Ice melt reveals Mawson's plane

An historic monoplane - the first Vickers aircraft ever made and a relic of Sir
Douglas Mawson's 1911-14 expedition - has been found in Antarctica thanks to
freakish luck after a three-year search.
An Australian heritage carpenter stumbled on the remains of the craft on New Year's
Day at Camp Denison, its cast iron framework revealed by an unusually low tide and
reduced ice cover.
"It's a remarkable find in remarkable circumstances," chairman of the Mawson's Huts
Foundation David Jensen said.
"We began the search three summers ago and thought we might have a reasonable chance
of finding it with all the equipment provided to us by sponsors."
Nearly a century after it was abandoned by Mawson, the old Vickers was spotted
sitting among rocks in a few centimetres of water during one of the lowest tides
recorded at Commonwealth Bay.
"They would not have been found had the tide not been so low and the ice cover at
Cape Denison at its lowest for several years - it was a fluke find," Mr Jensen said
in a statement.
"The Vickers was an historic aircraft and part of Mawson's remarkable story of
Antarctic exploration."
The aircraft, built just eight years after the Wright brothers' first flight and the
first produced by the Vickers factory in Britain, was also the first to be taken to
a polar region.
It never flew in the Antarctic because its wings had been damaged in a test flight
in Adelaide, but Mawson used it as an "air tractor" to tow sledges and abandoned it
when he left Cape Denison in 1913.
Mr Jensen said the aircraft was still sitting on the ice in 1931 and was spotted
again when ice melted in 1975.
It was found by a heritage carpenter, Mark Farrell of Hobart, who was looking for a
suitable landing spot for a cruise ship to bring visitors to the historic huts at
the site in January, he said.
A team of 10 from the Mawson's Huts Foundation arrived in early December for a
six-week stay to work on the conservation of the huts. They had planned to spend
this week using high-tech equipment to search for the craft's remains under the ice.
"Luck was on our side, without a doubt," field leader of the group, Dr Tony Stewart,
said in the statement.
The Australian Antarctic Division will decide whether to return the remains of the
Vickers to Australia for specialist treatment or leave them at Cape Denison.