Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2013L01343:front:0:p27
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2013L01343
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 68650–71277

Nimrod expedition, the designs incorporated the need for wind resistance and insulation from the cold, with the convenience of being portable and straightforward to erect. The final design was a pyramid on a square base. The prefabricated huts were obtained from building companies in four Australian states. Two pyramid huts, one small hip-roofed hut and another smaller hut were acquired.

The chosen site for the Main Hut that would have to serve as living quarters, workshop, storeroom and kennels, was a level section of rocky ground. The Main Hut was quickly erected, to minimise the time its eventual occupants had to sleep in tents. The completion of the hut was an opportune time to unfurl the Union Jack, upon which Mawson claimed possession of the area for the British Empire. He would repeat this ceremony in other places, and eventually named the sectors George V Land and Queen Mary Land, and Wild would perform a similar ceremony at the end of the year at the Western Base. While the claims were not formally commissioned or acted upon by the British government, they helped to lay the foundation of the formal claim two decades on, which established the Australian Antarctic Territory.

The Main Hut was a combination of a pyramid hut that, with the change of plan, would have to accommodate eighteen men, and a small hip-roofed hut which was originally intended as the third base but instead was attached and used as a workshop. It was reinforced by stacked boxes of stores on the three sides facing the prevailing weather. On the west side of the hut a makeshift hangar was annexed, made from packing cases. In the first two months, drift snow buried the hut to its roof, and its occupants improvised caulking to keep the tiny ice particles at bay, by plugging gaps between boards with rags, hessian and socks.

The Magnetograph House was erected in March 1912 on a cleared site approximately 400 m northeast of the Main Hut, where the party had to use explosives to clear and flatten the site. Their first attempt was blown over by strong winds. Large rocks were moved to line the walls, and sheepskins and hessian attached to the roof. Some of the materials (copper nails and the door) were salvaged from the Clyde, whose shipwrecked crew the Aurora had met on Macquarie Island. It was used to house the magnetograph equipment used by Eric Webb to measure variations in the South Magnetic Pole.

The Absolute Magnetic Hut – used in association with, and as a reference point for, observations made in the Magnetograph House – was the other main structure achieved in 1912. This building, made from scraps of