Timeline of New Zealand's links with Antarctica
This is a timeline of the History of New Zealand's involvement with Antarctica.
- Captain James Cook and the crews of his expedition's ships, Resolution and Adventure, become the first explorers to cross the Antarctic Circle
- Sealers and Whalers arrive in New Zealand
- The Balleny Islands discovered by English whaling captains John Balleny and Thomas Freeman
- Ross Sea and Mount Erebus discovered by James Clark Ross
- New Zealander Alexander von Tunzelmann becomes the first person to set foot on Antarctica, at Cape Adare
- British expedition led by Carstens Borchgrevink, including several New Zealanders, establishes first base in Antarctica, at Cape Adare
- Scott Island (formerly Markham Island) was discovered and landed upon by Captain William Colbeck
- Robert Falcon Scott leaves for Antarctica from Port Chalmers. Scott's party later died on the return journey after being delayed by a blizzard
- Ross Dependency proclaimed on July 30
- US Navy Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd leaves Dunedin for the first sea-air exploration expedition to the Antarctic. Byrd overflew the South Pole with pilot Bernt Balchen on November 28 and 29, 1929, to match his overflight of the North Pole in 1926. Establishes base at Little America
- Combined UK-Australia-NZ expedition led by Douglas Mawson
- New Zealand Antarctic Society founded
- Byrd becomes first person to winter over on the continent
- First publication of New Zealand Antarctic Society quarterly journal, Antarctic
- McMurdo Station established; construction of both Scott Base and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station started
- International Geophysical Year
- Scott Base established in Ross Dependency
- Edmund Hillary leads an expedition using farm tractors equipped for polar travel, arrived at the Pole, the first expedition since Scott's to reach the South Pole over land
- United States Operation Deep Freeze starts, based in Christchurch
- New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) established an Antarctic Division
- Antarctic Treaty signed with other countries involved in scientific exploration in Antarctica
- The first flight from New Zealand to Antarctica made by a Royal New Zealand Air Force C130 (Hercules) aircraft
- Marie Derby becomes first New Zealand woman to work in the Antarctic.
- Vanda Station manned for the first time
- South Pole visited for the first time by women - four Americans, an Australian, and New Zealander Pamela Young
- Antarctic Amendment Act comes into force
- Joint NZ-France expedition makes first ascent, and descent into crater, of Mount Erebus
- Prime Minister Bill Rowling had a formal proposal made at the Oslo Meeting for Antarctic to be declared a World Park.
- New Zealand proclaims Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 nautical miles (370 km), which provides for the zone to also include Ross Dependency's waters
- The Mount Erebus disaster: an Air New Zealand DC-10 crashes and 257 people die.
- Robert Muldoon becomes the first Prime Minister of New Zealand to visit Antarctica
- Closure of Scott Base Post Office (reopened in 1994)
- Closure of Vanda Station
- Antarctica New Zealand established on 1 July to manage the Government's interest in Antarctica.
- October (to January 2007): New Zealanders Kevin Biggar and Jamie Fitzgerald become the first people to walk to the South Pole without the aid of any supply dumps.[1] Their plan to parasail back is abandoned.[2]
- Prime Minister Helen Clark and Sir Edmund Hillary (now aged 87) travel with an official party to Scott Base to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its founding.
- 4 June First New Zealand Antarctic Medal (NZAM) awarded, to geophysicist Dr Fred Davey.