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Post Baudoin Station period
last update: Jan 24, 2008 05:54 PM
After the closure of King Baudoin Station in 1961, the scientist kept asking the government to continue the Belgian Antarctic Programme. Finally the government gave in, especially by the influence of Gaston de Gerlache. There was however one condition: the scientist had to cooperate with another European country. In 1963 the Committee for the Management of the Belgian-Dutch Antarctica Expeditions was founded. President of the committee was Gaston de Gerlache.
On 21 January 1964 the first Belgian-Dutch expedition, under the leadership of Luc Cabes, arrived in King Baudoin Station, or what was left of it. At once they started with the construction of a new base, a few hundreds of metres further on. Also the scientific observations were continued after an interval of three years. They studied the weather, the geomagnetism, the ionosphere, the aurora australis, atmospherical electricity, radioactivity, fauna and flora. Also disciplines as physiology and geodesy topography were on the busy programme. During the next few years Hugo Decleir, Jean-Jacques Derwael and Tony Van Autenboer explored systematically the Sør Rondane Mountains.
Until 1967 the new King Baudoin Station was the centre of the Belgian Antarctic Programme. The second Belgian-Dutch expedition was lead by Winoc Bogaerts. Tony Van Autenboer was in charge of the last expedition. In 1967 King Baudoin Station closed definitively.
This was not the end of the Belgian presence on the last continent. There was some money left and during three summer expeditions (1968, 1969 and 1970) Belgian scientists worked together with South African colleagues in SANAE Base. This station was situated at about thousand kilometres west from the former King Baudoin Station. The team Van Autenboer-Decleir-Derwael studied the Jutulstraumen, a gigantic glacier with a length of fifty and a width of two kilometres. The Belgians made for the first time in Antarctica use of a radio-echo-sounding. With this apparatus they could measure the thickness of the ice in a reliable way.
The last Belgian-South African expedition (1970) ended disastrously. A plane (an Otter) made a test flight, but the pilot made a mistake during landing. The Otter crashed to the ice and burst into flames immediately. Fortunately, the scientists aboard could leave the plane in time. But the expensive material and the plane were irrevocably lost.
From 1970 on Belgium lost all interest in Antarctica, though in 1972-1973 Bernard de Gerlache took part in an American South Pole expedition. Only in 1985 the Belgian activities in the Antarctic were resumed. Scientists participated in expeditions organized by other countries such as Australia, France, Japan, Great Britain...
