Scotts Last Expedition.

Late last week a few families took an excursion to the Australian National Maritime Museum. I was trying to find an exhibition on the Everest Climb, when I stumbled across this one.
I thought, that would be a good one to see. We hadn't studied much on Antartica or Scott for that matter, so we should see it.
I then noted that the Exhibition was soon to be finishing.
So I asked a couple of homeschooling Mums would they like to join us.
We began our adventure early in the morning. We rose early. Dermot dropped Brid & I to the ferry. We caught it and then walked the 5 minute trip to the station. We purchased our tickets and selected our Carriage. We were meeting 2 other families along the way, so we chose a spot in the train that would best suit us all- with 3 adults, 3 teen girls and 4 young men. Each party joined us and our adventure began.
Soon someone was saying are we there yet. Well 2 hours later we were there.
The Museum is at Darling harbour so we walked from Central Station to the Big water playground at Darling Harbour. There the children ate lunch and we chatted and ate lunch. Umm, we had a little incident with a seagull snatching a sandwich from one of the ladies hands. All We saw was a scurry of birds on the ground and wondered what had happened until, " they look that straight from my hand".  It was a little scary.
Anyway, we moved on to the exhibition. It was rather an amazing exhibit. I knew very little about Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his Expedition.
He travelled on the ship the Terra Nova, from Cardiff, Wales stopping several times along the way. His last stop was NewZealand to prepare for the trip to the South Pole.
The food, the luggage thet took was incredible, but nothing could prepare them for what they would come up against.
There was another explorer as well- Amundsen. He had reached the South Pole. Scotts' exploration was regarding the Emporer Penguin. The trip had the best naturalists ans scientists of the day. Many were interviewed but few were accepted. This is what the Maritime Museum wrote up about the Exhibit:

Scott and his companions outside there hut

-One hundred years after its tragic end, the definitive story of British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica is being told in this major international exhibition.
Scott's Last Expedition reunites the artefacts used by Scott and his team together with scientific specimens collected during the 1910-1913 expedition for the first time since their use in Antarctica. When Scott set off on his second journey to explore the Antarctic on board the former whaler Terra Nova, he could not have predicted the tragic ending. He and his four companions died on the return trek from the South Pole two years later, having lost the race to be the first.
To commemorate the centenary of the expedition and celebrate its achievements the Natural History Museum, London, the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand and the Antarctic Heritage Trust, New Zealand, have collaborated to create this international travelling exhibition. The premier venue for this unique exhibition is the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, New South Wales-

It was a very moving exhibit. There were various replicas and originals of the clothes and artefacts of the last journey. There was also a full sized replication of the hut that the 20 or so men called home for 3 years. It had positions on the floor for were beds were the table the heater the laboratory etc.
The part that was most sad were the diary entries, of Scott as he and his companions lay dying in there tent many many miles from the base nut. The weather was extreme, the cold biting and there food had run out. There were found 5 weeks later and there resting place is Antartica -were they died.
.
He thought there work would go missing and no one would know of there blight or there discoveries.

This Expedition took place for a theory of the embryo of an Emporer Penguin egg. It was many years later discounted.

So we walked away, enlightened , saddened and pleased we had made the effort to see this exhibit.
A coffee and afternoon tea was in order before we walked the 20 minutes back to Central station for our train home- 2 and half hours away.