Marion Wheatland and her wheel ‘Hero’ will take a spin on the Antarctic ice to honour a piece of Australian history. 55836 Picture: Nigel Clements
By Casey Neill
MARION Wheatland won’t be shopping up a storm at this year’s Boxing Day sales.
Instead she’ll brave unpredictable weather on the world’s harshest continent to honour a legendary Australian explorer.
The Yarra Ranges spinning teacher is taking her spinning wheel ‘Hero’ on a cruise to Antarctica where she’ll make yarn outside Sir Douglas Mawson’s huts to raise money for their preservation, which costs $600,000 each year.
Ms Wheatland will ply the yarn on the Southern Ocean, knit a replica of Mawson’s balaclava in New Zealand and auction it in Australia.
“And I’m Canadian – so it’s an international project,” she said.
Next December marks 100 years since Australian geologist Mawson set out on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.
Mawson, Xavier Mertz and Lieutenant BES Ninnis began their final mission in 1912. Ninnis fell down a crevasse with most of their supplies 1000 kilometres into the trek.
Mertz succumbed to vitamin A poisoning after the pair ate their dogs, leaving Mawson with 210kms to go alone.
“They had to be there by 15 January but he didn’t get there until February,” Ms Wheatland said.
“As he got back to base he saw this little tiny ship on the horizon. They’d left.”
“After all that struggle, all that hardship – almost dying, losing his friends – to get to the base and see your salvation sailing away.”
The captain had left six men on the land in case Mawson returned. They waited a year to be rescued. His efforts earned Australia a claim to 42 per cent of the continent. “It’s part of our national identity. It’s part of who we are as Australian people,” Ms Wheatland said.
“I might be Canadian by birth but I’m Australian by heart and I want to make sure that people are aware of Sir Douglas Mawson and his contribution to our country.”
Ms Wheatland’s father died three years ago, leaving her instructions to do something extravagant with her inheritance.
She planned a trip to Antarctica and her brother dared her to take her spinning wheel.
Ms Wheatland has a long-held fascination for wool and now teaches the craft at Mont De Lancey Historic Homestead in Wandin.
Spinning in freezing temperatures will provide new challenges.
“When you’re using your spinning wheel, you’re using your fingers, and I have worked out a way that I can spin and have no skin exposed,” she said.
She’ll wear a ski glove on one hand with a plastic knit palm, and fingerless gloves with a mitten flap over the top.
“I can hear the fibres come across the plastic and I can feel through the fabric the number of fibres I need to put into the machine,” she said.
She’s practiced in minus five degree temperatures at Mount Hotham, inside a minus 18 degree freezer, and taken a boat trip to Tasmania to check her sea legs.
Ms Wheatland today (7 December) planned to test how different fibres react in freezing temperatures at Chill On Ice Lounge in Melbourne, set at minus 10 degrees.
Visit www.spinningyarninantarctica.com to support Ms Wheatland’s fundraising effort.
