Erebus: The Ice Dragon – Sir Holmes Miller Memorial Lecture 2023

Tuesday 17 October 2023
Government Buildings LT01, Pipitea Campus
Victoria University ofWellington - Te Herenga Waka

Presenter: Colin Monteath
Polar and Alpine photographer and writer, Christchurch

Summary:
Spanning 182 years of human history, Mt Erebus, Antarctica’s most famous volcano, has played an important role for all who have lived and worked on Ross Island. Haunting and searingly beautiful, Erebus has attracted explorers, mountaineers, artists and scientists; each drawn to the mountain by their own particular vision or curiosity. The mountain is a truly unique geological phenomenon with its lava lake— an active volcano sheathed in ice, with hundreds of ice caves and steaming fumarole towers around its summit. Also, in the minds of many New Zealanders, it is a place of destruction and despair, wrought by a single momentous accident.
The Sir Holmes Memorial lecture will weave history, science, art and adventure into a compelling tale, supported by superb images selected from Colin's lifetime of working and voyaging in Antarctica. Erebus The Ice Dragon: A Portrait of an Antarctic Volcano, Colin’s 13th book, is the first Antarctic book to focus on a single mountain.

Biographical note:
Colin Monteath has had 32 summers in Antarctica, 10 of them based out of Scott Base (1973-83). As a mountaineer and Field Operations for the DSIR, Antarctic Division he took part in three science expeditions to Mount Erebus, culminating in a descent into the Inner Crater in 1978. The following year, Colin helped with the recovery operation after the Air New Zealand crash on Ross Island. Since 1983 Colin has been a freelance polar and mountain photographer working with a number of adventure companies in Antarctica: lecturing, driving Zodiacs, yachting, guiding peaks on the Antarctic Peninsula and crossing South Georgia. In the Arctic Colin has made ski crossings of Greenland, Svalbard and Alaska’s Denali and the Arctic Ocean by nuclear-powered icebreaker. He has taken part in 21 expeditions to the Himalaya.