According to his obituary in The Times, "His loyalty to his friends, his gallantry... and the unembittered courage with which he continued to meet the difficulties of a world which gave little recognition in peace to men of his mould – leave to us who shared in one way or another his various life the memory of a rich, rewarding and abiding spirit".

[1] After the early deaths of both parents, Bickerton and his sister, Dorothea, became the wards of their maternal uncle, the neurologist Dr Edward Lawrence Fox (1859–1938), living at 9 Osborne Place in Plymouth, Devon.

There is no record of Bickerton ever having formally graduated, but around 1910 he went to work in one of the iron foundries in Bedford and, while resident in that town, he met and became friends with the Antarctic explorer Aeneas Mackintosh (a veteran of Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition).

Mawson had determined to take a Vicker's REP monoplane to undertake survey work and Bickerton was appointed as mechanical engineer with responsibility for the maintenance of this, the first powered aircraft in Antarctica.

After dropping a small party on Macquarie Island in order to establish a wireless relay station, the "Aurora" sailed for the Antarctic on 23 December and reached Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica on 8 January 1912.

Almost immediately, however, the machine became a cause for concern and, on the following day, the engine seized so abruptly that the propeller was smashed; with no spare-parts and with little or no time to effect repairs, the three men agreed to abandon the aeroplane and to proceed on foot.

Despite this disappointment, the following day, 5 December, marked an important milestone in Antarctic science, with the discovery of a 1 kg olivine-hypersthene – the first meteorite ever to be found in Antarctica.

Over the next few weeks, despite appalling weather conditions, Bickerton's three-man team man-hauled their sledges across approximately 1,600 miles (2,600 km) of previously unexplored territory, eventually returning to base-camp on 18 January 1913.

By the time that Mawson reached base-camp in early February, the "Aurora" had been forced to depart in order to avoid being iced-in and a relief party of six men, including Bickerton, had been left behind to search for the missing sledgers.

Having heard what Wild called "wondrous accounts of the possibility of making rapid and colossal fortunes in Portuguese East Africa by growing tobacco", the three men planned to become farmers.

Having spent some time in Paris with his friend, the artist Cuthbert Orde, he travelled in Newfoundland, where he joined a colony of ex-pats established by Antarctic veteran Captain Victor Campbell.

During the late 1920s, Bickerton regularly travelled between Newfoundland and England, combining the lives of a Canadian backwoodsman with that of a fashionable party-goer in the London of the Roaring Twenties.

In 1928, Bickerton abandoned his farm in Newfoundland and decided to invest capital in a company founded by the American equestrian and golfing champion, Marion Hollins.

Ultimately, he would become heavily involved in the development of the Pasatiempo Country Club in Santa Cruz, working closely with both Hollins and the world-famous golf-course designer, Dr Alister MacKenzie.

The acrimonious break-up of the affair saw Bickerton quarrel with his business partner and, with the onset of the Wall Street Crash, he eventually fled the US and returned to England, a disillusioned and unhappy man.

Having travelled from England to New York and then through British Columbia shooting grizzly bear, the trio sailed from the East Coast of America to South Africa on board a cargo ship.