You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on pages 6 and 7.
Preserving Antarctic History
Protecting early buildings in Antarctica

A. Few people coming up to the most comfortable dwelling place imaginable are likely to picture wooden huts on an island off the coldest continent on Earth. But that's where the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott described the hut at Cape Evans on Ross Island that he used for his 1910–13 expedition. The hut is nestled below the cliffs on a flat, long stretch of sand. In 2011, a bottle of MacKinlay’s whisky, the only one, was to be seen in front of the newly restored structure and sun reflects off the cliffs of the nearby glacier.

B. The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust (NZHAT) and its accompanying workers recently announced the completion of 10 years of intensive work to save the historic buildings on Ross Island as well as the hut at Cape Evans, the hut at Cape Royds on Discovery Hut from Scott’s 1901–04 expedition at Hut Point, and the hut at Cape Royds, built for Ernest Shackleton’s 1907–09 expedition. When work began, many of the artefacts were temporarily removed while carpenters from the team of conservation workers repaired walls, floors and roof. In Scott’s ‘command hut’ was the table where team member Edward Wilson had once incubated his moulds and parasites. Of particular interest is the small wooden racks of sample tubes, sample jars and Bunsen burners standing on the biologist Edward Nelson, by its shape through a dusty window. This was where the young scientist preserved Antarctic specimens as part of his search for new species and an understanding of the Antarctic food chain.

C. The NZHAT executive director Nigel Watson describes the three restored huts as fantastic remnants of humans’ first contact with the continent. The idea for the birth of the conservation project, he says, was the fact that we were in great danger of losing them. ‘When the site work began in 2004, snow and ice were building up around, under and sometimes inside the huts, damaging the structures and threatening their contents. Now we have three buildings that are structurally sound and watertight with a very different feel – they are drier and lighter and the humidity is reduced. It’s a much better environment for the collection.’

D. As well as heritage carpenters, the NZHAT team on Ross Island has included experts in textile, paper and metal conservation: in total, 62 experts from 11 countries have visited Antarctica to work on the project, often spending a whole summer on-site, sleeping in tents around 25km back to Scott Base for the occasional shower. The team is now known as the most exciting conservation project in the world,’ says Watson. ‘So it attracted top heritage conservation talent.’ Some of the most exciting discoveries were the intact cases of MacKinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky found encased in ice beneath Shackleton’s hut, a paper notebook that belonged to surgeon, zoologist and photographer George Murray Levick found buried in dirt at Cape Evans and a small box of 22 cellulose nitrate negatives waiting to be developed into photographs found in Herbert Ponting’s darkroom. But most of the 18,202 items catalogued and conserved are more mundane: food, tools, clothing and other personal items that the crews found no purpose to take home on the return voyages.

E. The NZHAT team’s conservation treatments involved thorough cleaning, followed by meticulous treatment to help slow or, even reverse, the deterioration. Metal items would go through a chemical process, followed by a chemical stabilization treatment, then repackaged and preserved in airtight containers for future conservation. Treatment of paper items often involved washing to remove harmful acids and to repair the fractured parts so that in some cases the paper was even stronger than before.

F. As a result of the project, the NZHAT has become the world leader in cold-climate heritage conservation and its members have been interviewed for numerous television documentaries and radio reports. ‘The Ross Island huts are the jewels in the crown,’ says Watson, but there are other historic buildings needing attention. With logistics support from Antarctica New Zealand, programme managers Al Fastier and Lizzie Meek will be part of a small team heading to Cape Adare, an exposed site more than 700km north of Scott Base. The two Cape Adare huts, remnants of an 1898–1900 British expedition, are not only the first buildings on the continent,’ says Watson, but also the only example of humanity’s first buildings on any continent on Earth.

G. The three-year restoration effort will involve construction repairs and the removal, conservation and return of about 11,000 objects. Compared with the huts on Ross Island, which are relatively sheltered, Cape Adare is a ‘very remote and challenging place to work in’, says Watson. It’s set among the world’s biggest colony of Adélie penguins on an exposed spit of land, and it is important that they don’t interrupt the functioning of the colony in any way while they are there. Lizzie Meek looks forward to the challenge. But I’m also looking forward to going back to the Ross Island huts and seeing them with fresh eyes. After so many years of working on them, to be able to step inside and look around to see what we have accomplished will be amazing.

H. If you can find your way to Antarctica, you’ll need a permit to visit any of these huts, which each are in an Antarctic Specially Protected Area. But there’s an easier way to see them without making the long journey: the trust has partnered with Google to offer Street View walkthroughs of each of the dwellings, available via Google Earth or through the NZHAT’s website.