Sidney Jeffryes
But he is best known for his service as the wireless officer at Cape Denison during the second year of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, from February 1913 to December 1913, under the command of explorer Douglas Mawson.
Jeffryes' service ended in September 1913, two months prior to the relief of the shore party, after he developed symptoms of paranoia and had to be relieved of his duties.
[citation needed] The Commonwealth of Australia Gazette records Jeffryes as being employed on a temporary basis as a Telegraphist at Sydney from 26 March 1909, for a period of three months.
That gave the firm a strong marketing edge in the supply of equipment to local shipping to utilise the coastal station network.
Only a high-powered facility of comparable capacity to those recently established at Sydney (VIS) and Perth (VIP) would have been capable of direct communication between Hobart and Cape Denison in Antarctica, and that would have been prohibitively expensive and resource hungry.
It was decided to establish an intermediate station at Macquarie Island and, by halving the maximum distance for each signal to traverse, it was expected that the 2 kW Telefunken transmitters of the Australasian Wireless Co. Ltd. would enable reliable communication.
[16] Douglas Mawson appointed Walter Henry Hannam, who was associated with the prominent aviation pioneer and inventor, George Augustine Taylor, and had himself been involved with the establishment of the Wireless Institute of Australia.
A series of tragedies and mishaps had led to the Cape Denison shore base on Antarctica being kept open for a second winter, from March to December 1913.
The expedition leader and commander, Douglas Mawson, stumbled into the base, the sole survivor of a sled dog probe eastward along the previously unknown interior coastline of the Australian Antarctic Territory.
[3] Mawson's expedition hut was located close to what was then the site of the South Magnetic Pole, and the continual radio interference and static associated with polar conditions threatened the base's minimal ability to contact Macquarie Island.
[3] The expedition leader at first admired Jeffryes' assiduousness with earphones and the Morse code key, but grew increasingly guarded in his praise.
Conditions at Cape Denison were clearly worse than those on the Belgica, due to the katabatic winds which, because of the unique geography, are at their upper extreme in the vicinity.
In July 1913, as Antarctica neared midwinter, wireless operator Jeffryes began to exhibit symptoms of paranoia to his fellow shore-party winter explorers, none of whom knew how to receive or transmit messages in Morse code.
For some weeks his comrades believed he was recovering but, in September of the same year, the radioman experienced a psychotic break and began transmitting a message, through Macquarie Island, to Australia, declaring himself to be the only sane man on the expedition.
He was found near Stawell six days later, exhausted and starved, having lived on roots and grubs, and drinking water from stagnant pools.
[23] Jeffryes' meticulous records of wireless reception quality during the second year of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition were correlated by himself, and by other expeditioners, with other observations of variables such as magnetic readings, auroral intensity, and St Elmo's fire.
In his published histories, the expedition head and designated spokesman, Douglas Mawson, had little to say about Jeffryes' active service in Antarctica.
But, in August 2010, the Australian Antarctic Division honoured Jeffryes for his pioneering winter service by naming a previously unnamed glacier after him.
[17] In December 2013, the first opera to be based on Mawson's 1911–14 expedition to Antarctica, The Call of Aurora, by Tasmanian composer Joe Bugden, was performed at The Peacock Theatre in Hobart.
