In their own words

As you know the outbreak of war was disastrous to the Expedition — Neither the film or the book has paid a cent and I have had to spend £2000 almost of my own money to keep things going.

— Mawson to Charles Dovers, 29 December 1915

See a letter written by Mawson to the Prime Minister on October 1916 [PDF] © Mawson Antarctic Collection, South Australian Museum.

Unfortunately, at the very moment when the train was well laid for the realisation of these assets, the Great War broke out, and all arrangements fell through.

— Mawson’s 1921 report to the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science, explaining the AAE’s debt problem and the failure to publish the AAE Scientific Reports