A Bad Day at the Office 

Summed up by four memorable quotes

By David Cook, December 1999

Pilot Peter Ivanoff inches his way up a steep ice slope above his crashed helicopter.

Antarctica, February 1960.  Picture: David Cook

Some fifty years ago my job was trying to map the coast of Antarctica, where the maps current at the time had long sections of blank paper, filled in perhaps with a cartographic draftsman’s best estimate of where the coastline might be, in an average season. The coast, that is the edge of the water, shifts of course, seaward 30 to 80 miles in winter, retreating to glacial ice cliffs or outcropping rocks in the summer. Therefore the object of the exercise was to fix the positions of rock outcrops, about the only identifiable features which remain stationary and can be used to control the air photography from which the maps are drawn. This was achieved using star observations in daylight, as required in the Antarctic summer, a rather drawn out exercise in those pre GPS, pre computer days; only about ten stars are visible in daylight with a theodolite. Even mechanical calculators were useless in the field as they stiffened up in the cold and refused to turn. It was all logarithms, altitude-azimuth tables and bits of paper, while sitting on cold rock; not good for the haemorrhoids.

The transport for this exercise was two Hiller 12E helicopters, the first Australian helicopters in the Antarctic. They were three place, the pilot in the middle, straddling the instrument pedestal, passenger on one side, heaps of equipment on the other, and no shoulder harness, of which more later. They cruised straight and level at 50 knots with the little engine turning over, from memory, at about 3000 rpm, working fairly hard; the whole thing vibrated noticeably. To this newly qualified Private Pilot the salient feature was the carburettor heat control. Approaching to land on a dicky stretch of sloping ice or the chopper pad on a rolling ship, with quick power and pitch variations required, the pilot had to spend an inordinate amount of time shoving the carby heat lever back and forth to keep the temperature in the safe range. Each change in collective pitch also required a change in manifold pressure to maintain the rotor revs, the automatic coupling of pitch and power not being around in those days. You don’t have any spare hands, or feet, when flying a chopper; the pilot was a busy man.

So we set off from Wilkes, now Casey, one sunny day, 60 miles south west along the coast, geologist Ian McLeod and pilot Ray Hudson in one chopper, surveyor, yours truly, and pilot Peter Ivanoff in the other. They always flew as a pair, for safety. About 30 miles out we crossed a glacier, ten miles wide, sloping down to the coast and fast flowing, as evidenced by the heavily crevassed surface, with wide gaps starting blue and becoming black as they went down to huge depths. No chance of any successful forced landings here. From the pilot:

Quote no. 1: ‘These things always go into automatic rough in places like this.’

A little further out we landed at a fuel dump in a clear gently sloping area where the surface wind was about 25 to 30 knots and then went on to the destination, a small stony beach, now Ivanoff Head, nestling at the base of a long steep ice slope stretching many miles inland. Both being new to Antarctic flying neither the pilot nor I knew much about katabatic winds, the convective flow down any slope which blows every day when there is not a blizzard to change its course. It reaches a maximum about 11 am or so, the steeper the slope and the nearer the ground the stronger the wind. At Mawson, located at the seaward end of a long gentle slope, it attains about 20 to 30 knots on an ordinary summer’s day. In winter it gets really windy. Today, many miles to the east and at 3000 feet, it seemed like a nice day.

On approach to the beach the usual air speed of 30 to 40 knots did not seem to be getting us anywhere. More power, steeper descent – I remember noticing 74 knots and we were going backwards. From the pilot: Quote no.2: ‘We had better get out of here’.

A left turn, downwind out over the foam streaked sea, seemed not an attractive option. Theories like ‘Keep the airspeed constant and you don’t sink’ seem irrelevant when you are going backwards. So we turned right, trying to climb along the steep slope with full power and full pitch, but the wind, rushing downhill, over a 100 foot ice cliff and onto the sea made it impossible.

From the pilot: Quote no. 3:’ Hang on Dave’. This seemed, retrospectively, to be an understatement.

