THE CAPTAIN STEERING Australia’s Antarctic science program into its second century can’t risk getting caught in the wake of history as he casts off from Hobart’s Macquarie Wharf and heads south down the Derwent River.

In the summer of 2013 there is no room on the bridge of the Aurora Australis for Douglas Mawson, or for the storied master mariner who piloted his original Aurora, Captain John ‘Gloomy’ Davis. Nor for physicist-explorers of the ilk of Phillip Law and Louis Bernacchi. Or geologist Tannatt Edgeworth David, feted, rugged rock star of his era, and his precocious student Carsten Borchgrevink, who led the first expedition to winter on the ice.