Sir Hubert WilkinsPrint Page

A cairn commemorates Sir Hubert Wilkins, pioneering Australian polar aviator and explorer, who was manager of Lincoln Ellsworth’s private United States expedition which departed Cape Town late in 1938 aboard the "Wyatt Earp".

After departure, Ellsworth informed Wilkins of his intention to claim for the United States any land that he might visit in Antarctica despite a pre-departure joint statement declaring no intention to claim any land in Antarctica. Wilkins resolved to reassert Australian sovereignty over the areas claimed by Mawson.

On 8 January 1939, he and fellow pilot J. H. Lymburner landed on the northernmost point of the Rauer Islands, flew the Australian flag and deposited it near a rock cairn with a record of the visit in a small aluminium container. He repeated this exercise on the following day at the southwestern end of the Vestfold Hills, and again on 11 January at what is now known as Walkabout Rocks, because of the copy of the Australian magazine Walkabout which he deposited with the Australian flag and record of visit. The latter, the only one of these three Wilkins sites subsequently located.

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