DETOUR:

Who was the first person to visit Antarctica?

If you ask seven different people, you could get seven different answers.

With the first recorded expeditions having happened within the last 200 years - it’s a remarkably contentious bit of recent history.

However in 1973, there was a discovery that upended the understood stories of the early continent:

An arrowhead on King George Island, Antarctica. A week later, they found a second.

500-year old stone artifacts of South American origin, older than Columbus - they pointed to an exciting idea that people could have been visiting the continent for far longer than first thought.

In investigating the arrowheads I spoke with the 'Indiana Jones of the Antarctic', Ruben Stehberg who was put in charge of investigating the stones.

It's a topic I discussed with ocean rowers Fiann Paul and Colin O’Brady whose attempts to cross the Drake Passage might have followed a similar route as the projectiles.

Perhaps the strangest conversations I had was with the archaeologists commissioned during a Chilean dictatorship to go look for more arrowheads. It was a curious fact that Pinochet’s regime, with a record of repressing indigenous populations, suddenly had developed an interest in Amerindian artefacts when they appeared within the Antarctic circle.

They had a more cynical view of how the arrowheads got there.

Those exploring the earliest stories uncovered a surprising picture of the white continent, unlike anything you might have imagined. They pieced together a sketch of a boomtown in the Subantarctic.

Populated by New Zealand sealers, indentured Amerindians, playboy Americans - early Antarctica was very different place to the Heroic Era depictions.

Among the most interesting discoveries was the skull of a South American woman.

She holds a special place in Antarctica as not only one of the first people to have ever visited Antarctica, but also to die there.

For 60 years, Antarctica has been governed by a set of international rules.

The Antarctic Treaty is the rule book for countries who want to operate south of the 60th Parallel. For an international treaty it is surprisingly simple: no weapons, no war, no mineral extraction from the frozen continent.

New Zealand was one of the twelve original signatories.

In most parts it was a way to foster cooperation between science programmes and freeze tensions over historic territorial claims. In this way, it has been hugely successful.

But as year by year the continent becomes more crowded, these rules begin to strain.

Tourism not research is the main reason people come to Antarctica, with leisure visitors outweighing scientists 13 to 1.

The treaty was formed at a time when the biggest concerns were nuclear war and mineral wealth. One wonders what an Antarctic treaty would have looked like if climate change and Global Warming were on the agenda, back in 1959?

As new clauses are added so sets in motion a countdown until they need to be reviewed.

In 2048, 50 years on, this ban on mineral exploitation comes up for debate. It's a date that gives polar programmes the jitters.

Some see it as a point when the continent could be opened up to new commercial interests, and a race for fossil fuels, rare earth metals and even drinking water.

As countries such as South Africa and Australia, with large Antarctic programmes begin to face challenges from climatic change, might they begin looking South to solve them?

In 2018 During Cape Town’s drought, one South African salvage company proposed a plan to source drinking water from Antarctica. Could we see icebergs brought to Africa?

What happens if you fall pregnant in Antarctica?

This is a controversial question for a variety of reasons. Firstly, because it acknowledges the existence of sex in Antarctica. Secondly, because it results in the programme member being ejected from the continent and flown back to Christchurch.

Programme members from the New Zealand, US, Australian and the British Antarctic Survey are all subject to medical checks pre-departure. Pregnancy is a disqualifying condition from service in Antarctica.

However, this didn’t stop eleven children from being born there between 1978 and 84.

In the Argentine and Chilean stations on the Antarctic Peninsula, there was a period in which having children was not prohibited but encouraged.

But what sparked this Austral Summer of Love? The first was Emilio Palma, now 43, born on Argentina’s Esperanza Base.

But where is he now? And what did it do to his family?

One person who might know was photographer Horacio Viallobos, because he was there.

After a long, uncomfortable C-130 plane ride to Esperanza Base, which he shared with war criminal Guillermo Suárez Mason, he was tasked with taking pictures of the young family.

You can see the images today in the Archives of Antarctica New Zealand. A glamorous 1970s couple Captain Jorge Pama and Sylvia Morella in snow gear hold a baby that looks like it had just been plucked from the ice. This was young Emilio.

The photo call was for the Videla regime, which Horacio had no love for - he called it a “silly event”.

The Videla regime collapsed in 1982, as did much of the structures established by the militarist Junta.

However the Palma family continued to live with this extraordinary story in the family, in Buenos Aires.

As Juan Lucho says his older brother is a “special person”.

In spite of the glamor of having an Antarctican in the family, life has not always been easy.

If Antarctica was a country it would probably have the lowest crime rate on earth.
With a seasonal summer population of around 5000, the average Antarcan is highly educated and motivated. Mostly because everyone coming to the continent is there for a specific role or purpose.

