Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2013L01343:front:0:p46
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2013L01343
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 117983–120833

used, the type of scientific equipment and the scientific data and samples collected.

     The intactness of the buildings as a group demonstrates their function during a particular and intense period of time. The weathering of the huts and the patination of the building fabric and of other artefacts serves as a gauge of time elapsed since the AAE. The Main Hut contains a clear and strong internal structure and an efficiently planned use of space which provided both the functional requirements of accommodating eighteen men and a strong sense of communal focus and camaraderie around the central table, so well documented in Hurley's photographs.

     Mawson's Huts Historic Site demonstrates the types of building uses, scientific equipment and artefacts typical of Heroic Era scientific and discovery expeditions. The use of verandahs and hipped roof form provides Mawson's Main Hut with distinct Australian design characteristics.

     The strength and clarity of the spaces and functional arrangements in the living section of the Main Hut are greater than that revealed in the plans of other surviving Heroic Era huts.

     The arrangement of bunks around the outside of the central communal area, reinforced as a focus by the raking pyramid ceiling, creates a spatial volume of great character.

     Mawson's Huts Historic Site is one of the small set of Heroic Era expedition bases which symbolise the first period of land-based scientific research and geographic discovery in Antarctica.

     The attributes are the same as criterion (A).

    E.  Aesthetic characteristics

    Mawson's Huts Historic Site is a cultural landscape that retains a sense of historic time and place. The weathering of the huts and the patination of the building fabric and of other artefacts has aesthetic value and serves as a gauge of time elapsed since the AAE and of the conditions endured by its members in this remote and hostile environment.

     The weathered buildings of the Mawson's Huts site, as well as the artefacts and the memorial cross, and their relationship to the vast Antarctic landscape around them with its snow and ice scapes, rocks and relentless winds, and the sea beyond, combine in creating an aesthetic entity conveying a strong sense of time and isolation.

     The external form of the Main Hut is comprised of pyramid and hip roofs over low external walls. The building has aesthetic value, sitting with great repose in the landscape, made even more dramatic with a build-up of snow around it. The two different room forms also express the change in the AAE's plans that brought them together in the first place.

     This sense of awe inspiring isolation experienced by the expeditioners was first demonstrated in the evocative images of the AAE photographer, Frank Hurley. Mawson's Huts Historic Site has continued