Every avenue of scientific work was not yet closed. Even the routine of meteorological and magnetic work was adding in no slight degree to the sum of human knowledge. Our short mile of rocks still held some geological secrets, and there were biological discoveries yet to make. A wireless telegraphic station had at last been established, and we could confidently expect communication with the outside world at an early date. These were some of the obvious assurances which no one had the heart to think about at first; and then there was always our comradeship, most enduring of all.

— Mawson, Home of the Blizzard

The hut was not so cold the second winter and we were not so crowded … But the wind was as unvarying as ever, the food we knew too well in every possible combination, and we felt badly the need of occasional entertainment with people not subject to our routine or monotonous climate. We came to accept our life as the normal and an effort of the imagination was needed to see oneself in a world supplied with grass and friendly weather and modern plumbing.

— Frank Bickerton in a BBC broadcast, 1927

See the Antarctic perils [PDF]. © Mawson Antarctic Collection, South Australian Museum