This Accursed Land by Lennard Bickel

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges, front cover right tail corner, now protected with book tape. Inside covers and half-title page are sunned. Foredges are sunned. Body text and binding are still very good.

Sir Douglas Mawson's epic and tragic journey across 600 miles of unknown Antarctic wasteland has been described by Sir Edmund Hillary as 'the greatest story of lone survival in Antarctic exploration'.

This Accursed Land tells the story of how Mawson declined to join Scott's ill-fated British expedition to lead the Australasian party and his three-man team, which set out to explore the far eastern coastline of the Antarctic continent. The loss of one of his men and most of his supplies turned a hazardous trek into a nightmare. Mawson and his colleague, Mertz, were trapped 320 miles from base with only nine days' food and nothing for the dogs. They lived on the journey back by slaughtering their starving animals and eating what is now known to have been poisoned meat.

Mawson's ultimate and lone struggle for survival after Mertz's descent into madness - starving, poisoned, exhausted, and indescribably cold - is one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of exploration. When he arrived back, his weight had reduced from fifteen stone to eight stone.