Chapter Four

A LITTLE WORLD OF OUR OWN

*

It is surprising how little one worries of the daily happenings of the world when away from civilisation. Were I there I would be as much interested as anyone in what was happening in England, America or the Continent, but up here we seem to have a little world of our own, and see the memories of our friends and relations as something distinct and separate. It is true that I do sometimes long for civilisation and its possibilities, but these occasions are rare for I am most always much too interested in immediate conditions.

Wilkins’ letter to his parents, February 19151

On 28 June 1914, while Wilkins waited for the ice to melt at Clarence Lagoon, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria visited the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, where he was ambushed and assassinated. Although Austria and Bosnia were minor players among the European powers, they were part of a network of complex military, political, cultural, and family alliances. After a month of frantic diplomacy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on the Bosnian Serbs. Russia declared its support for Bosnia, while Germany declared its support for Austria. Believing the French would come to the aid of Russia, Germany decided to protect its western flank by invading France. When the German army swept through lightly defended Belgium en route to Paris, Great Britain threw its lot in with France. The great powers of Europe were at war.

As Australians watched these events unfolding, prime minister Joseph Cook declared, ‘whatever happens, Australia is a part of the [British] Empire right to the full. Remember that when the Empire is at war, so is Australia at war’. All the resources of Australia were, according to Cook, ‘for the Empire, and the preservation and security of the Empire’.2

Australia’s small army and three-year-old navy, which had been established to defend Australia from its Asian neighbours, were now called upon to go to Europe to fight for the Mother Country. The federal government immediately pledged to place the Royal Australian Navy under the control of the British Admiralty. It also promised to raise a force of 20,000 men (a division) to send to any destination the British government required. Around Australia, men flocked to enlist, and within weeks newly formed brigades and battalions of the 1st Division, Australian Imperial Force (AIF), were marching proudly through the streets of major towns and cities, while crowds cheered.

On 1 November 1914, a fleet of ships carrying the 1st Division sailed from Perth. On board one of the ships was Charles Bean, a journalist from Australia’s largest newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald. Even though half-tone photographs were appearing in newspapers by 1914, the Sydney Morning Herald did not consider sending a specialist photographer to cover the war. Instead, Bean carried a small Vest Pocket Kodak camera, noted for its ability to fold flat when not being used.

Kodak saw an opportunity in the war, and advertised its Vest Pocket camera as the ‘Soldier’s Kodak’. A Sydney Morning Herald advertisement proclaimed, ‘Every soldier naturally wants to keep a lasting record of the brave part that he and his own company is playing in the Great War — and he can do it well and easily with the little Vest Pocket Kodak’. The Kodak had, ‘every advantage the soldier looks for’, and was ideal for taking photographs during training or ‘at the front’.3

At the same time, newspapers offered money for pictures of the action, and prize money for the best photographs. Kodak exploited this as well, advertising: ‘Win [money] with a Vest Pocket Kodak — The Soldier’s Kodak. Even a single photograph enlarged from a Vest Pocket Kodak negative may be worth £1,000’ [$2,000].4 The possibility of winning £1,000 was attractive to men who were being paid just over £2 ($4) a week. As a result of the compactness and affordability of the Soldier’s Kodak, and the financial incentives offered by newspapers, thousands of cameras were carried when the 1st Division sailed from Australia.

***

When the ice had melted sufficiently at Clarence Lagoon, Wilkins followed Stefansson’s instructions. With two companions, he sailed the North Star to the small settlement on Herschel Island, where he met Anderson, the leader of the Southern Party, who had the Mary Sachs. After discussing their individual needs, Anderson and Wilkins agreed to swap ships. Wilkins left Herschel Island on 11 August and, with a small crew, sailed the Mary Sachs north. He reached Cape Kellett on the west side of Banks Island 15 days later.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there was no sign of Stefansson. After a month making sledging journeys inland searching for him, Wilkins returned to the Mary Sachs to find:

the three men there: Stefansson, Storkenson and [Ole] Andreasen. They were fatter and more healthful than I had ever seen them before, yet they told us they had eaten nothing but meat for about three months before coming back to camp. Their rations gave out forty odd days before they reached land, but they were always able to shoot bears and seals and after reaching land they found deer and had killed and dried the meat of more than fifty. Besides living themselves from the meat, they have all their dogs with them and they never lost a thing on the ice.5

The combined parties built a hut in which to spend the winter. Just as Wilkins had previously thrown himself into the work of the travelling shows in South Australia, filming in Sydney and Europe, the Balkan War and the West Indies, he now relished the idea of arduous work on Banks Island, telling his parents, ‘I am only too anxious to further the interests of the expedition by assisting in whichever branch of science that I may have the opportunity.’6

During October and November 1914, Wilkins went hunting with Stefansson to stock up their food for the winter. Witnessing Wilkins adapt to the conditions, Stefansson echoed the description Bernard Grant had written two years earlier during the Balkan War:

I have never known anyone who worked harder than Wilkins. He would be cleaning the scraps of meat off the leg bones of a wolf before breakfast and scraping the fat from a bearskin up to bedtime at night. His diaries were filled with information about the specimens he gathered, his fingers were stained with the photographic chemicals used in the development of his innumerable plates and films, his mind was always alert and his response always cheerful when a new task was proposed.7

The party spent the next six months at Cape Kellett. During the winter, Wilkins wrote a long letter to his parents, which he planned to post when he returned to the Canadian mainland. In it, he revelled in the hard work, and took pride in his achievements for the sake of the achievement alone:

… while hard at work the time soon passes; by hard work I do not mean that we are actually labouring, but we have scarcely an idle moment. While not preparing to go, or going somewhere, or coming back, there is always something of scientific value to study or collect and for the long winter nights I have already a collection of over 100 birds and small animals to skin and stuff, and tiring of this, much information to gather from the many useful books which we have with us and in every way it is a most educational time of life.*

[* In June 1918, Charles Bean found a French carrier pigeon, dead of exhaustion from flying among the shell bursts on the Western Front. Knowing Wilkins was a self-taught taxidermist, Bean gave it to him to stuff. It is now on display at the Australian War Memorial. Relic 10638.]

