The Southern Frontier

Antarctica looms large in the Australian psyche – as a place of science, adventure, and peril. Our romantic entanglement with this unique environment is deep and enduring.

The Southern Frontier traces Australia’s Antarctic obsession from its origins in the nineteenth century to the creation of the Australian Antarctic Territory and a permanent national Antarctic program in the 1930s and 1940s. It reconstructs Australian ideas, beliefs, and anxieties about the Antarctic and shows how Australians came to imagine their nation as having a natural right – perhaps even a destiny – to explore, exploit, and control the world to their south.

By examining how and why Australia relentlessly pursued the acquisition of its Antarctic Territory, Rohan Howitt recovers a forgotten way of thinking about this region: as one frontier of an Australian empire stretching from the equator to the South Pole.

At a time when the Australian Government is ramping up its investment in Antarctica and geopolitical tensions are on the rise, The Southern Frontier provides the historical explanation for how Australians came to see the world to their south as a natural extension of the nation’s territory.