Polar explorer, pioneer aviator and Anzac photographer. Sir Hubert Wilkins always carried a camera. For the first time, the extraordinary Sir Hubert Wilkins Photographs are being published in a collectible limited edition book from Netfield Publishing. Revealing Sir George Hubert Wilkins like never before. See this amazing Australian adventurer in a completely new light through his unpublished photographs, private documents and personal artefacts. Stunning hand-coloured glass lantern slides of the first aerial photographs of Antarctica. Unpublished records and photographs from Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Quest Expedition. Wilkins’ photographs of Anzacs at the Western Front in WWI. Anzac Cove and Gallipoli. The first photographs ever taken under the Arctic ice, from the Nautilus submarine on Wilkins’ 1931 submarine expedition. The Graf Zeppelin around-the-world flight in 1929. The Australian Outback in the 1920s. The first flight over the Arctic Ocean. Sir Hubert Wilkins’ medals, equipment, awards and personal items. From his birthplace at the Wilkins Homestead in South Australia in 1888, until his ashes were taken by US Nuclear Submarine to the North Pole in 1959, Sir George Hubert Wilkins lived an incredible life. Now it is revealed in this stunning limited edition book written by the acknowledged world expert on Sir Hubert Wilkins, Jeff Maynard. And with an introduction by Dick Smith AC.
“The author, who all of us who venture into the Wilkins world owe most, is Jeff Maynard.”
– Peter Fitzsimons author of The Incredible Life of Sir Hubert Wilkins.“I am pleased to introduce this book, which both showcases such remarkable photography, and illuminates the astonishing life of Sir Hubert Wilkins.”
– Dick Smith AC“I consider Jeff Maynard to be the foremost authority on Sir Hubert Wilkins and have relied on his expertise in guiding other researchers.”
– Laura Kissel, Polar Curator, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center Archival Program.
Whatever you have previously thought about Sir Hubert Wilkins will be changed forever when you read The Illustrated Sir Hubert Wilkins by Jeff Maynard from Netfield Publishing.
Throughout his remarkable life Sir Hubert Wilkins not only took photographs, but he kept copies of his correspondence and artefacts from his adventures. When he was working as an official photographer at the Western Front with Charles Bean in 1917 and 1918, photographing the Anzacs, Wilkins would collect items from the battlefields. He also recorded which photographs he took. Today those photographs of the Anzacs are at the Australian War Memorial and considered a national treasure. At the end of the Armistice, Wilkins went to Gallipoli with Charles Bean, to photograph the battlefields and Anzac Cove. Again, he recorded which photographs he took and kept souvenirs. It is both a privilege and an honour for Netfield Publishing to publishing some of these photographs and show some of these souvenirs for the first time in The Illustrated Sir Hubert Wilkins by Jeff Maynard.
Sir Hubert Wilkins also took many photographs, and kept items from Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last expedition. Wilkins sailed with Shackleton on the Quest, when it left England in September 1921. Wilkins hoped to study Shackleton’s leadership methods and had asked Shackleton to take him along as a kind of apprentice polar leader. Throughout the voyage of the Quest, Wilkins wrote to his mother, kept notes, and took photographs. Many of these letters and photographs are still in private hands, and will be published in The Illustrated Sir Hubert Wilkins for the first time. Items from the Quest have also been photographed by the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) especially for the book. The result is a unique eye witness account to the last days of Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the end of the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration.
Sir Hubert Wilkins’ pioneering work in polar exploration was in the field of aviation. From the time he first began to explore the Arctic in 1913, Wilkins believed that the future of polar exploration would be from the air. In 1928 he made the first flights in Antarctica. Wilkins took a stunning series of photographs of Antarctica from the air and hand-coloured them. These beautiful photographs will be reproduced in The Illustrated Sir Hubert Wilkins for the first time and they look as amazing – as if they had recently been taken using the most modern equipment.
Normally it would be exciting to publish previously unseen photographs from the Anzacs at the Western Front in World War I, or the England-Australia Air Race in 1919, Gallipoli, the Graf Zeppelin around the world flight in 1929, from polar exploration or pioneer aviation, from Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last expedition, or objects from Sir Hubert Wilkins personal life, collected from the time he grew up in South Australia at the Wilkins Homestead at Mount Burra East, to the time he died in America in 1958. But to bring together so many previously unseen photographs, from so many of Sir Hubert Wilkins’ adventures, and present them in one limited edition, collectible book, The Illustrated Sir Hubert Wilkins by Jeff Maynard, is a special thrill for Netfield Publishing.