He finished the letter by thanking his parents: [Wilkins was not to know it, but his father had died three months before the letter was written.]

For all of this I am exceedingly thankful, but what is most consoling to me is that I have been able to do my duty as a man faithfully and meet with success. For those principles and training, I sincerely thank you dear parents and trust that the time will soon come when I can see you and thank you personally.8

With the coming of spring, Stefansson ordered Wilkins to return south and collect the North Star from the Southern Party, as per his original instructions. To ensure Anderson would relinquish the ship, Stefansson gave Wilkins a letter of authority, making his wishes clear. Wilkins, never missing an opportunity to let his parents know he was making something of himself, explained that the letter ‘shows how much confidence Mr Stefansson has in me’.9

Stefansson did not want to give up the Mary Sachs either. So he instructed Wilkins to take Natkusiak and James Crawford, an engineer from Stefansson’s party, to the southern tip of Banks Island, and then make a sledge journey south-east, across sea ice, to the north coast of Canada. Wilkins’ diary indicates he relished the challenge of leading the small team over such a demanding journey. The three men set out on 25 April 1915.

On the same day, on the other side of the world, the Anzacs were landing at a small cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula, in Turkey.

***

Originally, the expeditionary force that sailed from Australia was to reach England via the Suez Canal. Famously, the men were disembarked at Egypt and drilled in the desert before being sent to the Gallipoli Peninsula, where the Turks, who had allied themselves with Germany, were denying the British navy access to the Black Sea. On the day that went on to become revered in Australia, troops from Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, France, and India landed at Gallipoli in an attempt to dislodge the Turkish forces.

Charles Bean, still travelling with the AIF, carefully recorded and wrote about the landing. But his stories were considered dull and inclined to include too much unnecessary information, while the despatches of other correspondents were more colourful and made for exciting reading. Writing about the landing, Bean avoided the stirring descriptions of the action and, instead, described the events in detail:

The summit … sends out a series of long ridges, running south-westward, with steep gullies between them, very much like the hills and gullies about North Sydney. They are covered with low scrub, very similar to a dwarfed gum tree: its chief difference is that there are no big trees, but many precipices and sheer slopes of gravel. One ridge comes down to the sea at a small bay … and ends in two knolls about a 100 feet [30m] high, one at each point of the bay … The men did not wait to be sent, but wherever they landed they simply rushed straight up the steep slopes.10

Contributing to the same newspaper, English correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett stirred the emotions of Australians by writing:

The boats had almost reached the beach when a party of Turks entrenched ashore opened a terrible fusillade with rifles and a Maxim [machine-gun] … The Australians rose to the occasion. They did not wait for orders or for the boats to reach the beach, but sprang into the sea, formed a sort of rough line, and rushed the enemy’s trenches. Their magazines were uncharged, so they just went in with cold steel.11

The hard-fought, and ultimately unsuccessful, campaign to take the Gallipoli Peninsula lasted eight months. As winter approached, the Allied Forces were evacuated in December and sent to Europe.

***

Wilkins and his two companions made the 800-kilometre journey from Banks Island to Bernard Harbour, Canada, in 25 days. In terms of polar travel over sea ice, it was an amazing accomplishment.

In addition to Wilkins’ competence in Arctic travel, another aspect of his character began to emerge during the trip: he began to articulate his search for the true meaning of civilisation. When he stayed briefly with an Eskimo family, he observed, ‘If their language had not been strange and their dress so peculiar, one would have scarcely known that they were not amongst our own people in some out-of-the-way country place.’ It was difficult to understand, Wilkins reasoned, how, without the advantages of civilised society, these people ‘who are supposed to be the lowest on the scale’ could be so happy living under the conditions they did. ‘One not only wonders whether we are the better off for the so-called advances, but whether they really exist.’12

At Bernard Harbour, Wilkins presented Stefansson’s letter to Anderson, authorising Wilkins to commandeer the North Star. Anderson refused to hand over the ship, stating that he was in charge of the Southern Party and not bound to obey Stefansson’s orders. Anderson noted in his diary that Stefansson ‘seems to have hypnotized Wilkins into believing whatever he says is law and gospel’.13

While Wilkins waited at Bernard Harbour, seeking a resolution to the conflict with Anderson, a traveller brought two astounding pieces of news. Stefansson had left Banks Island, and was camped further along the Alaskan coast. Wilkins’ trip to get the North Star had been unnecessary.

The other news, which was perhaps more remarkable, was that all of Europe was at war. Hundreds of thousands of men were being killed as the German army pushed west towards Paris and east towards Moscow. ‘This amount of news in less than five minutes, after twelve months of isolation was staggering’, Wilkins later commented. Using the opportunity of being able to post mail, he wrote to his parents, ‘What terrible news we heard of the war. It must be dreadfully unsettled in Europe now.’