Sir Hubert WilkinsPrint Page

The Sir Hubert Wilkins Memorial Visitors Centre commemorates the Australian polar explorer, pilot, scientist, writer and photographer Sir Hubert Wilkins, who was born at nearby Mount Bryan East in 1888.

Outdoor story boards share insights into Sir Hubert Wilkins’ fascinating life story and displays inside the visitor centre tell in greater detail the story of Sir Hubert’s adventures.

Sir George Hubert Wilkins MC & Bar (1888 - 1958) was an Australian polar explorer, ornithologist, pilot, soldier, geographer and photographer.

Born George Hubert Wilkins at Mount Bryan East in South Australia on October 31st, 1888, he became first an electrical engineer, and subsequently an early photographer. These skills led him into Arctic and Antarctic exploration, and he became the companion of Vilhjalmur Steffanson and Sir Ernest Shackleton on several expeditions between 1913 and Shackleton`s death at the beginning of 1922.

Enlisting in the Australian Flying Corps in 1916, as soon as he found out there was a war on, George Wilkins became Australia`s official war-cinematographer on the Western Front. Subsequently as a pioneer aviator, he was a participant in the first England-Australia air race of 1919, pioneered aviation in the Antarctic, and was knighted in 1928 for the first flight across the North Polar ice-cap.

He was a pioneer anthropologist in the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1923, a pioneer submarine explorer of polar regions in the 1930s and eventually consultant on Arctic survival to the American government and military.

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