In their own words

… Our days in Hobart were spent in sorting and checking the thousands of packages which littered the wharf, and wheeling them to the ship where they were taken on board. Here wharf-labourers stored them into the hold. Much had to be unpacked and divided into four parts, and then re-packed to supply the wants of four separate bases.

— Charles Laseron, South with Mawson

A vast crowd blockaded the wharf to give us a parting cheer … As we proceeded down the river … Hobart looked its best, with the glancing sails of pleasure craft skimming near the foreshores, and backed by the stately, sombre mass of Mount Wellington. The ‘land of strawberries and cream’, as the younger members of the Expedition had come to regard it, was for ever to live pleasantly in our memories, to be recalled a thousand times during the adventurous months which followed … A few miles lower down the channel, the Premier, and a number of other friends and well-wishers who had followed in a small steamer, bade us a final adieu … Behind lay a sparkling seascape and the Tasmanian littoral; before, the blue southern ocean heaving with an ominous swell …

— Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard

The Aurora sailed from Hobart for Antarctica via Macquarie Island on Saturday afternoon, having on board Dr Mawson and nearly half the members of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, the scientific instruments, and wireless telegraphy equipment, a large quantity of stores of all kinds, provisions, clothing, sledges, 266 tons of coal, etc …

— The Hobart Mercury, 4 December 1911