You can't beat a good old Antarctic exploration story for edge-of-the-seat awe-inspiring feats of endurance. Was pleased and surprised to come across a book about Australia's own Antarctic hero, Douglas Mawson, whose death-defying exploits were contemporaneous with Scott's last gasp.

Anyone with an interest in such lit can read more here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841581410/203-6291161-1395135

There are some interesting features of the story that impinge on the ever popular 'Was Scott Incompetent' debate. The favourite 'Yes' argument is that he should have used huskies, like Amundsen. Doh. The counter-argument has been that husky teams are not well suited to all types of south polar terrain including glaciers. Well, when Mawson's team were hundreds of miles out, one of his team of 3 men, plus a whole team of huskies and sledge, disappeared into a crevasse never to be seen again. As it happened, this sledge was carrying almost all the expedition food. Mawson survived, barely, on husky meat, including the dogs' (then unknown to be) toxic livers, while his remaining colleague succumbed to the grotesqueries of hypervitaminosis-A in an extremely arduous retreat lasting several weeks.

In the best tradition of explorer heroics, he found a supply dump by incredibly skillful/lucky navigation, missed a search party by a matter of hours, and a few days later missed his ship for home by a similar margin entailing another year spent on the ice. For the rest of his life he asked himself why he had led men to their deaths and what he had achieved in doing so.

Incidentally, another team from the expedition came then-closest to the magnetic South Pole. This team included the American photographer Frank Hurley, later to become famous for his pics of The Endurance on Shackleton's last expedition.