Interesting Trivia:

• came from a family of pioneer settlers and sheep farmers
• was a pioneering aerial photographer
• was part of the 1913 Vilhjalmur Stefánsson Arctic expedition as a photographer
• was the first to take moving pictures in 1912 from actual battles
• during World War I, was awarded the Military Cross twice
• carried the rank of Captain during WWI
• was knighted by King George V in 1928, and became known as Sir Hubert
• was the first to fly both over the Arctic and Antarctic
• the first Australian to make a flight around the world in the German airship “Graf Zeppelin”
• was on the maiden voyage of the “Hindenburg” to America in 1936
• there is a memorial honouring Sir Hubert Wilkins (unveiled on 29 November 1966) in Hallett, Australia
• in 2001, the cottage where he was born at Mount Bryan East was restored
• the majority of Wilkins' papers and effects are archived at The Ohio State University - Byrd Polar Research Center
• Wilkins Sound and the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica are named after him

His life:

George Wilkins was born on a small farm at M;ount Bryan East, South Australia.  It was a difficult time for farmers.  He was the youngest of thirteen children and soon learned to make the best of any situation. Various of his siblings died young. His grandparents had been among the very first migrants to come to South Australia, arriving on Kangaroo Island on 5^th October, 1836.

George went to school at Mount Bryan East, but was mostly teaching himself things.  He was a bit of a loner, and always reading. He was not able to finish his formal education as he had to help his family on the farm.

In 1907, Wilkins enrolled at the Elder Conservatorium of the University of Adelaide to take music lessons from Frederick Bevan.  He stayed until the end of second term 1908. His next school experience was also a short one, at the South Australian School of Mines. With motion pictures being the new rage, he traveled to South Australia's country towns and the eastern states showing moving pictures. But this was not adventurous enough for him and he wanted to try his luck in England.  As he could not afford to buy a ticket he sneaked aboard a ship at Port Adelaide. 

However, he did not make it to England as he was discovered and thrown of the ship in Algiers.  He had his fair share of adventures in Algiers before he finally made it to London, just after his twenty-first birthday.

In 1910, he next tried out flying, but again, failed to sit for the exam. He could fly, so why bother about getting the official qualifications ! He found out there is money to be made taking pictures from the air and started balloon flying.

His adventures did no stop there, he was actually the first person to take moving pictures in 1912 from actual battles.  He was captured in the Balkan and barely escaped a firing squad.

He joined Vilhjalmur Stefánsson Arctic expedition in 1913 and took a liking to the place.  In the following three years he walked thousands of kilometers over the Arctic wasteland (one of the things he did was showing movies to the Peoples there). It must have been quite a change from the hot, dry and dusty South Australian outback. Maybe it was just this difference that attracted Wilkins.

Then World War I broke out and he returned to Australia where he joined the armed forces and went to France as official photographer. Between 1917 and 1918 he worked with Australia's official war historian C.E.W. Bean and was wounded several times. He took pictures of the Australian battles from his balloon, often traveling across enemy lines.  In June 1918 Wilkins was awarded the Military Cross for his efforts to rescue wounded soldiers during the Third Battle of Ypres. He received a bar to his Military Cross when, at the Battle of the Hindenburg Line he assumed command of a group of American soldiers who had lost their officers in an earlier attack, directing them until support arrived.

His pictures and his record keeping of the battlegrounds became historical evidence and after the war he was given the job of organizing a display of his photographs of the Australian Forces in action.

After he finished that he left for England again, and participated in the 1919 England-Australia air race.  His participation was sponsored by the British Daily Mail, but unfortunately, he crashed his plane (the “Kangaroo”) in Crete.  Again, he lived to tell the story.

More job offers followed, which had him travel the globe.  Mostly, it was taking pictures or filming. There were also extensive trips and stays on the Antarctic ice with (Sir) Ernest Shackleton.

In 1923, he was asked to lead the British Museum's Northern Australia expedition.  The expedition took two years and upon his return he published his first book (“Undiscovered Australia” in 1928). Again, he had delivered brilliant work for the museum but did not get the same acclaim from Australian authorities because of the sympathetic treatment he afforded the Aboriginals.

The lure of the Arctic was strong and drew him back to fulfill his dream.  In 1928, Wilkins and his pilot Carl Ben Eielson made a trans-Arctic crossing from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Spitsbergen, a trip of 3350 kilometres which they managed in 20.5 hours. He was knighted for this feat.

Back in 1925, he had tried to get permission to fly from the Ross Sea across King Edward VII Land to Graham Land. However, the only way to raise money for this expedition was to fly around the Arctic region for three years between 1925 and 1928.  These flights earned both Wilkins and his friend Eielson a place in the aviator's Hall of Fame. Finally, in 1928, they had raised enough funding to attempt a flight in Antarctica. (The flight had been financed by William Randolph Hearst.) So, on 16 November 1928, both men took off in the "Los Angeles" and flew for about 20 minutes, but bad weather forced them to land. However, their flight still made history as the first powered flight in Antarctica. But they were not about to give up the attempt and a month later, on 20^th December 1928, they took off from Deception Island, flying for about 11 hours over the Antarctic Peninsula and along the eastern side. The covered over 2100 km and reached as far south as 71°20'S.

On August 30^th, 1929, he married Australian singer and actress Suzanne Bennett.  But being married did not dampen his adventurous spirit.  Two years after he got married he attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to reach the North Pole in a submarine (“Nautilus”). However, with this effort he had proven that submarines were capable of operating beneath the polar ice cap.

He then teamed up with Lincoln Ellsworth and walked or flew over Antarctica. After that, he again went back to the Arctic region, in search of the missing Russian aviator Sigismund Levanevsky who had disappeared in 1937.

His remaining years he worked for the US Army (from 1942 onwards), first as a consultant in the Planning Division but then as an Arctic consultant.  The man had unbound energy.  While he was working for the US Army, he still continued to write and co-write books.

He made one final trip to Antarctica in 1957, as a guest of "Operation Deepfreeze".

Then, in February 1958, he once more visited his homeland Australia and his birthplace at Mount Bryan East.  It was to be his last visit.  Later that year, on 30^th November, he died from a heart attack at Framingham, Massachusetts.  Although the British Government had planned a resting place in Westminster Abbey, his ashes were scattered across the North Pole.

Books:

• 'Undiscovered Australia', published in 1928
• “Australian War Photographs, a pictorial record from November 1917 to the end of the war”, Edited by Captain George Hubert Wilkins
• “Flying the Arctic”, 1928
• “Under the North Pole”, 1931
• “Our Search for the Lost Soviet Aviators”, 1937
• “Thoughts through Space”, 1947, (in conjunction with Harold Shurman)
•  “Urantia”, 1955 (he made a contribution to the book)