Sir Hubert WilkinsPrint Page

The park, featuring a sundial and book, commemorates the achievements of Sir Hubert Wilkins.

Sir George Hubert Wilkins MC and 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 United States of America government and military.

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