He rolled the aircraft onto its side and flew it hard onto the surface. The undercarriage skids broke off and the cross members stuck solidly into the ice, as he had intended. The rotor blades broke off and the engine, still at full throttle, screamed its head off. Eventually the pilot, dazed from smashing his face against the instrument panel (no shoulder harness, no crash helmet) reached out and cut the ignition. To say everything became deathly quiet would be inaccurate but at least we could shout over the noise of the wind.

The next step was to climb out onto the steep slope, slippery like a fresh frozen ice cube, and attempt to stand up in the 50 knots plus wind. With no crampons for the boots and only a roll of rope and one ice axe between us there was only one way out and that was up, away from the menacing cliff top where most of our externally loaded gear had already slid over and disappeared into the sea.

The method was for me to laboriously climb up, cutting one step at a time, to the limit of the rope, and there cut two steps for myself and two for the pilot. Then he would pull himself up along the rope, lying prone on the ice to cope with the effects of the head blow and loss of vision due to blood, and eventually sit in his set of heel holds while I set off on the next rope length. The theory was that if I started to slide he would gather in the loose rope as I went past and hang on; life is full of untested theories.

On one of these stages I photographed him heaving himself upwards. When he reached me he said (Quote no. 4): ‘Bloody funny time to be taking photos’.

Peter Ivanoff on the steep ice slope above his crashed helicopter. Picture: David Cook

Ray, the second pilot, having stayed at a safe height and observed all the events related above, radioed the ship and then pulled off a magnificent landing on the nearby peninsula, far enough from the beach to at least have the wind blowing more or less horizontally but still in violent turbulence. This was achieved, on about the fourth attempt and in wind which exceeded the forward speed of the helicopter, by having Ian, the geologist, peer backwards out of the open door calling ‘left a bit, right a bit, down’ while they backed precariously into a penguin rookery, slid sideways into the partial shelter of a large rock and put down in 15 inches of penguin droppings. The rotor brake was ineffective and it was 15 minutes before the pilot felt able to release the controls and jump out to try and stop the flailing rotor by gripping the tail rotor drive shaft with gloved hands.

Peter Ivanoff (left) and David Cook following the crash. Picture: David Cook

Meanwhile Ian, the knight in shining armour in all this as far as the pilot and I were concerned, set off, also working without crampons and with no safety rope, and nothing to attach it to anyway, to cut steps for about half a mile along the steep, wind swept ice slope to meet two tired and grateful people coming the other way. When we reached the beach, our original destination, Ray, the second pilot, had a tent erected and a welcome hot brew made.

There must be some obvious lessons to be learnt from this exercise. Maybe one less obvious would be to always wear a life jacket when flying near the sea, regardless of whether you intend to actually fly over it, much less fall into it.

The crashed helicopter above the ice cliffs and the ice slopes traversed by Ian McLeod, David Cook and Peter Ivanoff to reach the rocks in the foreground. Picture: David Cook

Time for a tot of Akvavit! (from left) Ian McLeod, Ray Hudson, Peter Ivanoff and David Cook. Picture: David Cook

Postscript: There was a story, which I cannot vouch for, that, a year or two later, an Australian De Havilland Beaver, equipped with floats, was operating about 100 miles inland. The engine developed carby ice, almost unheard of in the Antarctic with temperatures way below freezing. They managed to keep the engine going by fiddling with the priming pump and, losing height, half gliding, half flying they just made it to the coast. They scraped over the cliffs, put it down safely on the water, looked out the window and there was the wreck of the Hiller, still plastered on the ice like a fly on the wall. The carby ice cleared itself and they flew home to Mawson, no doubt wondering how, in a continent two and a half times the size of Australia, such things might happen.

Pictures compiled by Grahame Budd

Editorial note: The accident occurred on Saturday, 13 February 1960.

References 

Cook, David, 'A Bad Day at the Office', Aurora Magazine, June 2009, pp. 21-22.

Hudson, Ray T.,  'Antarctic Helicopter Accident', AIRCRAFT, December 1983, pp. 40-42.