Research positions often not only require candidates to have a PHD but to be at the very top of their field professionally. It may be one of the most challenging places to live on the planet but it is often the pinnacle of an academic career. You’d expect that nobody in their right mind would do anything to jeopardise their place there.

Which is fortunate, considering the complete lack of law enforcement.

Antarctica is the only continent on earth without any police, courts or jails.

There isn’t a single jail cell for the entire 14.2 million km landmass.

However this doesn’t mean there is no crime. Just that the continent is woefully under prepared for it.

Last year the Office of the Inspector General opened 45 criminal and civil investigations into the US Antarctic Program and National Science Foundation. These were mostly alleged fraud, misclaimed expenses and plagiarism of scientific research. White collar crime in the white continent.

Serious crime where researchers or contractors pose a danger to one another is extremely rare.

So when, in December 2000, it was determined a young scientist had been poisoned at the South Pole Base it was cause for alarm.

More alarming still was the fact that he had been dead for seven months, and the people who had last seen him alive had long since left the country.

Rodney Marks from Geelong Victoria was an astrophysicist who died under mysterious circumstances during the overwinter. His case ended up in the Christchurch Coroner’s court as New Zealand’s gateway to Antarctica. It was one that would stretch out for a decade and meet many unexpected obstacles.

There may be no courts Antarctica, but it is just as difficult to find justice for supposed crimes that happened on the continent.

Particularly when not all parties involved can agree on whose jurisdiction actually counts in a continent without law.

The early 80s was the era of Nuclear Free New Zealand.

A generation of plucky Kiwis had taken to the streets and the high seas to protest the arrival of nuclear powered ships and the testing of bombs in the Pacific.

It’s an iconic bit of New Zealand history, when we stood up against the big guys. It was a David and Goliath story of a grass-roots movement in rubber dinghies turning stopping warships in the Waitemata Harbour.

But at the same time as small ships were sailing to picket Mururoa there was a different nuclear cargo passing through the ports of Lyttleton.

Over nine years, 350 tonnes of radioactive antarctic topsoil were shipped through New Zealand. With this were seven faulty reactor cores.

These were the remnants of Antarctica’s little known nuclear secret: PM3A.

Better known to those on the continent as “Nukey Poo”, the portable reactor provided power for McMurdo Station in the Ross Sea. Or it was supposed to. After almost 500 faults and a potentially dangerous leak into the earth shielding, it was abandoned in 1972.

The cleanup lasted for over a decade.

But with the only logistic routes for recovering the reactor leading through New Zealand, which had recently decided to move away from atomic energy, the USAP faced some difficult questions.

That was before Antarctic workers, including four New Zealanders, began reporting health issues consistent with radiation exposure.

Now - 50 years after the reactor was finally switched off and 40 years after a huge clear up operation - a kaupapa on whether New Zealanders were properly warned of the dangers is about to be heard in New Zealand courts.

Along with a Waitangi tribunal hearing, Assistant Base Mechanic Peter Breen has also been appealing for medallic recognition for NZDF workers on the continent.

Like the Special Service Medal Nuclear Testing awarded to sailors who visited French bomb sites in Mururoa, he wants the risks recognised.

Records are a hard thing to keep track of even in a white continent with relatively little history.

If you asked an Argentinian, a Russian, an American and a Kiwi to name the first person to visit Antarctica, you'd get three different answers.

The Russians claim Fabian von Bellingshausen is their man. Sailing south through New Zealand's fiords in 1820, he was first to see the ice of Terra Incognita.

Meanwhile the Americans claim John Davis was the first to step foot on the ice, roughly a year or so later at the Antarctic peninsula.

According to Aotearoa’s ministry of culture and heritage, the name of New Zealander Alexander Von Tunzelmann is given as the first confirmed person to land on continental Antarctica.

Part of a Norwegian sealing trip, even those on the boat don’t even acknowledge who was first off the boat. Or if Tunzelmann was even on the landing party.

Some suggest Polynesian navigators could have seen the ice as early as the 7th century according to the legends of Hui Te Rangiora.

They’re all different versions of the same story: we got here first.

In 2019 a different record attempt caught the attention of the world. It was the most controversial since Amundsen’s race against Scott.

Colin O’Brady skied solo, without resupply across the continent for 54 days 1500km. An impressive act and - according to him - a world first.

O’Brady’s “Impossible First” led to a surprising reaction from the normally genteel club of polar exploration.

From angry op-eds in the New York Times to a scathing review titled “The problem with Colin O’Brady” appeared in the National Geographic, the claim upset a lot of people.

Børge Ousland called it “dishonest, if not worse”. He should know, considering he was the first person to cross the continent solo from ocean to ocean, a distance twice that of O’Brady.

Ousland is one of ten skiers to have crossed Antarctica solo. Yet again, which crossing counts is a matter of debate.