“As the wind remained invariably fixed at east by south, I continued to stand to the south, and on the seventeenth, between eleven and twelve o’clock we crossed the Antarctic Circle in the latitude of 66 degrees 36 minutes 30 seconds south. The weather was now become tolerably clear, so that we could see several leagues around us”The first mariner to cross the Antarctic Circle, James Cook, 17 January, 1773, taken from ‘A voyage towards the South Pole and Round the World‘. London 1777.

In the Antarctic summer of 1773/74 Commander James Cook returned on the Resolution to circumnavigate Antarctica for the first time thereby commencing 230 years of fascination, exploration and discovery, an allure that continues just as strongly with modern day adventurers and growing numbers of eco-tourists.

Fuelling this interest are the astonishing stories and achievements of explorers such as Mawson, Bellingshausen, Cook, Shackleton, Ross and Dumont d’Urville, to name a few, cementing the foundation stone of what is now a continent truly shared by the collective nations of the world as a place of peaceful scientific research and cooperation.

Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest continent. The average elevation is 2,300 metres – 7,546 feet; in Australia it is 340 metres – 1,115 feet by way of comparison. Despite containing 70 percent of the world’s freshwater, much of Antarctica is a desert, with the annual snow accumulation over much of East Antarctica being the equivalent of less than two inches of rainfall.

No land based vertebrate animals inhabit Antarctica and only very limited plant life can withstand this harsh climate and the winter and summer seasons that bring continuous hours of darkness and light respectively. Much however has been written on the spectacular array of sea life that abounds in the surrounding ocean. Large numbers of whales feed on the rich marine life, especially krill. Six species of seals (including the crab eater, elephant, and leopard) and about 12 species of birds live and breed in the Antarctic. The most prominent inhabitant of the Antarctic is the penguin. A flightless bird, it lives on the pack ice and in the oceans around Antarctica and breeds on the land or ice surfaces along the coast.

Antarctica has some seven million cubic miles of ice, representing some 90 percent of the world’s total. The ice averages one and a half miles in thickness (7,100 feet-2,164 metres), with the thickest ice being almost three miles thick (15,7000 feet-4,785 metres)