The Australian Broadcasting Corporation television show Gruen1, which examines the advertising industry, sometimes hilariously, is always entertaining. On a recent show telecast on Wednesday June 3rd, one of the regular panellists, Todd Sampson, was talking about a couple of young blokes that were going to Antarctica and found it difficult to get funding. He stated that explorers have a hard time getting support.
I must admit I burst out laughing when I heard him refer to them as ‘explorers’. You can fly over most of Antarctica by plane or helicopter. In fact, I have several colleagues who have flown down there. What ‘exploration’ is going on? I then wondered if Todd Sampson would consider climbing Mt Everest as exploration. I am afraid I wouldn’t do so because, during the climbing season, there are queues of people at the top waiting for their chance to reach the summit.
We can get to everywhere on the planet using technology (vehicles, aircraft, etc). I have been to some very remote places in central Australia, and in some of my peregrinations, I could have been the first white person to stand in a particular rocky outcrop, or climb down a particular gully. I would not call that exploring. Furthermore, given that Aboriginal people have been on this continent for tens of thousands of years, how could you construe what anyone does on this continent as exploring?
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