The tragic love story that launched a life of adventure

62 INSIGHT

Sunday, April 10, 2022

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The tragic launched South Australian Sir Hubert Wilkins’ exploits across the globe are the stuff of a Boys’ Own adventure but a new book reveals an unknown side of the daredevil photographer and explorer, writes NATHAN DAVIES

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IR Hubert Wilkins entered into a suicide pact with his lover as a teenager and almost died, according to the author of a new book on the respected South Australian explorer.

Melbourne author Jeff Maynard uncovered the dramatic plot between the star-crossed lovers while researching Wilkins’ records and interviewing people connected to the adventurer.

According to Mr Maynard, Wilkins had fallen in love with an 18-yearold singer named Tilly who was, to use the parlance of the early 1900s, “in the family way”.

Tilly’s parents, deeply religious, forbid her from marrying Wilkins and instead wanted her to marry a man in his forties.

Wilkins also hailed from a religious and conservative family who were already disapproving of his lifestyle choices – which included working at a carnival and singing publicly himself – and the pair saw death as the only way they could stay together.

A plan was hatched to commit suicide by taking potassium cyanide, a deadly chemical used in electroplating, but before they could go through with it Tilly sent Wilkins a letter imploring him to go on with his life before she drowned herself.

The grief-stricken Wilkins swallowed the cyanide but failed to kill himself and was nursed back to health by his family.

Four months later he stowed away on a ship to Sydney, found work in the newly bustling film industry and began his now-famous life of adventure.

South Australian adventurer Sir Hubert Wilkins and, right, the Wilkins family homestead at Mt Bryan in the Mid North.

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or Maynard, who has produced a limited run of 1000 copies of his hardcover book The Illustrated Sir Hubert Wilkins to raise

funds for further research of the explorer’s records, the incident points to a man who was far more complex than many have painted him over the years.

“I’ve been researching him for over 20 years,” Maynard said.

“I’ve tried to get past the Boys’ Own adventure version of Wilkins.

That’s all good but I knew there had to be more to him than that.

“And when I went looking it was one of those cases of truth being stranger than fiction. I found a very complex man, a man with a lot of self-doubt.

“There are letters from the 1930s where you find yourself thinking, ‘This man is either close to a nervous breakdown or he has serious depression’.

“What I tried to do was shine a light on some of this without dragging the guy down in any way, because he was incredibly heroic.”

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ilkins, who was born in the Mid North town of Mt Bryan, was one of history’s great aviator-navigators, the first person to take a submarine under polar ice and the first person to shoot moving pictures of a war.

He was the only Australian war photographer to be decorated in battle, a pioneer in the fields of climate science and meteorology, and a man ahead of his time on issues of conservation and Indigenous relations.

And despite being a man of science, he also had a deep interest in ESP, telepathy and other paranormal phenomenon.

Wilkins conducted a long-running experiment in an attempt to prove ESP was possible, trading diaries with friend Harold Sherman in the 1930s to see if they could read each other’s minds over thousands of kilometres.

Wilkins also had rather unorthodox views on fidelity and marriage,

One man’s extraordinary journey Sir George Hubert Wilkins Born October 31, 1888, Mt Bryan East, South Australia Died December 1, 1958, Framingham, Massachusetts, US

Hubert Wilkins and Ben Eielson on their trans-Arctic flight. Picture: University of Alaska Fairbanks

■ Wilkins grew up at Mt Bryan, near Burra, and – unusually for the time – had a very close

relationship with the local Indigenous people, often camping out with his young Aboriginal friends.

■ He was the first person to shoot moving pictures of a battle after travelling to The Balkans in 1912.

■ He was exploring in the Canadian Arctic when the First World War broke out.

■ In 1918 he was appointed as

an official photographer for the AIF on the Western Front, receiving a Military Cross and becoming the only photographer to be decorated in recognition for helping wounded soldiers under fire.

He also assumed command of a group of American soldiers who had lost their commanding officers, and for this effort a bar was added to

his Military Cross.

Sir John Monash said of Wilkins, “He was a highly accomplished and absolutely fearless combat photographer.

