The Antarctic Legacy of South Africa Project was invited by Hanlie Gouws of the Mountain Club of South Africa to give a talk to its Cape Town Section on the work that the project is undertaking. Anché Louw and I went to the section’s weekly meeting on Friday 8 July along with Hennie Louw (Sealer of the 70th Marion Overwintering Team). About 60 people attended the meeting and really enjoyed the 45-minute talk on the work of the project. A slideshow of old and new photographs was shown as well as the famous SANAE video made by Dave Scott, which can also be accessed through the archive on the ALSA web site.
The talk also covered a bit of background as to South Africa’s role in the Antarctic and at sub-Antarctic islands. One of the highlights was that J.J. ‘Hannes’ La Grange, the first South African to reach the South Pole, was also a member of the Mountain Club of South Africa. This fact enabled me to show how everybody has a story to tell and that people are linked in many different areas of interest. With the material on Hannes I was able to explain the process of identifying material until the entry is added to the database. Photographs of Hannes la Grange’s widow with the material ALSA has collected from her, as well as of a few of his original documents and images were also included in the presentation.
Nerina de Villiers, an artist who has been to Antarctica, had her paintings on display. Anché Louw had time to chat with her before and after our talk and will be writing an article about her time at SANAE (South Africa’s Antarctic base) as an artist during 2007 as part of the takeover team. Some of her recent Antarctic paintings will then be featured on this website.
We received good feedback from the talk and a few people approached us afterwards, wanting to know more detail about overwintering trips to Antarctica. What is also great is that we met Nerina de Villiers and Nigel Basil who will make their material (images and documents) available. We were also grateful that we obtained the details of three more SANAP team members who we can contact to see if they have any material available.
Material that was used for the talk to the Mountain Club is all digitally preserved on the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa archive and can be accessed through our website at www.antarcticlegacy.org.
Stellenbosch University, 18 July 2016
