At the height of Sydney's summer theatre season in 1921, Frank Hurley was presenting his latest entertainment, the Melanesian travelogue Pearls and Savages, to record houses at the Globe Theatre in George Street. On 10 December he wrote to Sir Douglas Mawson, who in 1911 had taken Hurley as his camera operator on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition. Hurley had a deal to put to him. He had been back from Papua, ‘the land of Headhunters’, for a couple of months now and was bursting with ideas for a new show. ‘Briefly,’ he wrote, ‘my project is this. To produce an Evening's “Antarctic Memories” using Shackleton & your film in conjunction.’ Not given to modesty, Hurley went on, ‘I would lecture with an assistant, & will have the presumption to say that there is no one will make a bigger success of the picture than myself, as I am well in with the Union Theatres & press & public.’

Three months later and still on tour, Hurley was staying at the Oriental Hotel in Melbourne's Collins Street. He had received a positive response from Mawson and replied, ‘I will be back in Sydney in a fortnight & will have an agreement drawn up… The rights I presume will include N[ew] Z[ealand]. About the rest of the world – continental, UK & US… As I expect to be over there in the near future fine business could be done.’