What happened to him is a story of epic proportions.

Wounded many times ... he always came through. At times he brought in the wounded, at other times he supplied vital intelligence of enemy activity ADVE01Z01MA - V1

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Sunday, April 10, 2022

INSIGHT 63

love story that a life of adventure

Sir Hubert Wilkins on his last trip to Antarctica in 1957-58.

perhaps best demonstrated by the fact a singer he employed to work as his assistant, a man named Winston Ross, ended up living on the Wilkins’ farm in Pennsylvania and having a long-running affair with Wilkins’ wife Suzanne.

“This fellow moves to the farm in with his wife and Wilkins keeps travelling, living in hotel rooms, and yet he was always loyal to her, supportive of her,” Maynard said.

“It was probably what we’d now call an open marriage. But Hubert was off doing his ESP studies and communicating with other planets and all that stuff. It’s very complex.

“That was another confliction – this strict Protestant upbringing and his interest in all these strange things.”

I

t was through Winston Ross’s adopted son Mike that Maynard learned more touching details about the suicide pact.

“Tilly wrote him this note before

Captain Hubert Wilkins (right) taking photos on a British tank during World War I.

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Sir Hubert and his wife Suzanne.

she killed herself, and I don’t know if that note still exists,” he said.

“But the story I got through Mike was that the note existed after Wilkins died. Mike said that his father told him that within that letter were the words, ‘sing for the both of us’.

“So just before she drowns herself

he observed. At one point he even rallied troops as a combat officer ... His record was unique.”

■ In 1919 he travelled to Gallipoli with official historian Charles Bean to photograph the battlefields where so many Australians had died.

■ Served as an ornithologist on the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition to the Southern Ocean and adjacent islands.

■ In 1923 he carried out a twoyear study of the bird life of

she writes him this letter telling him to sing for the both of them, and he’s had that letter in his pocket as he runs out into no man’s land during World War I. “He’s had that note in his pocket as he’s flown over the Arctic. It just makes you think, ‘wow!’. It puts a dif-

northern Australia.

■ Flew from Alaska to Norway, for which he was knighted.

■ Explored both the Antarctic and Arctic by air.

■ Attempted to take a World War I submarine to the North Pole. The expedition was ultimately a failure, but it was important in demonstrating that subs could operate under polar ice caps.

■ Wilkins had a keen interest in ESP and other supernatural phenomenon, carrying out a

ferent complexion on the whole man and, for me, makes him incredibly interesting.”

Maynard said finding the letter from Tilly would be “one of – but not the – Holy Grails of Hubert Wilkins memorabilia.

“There are boxes of material in America that I know about, and that note would certainly be very special,” he said.

“But his diary from the Western Front in World War I, where he would have been commenting about

long-running, long-distance experiment with a friend where they would record their thoughts in a diary and send them to a third party for analysis.

According to Wilkins the experiment yielded several promising results.

He was also a devotee of an esoteric tome called The Urantia Book, which aimed to unite religion, science and philosophy and offered an alternative version of the life

(Sir John) Monash and (Charles) Bean, that would be an incredible thing to find. The diary of the official photographer of the Western Front – that would be phenomenal.”

Maynard said Wilkins was receiving some long overdue recognition thanks to a recent book by best-selling author Peter Fitzsimons, but his main recognition in his home state remains a mural located in the men’s toilet at Adelaide Airport.

“It took me half an hour to photograph it because I had to wait for the toilets to be empty,” he laughs.

“But I didn’t want to be pulling my camera out in the urinals. I think the only thing now that could make him a household name would be a feature film. It’d be a great movie.”

The Illustrated Sir Hubert Wilkins is available at netfieldpublishing.com.au

of Jesus Christ.

■ Was married to Australia actress Suzanne Bennett. The pair stayed married until Wilkins’ death, although it seems the marriage wasn’t always a faithful one.

■ After his death Wilkins’ ashes were scattered on the ice at the North Pole by the crew of the USS Skate, a sign of the regard he was held in by submariners.

Sir Hubert Wilkins on the threshold of adventure