Project Eaglestar

After crossing the Antarctic Circle in 1773, unaware that he had been only eighty miles away from the coast of Antarctica, Captain Cook declared, "I can be bold to say, that no man will ever venture farther than I have done and that the lands which may lie to the South will never be explored."

Well, they were! They were investigated, evaluated, traversed, claimed and counter claimed, and year-round camps established on them. Antarctica had been pretty much ignored for centuries after Ptolemy suggested the existence of 'an unknown southern land.' He considered that this southern land mass was necessary in order to bring a global counterbalance to the known northern land, the Arctic. But suddenly, despite its forbidding climate, it hosted around 16 expeditions in the 1890s. It became a place of international interest where wildlife was to be decimated (ask the whales and seals); Nazi naval craft could pursue their hunt for the ingredients of margarine in 1936 and find refuge during WWII (enter UK Operation Tabarin), a focus of friction between interested countries and a place to which pregnant women were airlifted in order to win the race to produce the first Antarctic nationals (won by Argentina and followed by ten other births).

It is a place where politics is beginning to run deeper than its 4km thick ice covering. A place of overlapping borders, most of which end in a point at the South Pole; intrigue over claimed territories; suspicion over the motives of others; usurpers setting up research bases and incursions across international claims. It is a meteorite repository and is thought by some to hold considerable mineral wealth, including oil and gas.

The remoteness of Antarctica, despite the technological advances in communication and transport, enables it to remain a place of mystery and beauty; so, who really knows what global activities go on there?