00:01Music
00:12Pioneered by the courage and enterprise of Australians,
00:15a million square miles of the Antarctic continent has been handed by the King
00:18to the control of the Commonwealth government.
00:21These gigantic areas of snow and ice were explored on three occasions
00:25by Sir Douglas Mawson aboard the Discovery.
00:27His companions included Captain Frank Hurley,
00:30who brought these pictures back from the frozen south.
00:33The explorers found that locked in the grip of perpetual ice
00:36are minerals of tremendous value.
00:38They include coal, a relic of the pre-ice age
00:41when tropical forests covered what is now a frozen wilderness,
00:44gold and iron.
00:46When the treasures of warmer climates are exhausted,
00:48the world must eventually turn to nature's gigantic icebox for its supplies.
00:53Then this newest Australian territory,
00:55now deserted save for seals and penguins and the roving whalers,
00:59who are building up a huge Antarctic industry,
01:02will come into its own.
01:03Antarctica is the new land of opportunity.
01:06Go south, young men, go south.
01:08But keep cool, there's plenty of building allotments to choose from.
01:11Some of the local boys and their flappers, er, flippers,
01:14come down to meet the boat.
01:15No, they're not interested in shares in ice cream mines,
01:18and it's no use refrigerator salesmen calling.
01:21So far, water's not laid on.
01:23But before you go cold on the idea,
01:26put a deposit on an acre or two in enderby land.
01:28The westerlies are slightly chilly in winter,
01:31but the place is certain to go ahead,
01:33especially if an avalanche comes along.
01:35A suggested site for a new capital city.
01:38The politicians can hibernate through the winter.
01:41There's no summer.
01:43It is more than a hundred years since roving British whalers
01:46first sighted parts of this polar continent.
01:49Eighty years later,
01:50Mawson and his fellow Australians,
01:51following the trail, penetrated further.
01:53And so, today, in this glittering land of the midnight sun,
01:57stands a lonely mast in a wilderness of fight.
02:00From it flutters that flag on which the sun never sets,
02:04the flag which, in every corner of the globe,
02:07immortalizes British courage and British enterprise.
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