Sir Hubert WilkinsPrint Page

The homestead was restored to commemorate Australian explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. The homestead was his birthplace.

The Regional Council of Goyder and the Australian Geographic Society felt that it was fitting that they honour such a great Australian. To this end, with financial support and inspiration from Mr. Dick Smith, the assistance of National Trust and the dedication and hard work of the Sir Hubert Wilkins Memorial Trust Committee (an all-volunteer body of interested people), the cottage of Sir Hubert's birthplace has been restored to its original condition. The project took many hours to complete but the Committee wanted to ensure a fitting memorial to an nearly unknown Australian legend.

Born George Hubert Wilkins at Mt 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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