South Africa’s rich involvement in the Antarctic is preserved by means of documents, personal narratives, photographs etc.
Over the past few years Antarctic Legacy of South Africa has been collecting these documents, personal narratives, photographs etc. for archival purposes. In most cases material needs to be digitised and can only then be uploaded onto the ALSA online open access archive/repository. ALSA has gone the extra mile to get hold of (and digitise) South Africa’s National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE) team photos. In some cases we could not get hold of original team photos and voluntary SANAE team members took photo of these team photos, that is framed and currently inside the SANAE IV base. These photos of photos tend to be extremely poor quality.
We encourage previous team members to come in contact with us, supplying the original (high quality) photos – which can then replace the low quality photos.
With this process ALSA, together with the help of previous team members, can improve the quality of our online archive which preserves South Africa’s Antarctic Legacy for future generations and for future humanities and social science research.
Thank you Cornelia Oberholzer (Space Weather Engineer of SANAE53) for supplying ALSA with this new version of the SANAE53 team photo.
Cornelia is now married to Philip Mey (HF Radar Engineer of SANAE52) and I am looking forward hearing more about your Antarctic love story.
Anche Louw, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, 19 November 2018.
