Antarctic Close-up

1. John Close spent a lot of time writing letters or entries in his journal during the Antarctic expedition. Ask your students to select an event from the story and create a journal entry that Close may have written to record his reflections of that day. You may like to challenge them to think about the writing implements that Close would have used for this task.
2. Ask your students to visit the website of the Australian Antarctic Division www.aad.gov.au in order to complete the questions on the What's happening in Antarctica? BLM (PDF file 379kb).
3. Invite students to write a description of how Antarctica may be different 100 years from now. You may wish to conduct a class discussion on global warming (or allow students time to do some research) before they undertake this activity.
4. Use the Antarctica then and now BLM (PDF file 301kb) to explore some of the differences between life in the Antarctic for members of Mawson's 1911 expedition and living conditions at the Australian Antarctic bases today. Students complete a chart highlighting the changes.
5. In the story Antarctic Close-up, one of the members of the expedition is the photographer Hurley. Ask students, working in groups, to create a powerpoint presentation featuring Antarctic photographs taken by Frank Hurley. Each group could focus on a different subject eg wildlife, expeditioners, ships, landscapes. A good starting point for Hurley images is www.pictureaustralia.gov.au
6. Ask students, working in pairs, to create a board game called Fantarctica. They could draw on the incidents and challenges depicted in the story.

Further information about the Antarctic and Hazel Edwards' experience of writing Antarctic Close-up is available at www.hazeledwards.com

> View Frank Hurley's documentary footage of Mawson's 1911-1914 Antarctic expedition (MPEG4, 4mb)
> Explore Antarctic Close-up discussion questions
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