Vale Ian McLeod 1931-2020

Geologist Ian McLeod in Antarctica in 1958. Picture: Graham Knuckey

Ian McLeod: Courage in the frozen wilderness

By Malcolm Robertson

Chipping steps to traverse the icy slope of an Antarctic glacier only metres away from a sheer precipice takes both courage and skill. To do it on your own, still aged in your twenties, to reach two injured colleagues, survivors of a nasty helicopter crash, takes a special sort of person. Geologist Ian McLeod, who has died aged 89, was certainly that. In February 1960, in appalling windy conditions, his mountaineering experience and gritty geologist's determination ensured that he and his injured friends, all members of the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) summer party to Wilkes base that year, made it safely back.

The dogs all had different characters - loafers, humourists, workers, you name it - and they could be a handful at times, but I found it the best way to travel and to really see the country

-- Ian McLeod describing dogsledding in Antarctica

In 1960, McLeod was no stranger to Antarctica and the vagaries of its weather conditions that had led to the helicopter incident. He had joined the Australian Government's Bureau of Mineral Resources (BMR, now Geoscience Australia) to over-winter at Mawson base in 1958 as glaciologist and geologist. In that year, he had earned the respect of his colleagues with a 650km traverse across Kemp and Enderby Lands in the hinterland behind Mawson base in the company of a surveyor and radio operator using a dog sledging team for transport, a feat little different to the pioneering traverses by Sir Douglas Mawson in the early years of the twentieth century.

To quote Ian: "During the traverse, the surveyor nominated the spot at each rock outcrop for a fix, and while he was doing that, I would do some basic geological observations. We used hickory wood sledges fastened with rawhide. There were no nails or rivets in the frame so the whole construction was flexible. The dogs all had different characters - loafers, humourists, workers, you name it - and they could be a handful at times, but I found it the best way to travel and to really see the country.”

Helping to recover his injured colleagues in 1960 drew on all his previous Antarctic experience, his mountaineering skills and his inner resolve and strength.

Ian McLeod with sled dog Lewis in 1958. Picture: Geoscience Australia

McLeod was born in Rockhampton on 26 July 1931, the eldest of three children born to parents Roy and Edith McLeod. Roy McLeod was a qualified accountant working with Vacuum Oil Company which later became Mobil. The family moved to Brisbane in 1940 and Ian finished his primary schooling at Taringa State School before moving to Brisbane Grammar School for his secondary education. He chose to study geology for his matriculation, a subject he soon found fascinating and absorbing.

McLeod went on to the University of Queensland to achieve distinctions in geology, First Class Honours and a Master of Science, working part-time in the Geology Department as a graduate demonstrator and research assistant in his post-graduate years. A quiet and thoughtful young man, he loved the outdoors and the Australian bush, hiking extensively in untracked areas while at university, building skills in bushcraft, navigation and rockclimbing.

McLeod's introduction to field work was in 1955 when he spent two months with three others in western Tasmania, being supplied by fortnightly airdrops. In early 1956, Ian joined Reg Sprigg's Geosurveys of Australia to explore for nickel in the far northwest of South Australia and adjoining Western Australia. The geology of the area was then hardly known, except that there were several well-exposed bodies of layered rocks, some dipping near vertically with thicknesses up to seven kilometres and exposed strike lengths up to 40 kilometres.

Being among the first to investigate these was exciting and challenging. The only road in the area was a two-wheel track winding through the bush to Mulga Park station, 250 kilometres to the east, but over the next two years, Giles weather station was established and the redoubtable Len Beadell began to grade the network of roads for the Woomera rocket range and the atomic bomb test sites. All the geological work was done using specially flown aerial photographs.

McLeod moved to BMR in late 1957 and went on to be one of Australia's leading experts in Antarctic geology. He returned to the frozen continent five times over the period 1960 to 1970 to participate in and supervise summer field work out of Mawson station and in the vast Prince Charles Mountains further south. His contribution to Antarctic geology is recognised with McLeod Massif, the McLeod Nunataks, McLeod Glacier and McLeod Island all bearing his name, and with a Polar Medal, an MBE and the Bellinghausen medal from the Russian Academy of Science.

