The Antarctic is unique in so many respects that is difficult to avoid superlatives in any description. Flying up the Beardmore Glacier from the New Zealand headquarters in McMurdo Sound at Scott Base in a US Navy Hercules Cl 301 was struck by the marvellous beauty of the Antarctic and yet its innate harshness. Landing at the South Pole under the midnight sun and spending a brief few hours at the American base one at once realises how different it all is to the rest of the world, including even north polar regions. While the North Pole is situated on sea ice over an ocean 3000 m deep, the South Pole is in the middle of a plateau of ice of similar depth, stretching as it seems endlessly in all directions.

There are great mountains distant from the Pole, and amongst those nearer the coast are impressive dry valleys and canyons, empty even of snow and sometimes with a small lake which very occasionally thaws. At the New Zealand base at Lake Vanda the temperature at the bottom of the lake is –25 °C. Nearby there is a small strip of brown moss close to the glaciers. In the few ice-free areas have been found not only coal deposits, but also traces of minerals which could be of economic interest. It will be many years, if ever, before these will be exploited, though it is perhaps otherwise with the potential hydrocarbon fields under the Antarctic seas, not to mention the enormous stocks of fish, squid and krill in the ocean south of the Antarctic Convergence.