The Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins Australia's Unknown Hero

By Simon Nasht

THE BOOK

Sir Hubert Wilkins was born at Mount Bryan East, South Australia, on 31 October 1888, and was the thirteenth child of a South Australian sheep-farming family.

He went on to be a war correspondent, polar explorer, naturalist, geographer, climatologist, aviator, author, balloonist, war hero, reporter, secret agent, submariner and navigator.

In his day Hubert Wilkins was one of the most famous men in the world. He was a front-line photographer in World War I—and was twice decorated. He took the first ever film of battle, and took the first moving images from an aircraft. He was the first man to fly across the Arctic Ocean, the first to fly in the Antarctic—and the first to fly from America to Europe across the then unknown Arctic (the New York Times called this 'the greatest flight in history').

In a pause from his Antarctic expeditions of 1928 to 1930, Wilkins purchased a surplus World War I submarine for one dollar, renamed it Nautilus, and attempted to cruise beneath the ice to the North Pole.

When he died in 1958 he was buried at sea at the North Pole by the US Navy.

How can a man who achieved so much be so little remembered, not only in Australia, but his home state, South Australia!

For a transcript of an interview given by Simon Nasht on the ABC RAdio National's Book Show click here.

The publisher: Hachette Livre Australia.

For information on the author Simon Nasht click here.