The Spencer-Smith Memorial Lecture, March 8th 2025, All Saints, Cumberland Street, Dunedin.

I am honoured to have been invited to deliver this talk, which has the title "Paths Are Made by Walking". There is a link to a recording of the talk on the All Saints website:

https://www.allsaintsdn.org.nz/

this links straight to my talk on All Saints' YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ0ABCDOJyU&t=13s

 The material of the talk came under three sub-headings:

1. Firstly, the reason I was interested in Antarctica is because my grandfather, H T Ferrar, was the geologist on "Discovery"(1901-4) and as such was the first man to walk - and so make - many of the most-used paths on Ross Island, where the American and New Zealand bases were subsequently established. In 2016 I was fortunate enough to join in the SCAR conference in Kuala Lumpur where I presented a short paper about his life and work. The first part of my talk will involve showing again the power point presentation I made for that conference. I can't upload that here, so here's the first photograph ever taken of an emperor penguin chick. There were several people with cameras on the "Discovery" expedition and I don't know who took this particular shot.

There is more about H T Ferrar here:

https://bpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.auckland.ac.nz/dist/0/594/files/2019/06/Brook-and-Ferrar-2019.pdf

2. Secondly, one of my particular interests is in site-specific improvisation. I use my violin to explore my reactions to particular places. It helps me to focus on what is in front of me and clarifies the responses of my imagination. A fellow student on the PCAS course, "CY", filmed me playing in the "Discovery" hut and I will show that film during my talk. It is about 7 minutes long and can be found here, 42 minutes in:

  href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBJMpeu2wLA&t=2508s" (with a short introduction)

Under the same heading, broadly, "Artistic responses to Antarctica", I'm posting 4 more links, though there is lots of other wonderful stuff out there:

•  Ruth Watson, my tent-mate in December 2011 when we camped on the Ross Ice Shelf:

https://eyecontactmagazine.com/2012/08/the-future-of-antarctica

and her website: https://www.ruthwatson.net/about

•  Phil Dadson, a fellow free improviser, who made some wonderfully playful work in the dry valleys:

https://www.circuit.org.nz/work/echo-logo

• Lita Albuquerque, whose book "Stella Axis" I borrowed from the library and will make available for people to look at:

https://www.litaalbuquerque.com/stellar-axis-antarctica

3. Last but not least, Religion in Antarctica. This is a vast subject now and I haven't even scraped the surface of it. My experience was of taking communion on the Ice on Christmas Day 2011. It wasn't practical for me to get to the Chapel of the Snows at the American base so I took consecrated host, already sprinkled with wine, in a pyx lent to me by Fr Ron Smith of Christchurch. I shared communion with CY who had been filming me. I was the first person in the 14 years that PCAS had been running who wanted to take communion on the Ice. Here is a picture of my altar, a block of compressed snow covered with the red cloth that was always around our Christmas tree when I was a child:

It was wonderful to feel the whole planet sharing Christmas Day beneath my feet. I suppose in a way this is always the case, but somehow being so far South, and using the same time zone as Aotearoa New Zealand, it came home to me in what felt like a pretty profound way.

For more information, or more involvement with matters Antarctican, maybe start here:

The New Zealand Antarctic Society:  https://antarcticsociety.org.nz/ 

The definitive book about the Ross Sea Party: https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/about-uc/what-we-do/canterbury-university-press/canterbury-university-press-catalogue/polar-castaways-the-ross-sea-party-1914-to-1917-of-sir-ernest-sh

For a discussion about Antarctic Arts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPq1vwvyEKc