On his return from Antarctica, McLeod lived at Havelock House where he met Beverley Bradfield, a young pharmacist who had moved from Sydney to take up a position in Civic. They became good friends and married in 1964. Their two children, Graeme and Jennifer, were born in 1966 and 1968.

McLeod's greatest contribution to Australia's growth as a nation came when he became head of the BMR's Mineral Economics Section in 1974. This Section was responsible for compilation, analysis and publication of information on Australia's mineral assets, and for the provision of expert advice to both government and industry. Its work was critical to the development of Australia's mineral resources and to the policy and regulation framework that the mining industry works within today. As well as leading the Section, Ian was the commodity specialist for tin.

His role evolved and by 1985 he was responsible for the co-ordination and broad supervision of the groups in the wider Mineral Resources Branch. He retired at the end of 1990 but his extensive knowledge of Australia's mineral resources continued to be in demand. Ian's career had included membership of several national and international committees concerned with Antarctica and the mineral industry, including the Australian National Committee on Antarctic Research, the Working Group on Geology (of which he was secretary) of the international Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, and the International Strategic Minerals Inventory Working Group. He continued part time as consultant on these and on several resource studies for BMR while quietly throwing himself into the other activities he loved.

Ian McLeod in retirement (ca 2013). Picture: Beverley McLeod

He became a voluntary explainer at Questacon, a role he continued for many years, and where he was recently awarded Emeritus Volunteer status.

McLeod also devoted more time to the iconic Canberra Alpine Club which he and Beverley had joined when they had arrived in Canberra. Ian was an active member, bushwalking, skiing, at work parties, and in the management of the Club on committee positions over many years. He was still actively organising the next work party when he became ill. He is remembered as an absolute gentleman, a quiet achiever, who was always ready to lend a hand, and who got things done. His welcoming smile left a lasting impression on everyone he met. He was elected honorary life member in 1997. McLeod's role as Mt Franklin Officer with the Club brought him in close contact with ACT Parks and Conservation. His knowledge of the mountains of Namadgi National Park was legendary and combined his love for geology, the bush and the solace of the wilderness. His steadfast passion and enthusiasm for the heritage of Mt Franklin and the Canberra Alpine Club's association with skiing in the Brindabellas is a tangible legacy.

Ian McLeod is survived by his sister Fiona, his wife Beverley and their two children.

Jon Stephenson revisited

 

Jon Stephenson revisiting Heard Island in 2002 (photograph: Grahame Budd)

Jon Stephenson is a name that resounds throughout the postwar history of climbing in Queensland but his contribution extends far beyond his pioneering exploits on the crags of southeast Queensland. This review of Jon's life has been prompted by recent communication with one of his contemporaries, Antarctic explorer Grahame Budd, and Pat Conaghan, himself a trailblazing climber and scientist with more than a passing interest in Australia's climbing heritage and history.

When Jon passed away in 2011, there were several worthy obituaries celebrating his life but one which has perhaps had limited distribution and which sums up his extraordinary achievements was written by his climbing and scientific contemporary, Grahame Budd. In 1963, Jon and Grahame, together with former British commando Warwick Deacock, made the second attempt to reach the summit of the highest point in Australia and its territories, Mawson Peak on the Big Ben massif, an active volcano on the subAntarctic Heard Island. The following year, Grahame was in the first successful ascent team. 

Grahame's obituary for Jon captures the essence of the influential yet humble man whose unbridled passion for science, the environment and setting foot on high places, helped to create the foundation for Australian climbing culture.

Grahame's obit for Jon Stephenson is available online in the Australian Antarctic Magazine, Issue 21, 2011.

A more detailed description of the ascent of Big Ben, along with more of Grahame's historic photographs is in my book, The living rock, available as a free download until 1 March 2022 from either Apple Books or from Google Drive. Please note that both are very large files (around 700 MB) and will take some time to download.