the Hobart waterfront. The Mawson's Huts Replica Museum stands at the corner of Morrison and Argyle Streets, about 200 metres from where the Aurora sailed in 1911, and was built from the measurements and photographs of the heritage carpenters who conserve the real huts. Step inside, and in a few square metres you understand how 18 men lived through an Antarctic winter.
Choosing the voyage that tells your story
Each of these places belongs to a different voyage, and that is what makes the choice so personal. Hurley's ice is the Weddell Sea. Shackleton's last chapter is South Georgia. The huts of Cape Adare and Cape Royds mean a longer, rarer voyage into the Ross Sea.
Our team has sailed these routes and knows how each tends to unfold: which landings a season favours, where the ice usually sits, which ship and which cabin will suit you. Tell us whose footsteps you would like to follow, and we shape the whole journey around them, from the flights out of Australia until you are home. Plan your expedition.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Antarctica?
No single country. Seven nations, including Australia, claim parts of it, and the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 sets those claims aside and reserves Antarctica for peace and science.
How much of Antarctica does Australia own?
Australia claims about 42 per cent: the Australian Antarctic Territory, nearly 5.9 million square kilometres of East Antarctica.
Can you visit Mawson's Huts?
Rarely, on a handful of voyages from Hobart, ice permitting. The Mawson's Huts Replica Museum on the Hobart waterfront is open to everyone.
Can you visit Deception Island?
Yes. It is a frequent landing on Antarctic Peninsula cruises, weather permitting, and Whalers Bay is where the first flight in Antarctica took off.
Who was the first Australian in Antarctica?
Louis Bernacchi, who landed at Cape Adare in 1899 and wintered there with the Southern Cross expedition.
Was Frank Hurley Australian?
Yes. He was born in Glebe, Sydney, in 1885, and photographed both Mawson's expedition and Shackleton's Endurance expedition.
