This Accursed Land: An epic solo journey across Antarctica

By Lennard Bickel

Sir Edmund Hillary described Douglas Mawson’s epic and punishing journey across 600 miles of unknown Antarctic wasteland as ‘the greatest story of lone survival in polar exploration’.

This Accursed Land tells that story; how Mawson declined to join Captain Robert Scott’s ill-fated British expedition and instead lead a three-man husky team to explore the far eastern coastline of the Antarctic continent.

But the loss of one member and most of the supplies soon turned the hazardous trek into a nightmare. Mawson was trapped 320 miles from base with barely nine days’ food and nothing for the dogs.

Eating poisoned meat, watching his body fall apart, crawling over chasms and crevices of deadly ice, his ultimate and lone struggle for survival, starving, poisoned, exhausted and indescribably cold, is an unforgettable story of human endurance.  

Grippingly told by Lennard Bickel, this is the most extraordinary journey from the brutal golden age of Antarctic exploration. Perfect for fans of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air or Michael Palin’s Erebus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo History
• Release date: Sep 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800325487

Lennard Bickel

Lennard Bickel (1913–2002) was a science writer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the 1960s. He was the only Australian journalist invited to witness the 1969 Apollo II moon landing from the launch site. In 1970, Bickel was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship in order to write Rise Up To Life, a biography of Howard Florey, who pioneered the development of penicillin. He subsequently wrote a number of other books that highlight remarkable human achievement: little-known epics of triumph over diversity, including This Accursed Land (1977), about Douglas Mawson's struggle to stay alive in the Antarctic, and Triumph Over Darkness: The Life of Louis Braille (1988). In 1974 he was made a Knight of the Order of Mark Twain for his biography of Norman Borlaug, the Nobel-winning humanitarian scientist.