A new Antarctic book about early Scott Base, Ross Island. Its building, expansion, polar transport, and life in the cold.

Scott Base Antarctica
the early years
A science technician’s view of the years 1960 and 63, including the Base’s growth from its construction and through two major extensions.

Don Webster

RRP:   Published: November 2019

ISBN:  978-0-473-45852-2

Format: Paperback 210 x 250 mm, 268 pages

Contact comments below or Don Webster, donweb@xtra.co.nz

Back cover blurb...
For two periods in the early 1960s young science technician Don Webster wintered over in Antarctica, helping build extensions to the New Zealand station at Scott Base. It was barely two years after Sir Edmond Hillary’s support of the 1957-58 Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

Don describes in detail the design and construction of the buildings of the base, providing an invaluable historical record of both the physical base itself and also of daily life there in the summers and winters of those early years. Storms, severe cold and aircraft accidents are described in vivid detail.

The book has 370 photographs many never before published.

DON WEBSTER retired from a career in electronics and computing now lives in the lower North Island, New Zealand with his books, cat, and computers, not necessarily, he says, in that order. During his frequent travels he has spent many weeks at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England, and the archives at the Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada.  He has visited many aircraft museums and second-hand bookshops in Canada, England and the USA.

For info about puchasing the book please Email donweb@xtra.co.nz

The next postings will be excerpts from the book.

Travels ended, Book completed

My travelling days are over. In 2017 while in Cambridge spent three days in the hospital and in 2018 I came home in a wheelchair. I am a slow learner but I eventually decided that overseas travel was no longer an option. So what to do?

I then devoted my time to finish writing a book on the early days at Scott Base on Ross Island in Antarctica. After much writing sorting photos, editing by myself and friends in November 2018 I decided to go to print. I would have the book out by Christmas and have all presents solved.  No way!  After another twelve months of professional editing and layout, not to mention the cover design and indexing finally today, 27 November 2019, I received eight boxes of my book. As I promised my family they will have a copy for Christmas. Luckily last year I didn’t say what Christmas.

The book tells about the building of Scott Base, the individual buildings, and the two major expansion. The book describes travelling to the Antarctic in the little wooden Endeavour and flying a propeller-driven Super Constellation. The winters and the how we moved around – land sea and air transport – and some description of aircraft crashes and rescues. Finally I give a comparison of how the bases have changed over the last 100 years using Scott's Cape Evans base, 1913, the original Scott Base in 1963, and the new Scott base as it was in 2013.  Interspersed throughout the book are stories from my two winters in 1960 and 1963.

I will talk more about the book in future blogs.