MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Antarctica: Sir Douglas Mawson's monoplane found

An historic monoplane - a relic of Sir Douglas Mawson's 1911-14 expedition - has been found in Antarctica thanks to freakish luck after a three-year search.

An Australian heritage carpenter stumbled on the remains of the craft - the first Vickers aircraft ever made - on New Year's Day at Cape Denison.

The cast iron framework of the plane was revealed by an unusually low tide and reduced ice cover.

``It's a remarkable find in remarkable circumstances,'' chairman of the Mawson's Huts Foundation David Jensen said.

``We began the search three summers ago and thought we might have a reasonable chance of finding it with all the equipment provided to us by sponsors.''

Nearly a century after it was abandoned by Mawson, the old Vickers was spotted sitting among rocks in a few centimeters of water during one of the lowest tides recorded at Commonwealth Bay.

``They would not have been found had the tide not been so low and the ice cover at Cape Denison at its lowest for several years - it was a fluke find,'' Mr Jensen said in a statement.

``The Vickers was an historic aircraft and part of Mawson's remarkable story of Antarctic exploration.''

The aircraft, built just eight years after the Wright brothers' first flight and the first produced by the Vickers factory in Britain, was also the first to be taken to a polar region.

It never flew in the Antarctic because its wings had been damaged in a test flight in Adelaide, but Mawson used it as an ``air tractor'' to tow sledges and abandoned it when he left Cape Denison in 1913.

Mr Jensen said the aircraft was still sitting on the ice in 1931 and was spotted again when ice melted in 1975.

It was found by a heritage carpenter, Mark Farrell of Hobart, who was looking for a suitable landing spot for a cruise ship to bring visitors to the historic huts at the site in January, he said.

A team of 10 from the Mawson's Huts Foundation arrived in early December for a six-week stay to work on the conservation of the huts.

They had planned to spend this week using high-tech equipment to search for the craft's remains under the ice.

``Luck was on our side, without a doubt,'' field leader of the group, Dr Tony Stewart, said in the statement.

The Australian Antarctic Division will decide whether to return the remains of the Vickers to Australia for specialist treatment or leave them at Cape Denison.