The Arctic vessel Gjøa was the first ship that sailed through the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, a voyage captained by Roald Amundsen. Gjøa was launched in 1872 and for 10 years was captained by Asbjørn Sexe while transporting fish products from northern Norway to ports on the west coast. She was wrecked in 1882 and sold to Captain Hans Chr. Johannesen, under whose ownership she sailed for 18 years as a sealer in Arctic waters including voyages to the Kara Sea, Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, and northeast Greenland. In 1892 she was the expedition ship for the Axel Hamberg expedition to Spitsbergen, and in 1900 she was a tender for the Svensksund expedition to Spitsbergen. The following year she was sold to Amundsen. On 17 June 1903, Amundsen and his companions sailed from Kristiania (present-day Oslo) and three years later they completed the transit of the Northwest Passage. In 1909 Gjøa was put ashore in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. In 1972 — 100 years after Gjøa was launched — she returned to Oslo and was made a permanent exhibit outside the maritime museum (Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum), where she can be seen today.

Antarctica and Australia share a geographical marginality, a commonality that has produced and continues to reinforce historical and political ties between the two continents. Given this close relationship, surprisingly few fulllength novels set in or concerned with the Antarctic have been produced by Australian authors. Until 1990, two latenineteenth- century Utopias, and two novels by Thomas Keneally, were (to our knowledge) the sole representatives of this category. The last decade, however, has seen an upsurge of interest in Antarctica, and a corresponding increase in fictional response. Keneally's novels are ‘literary,’ but these more recent novels cover the gamut of popular genres: science fiction, action-thriller, and romance. Furthermore, they indicate a change in the perception of Antarctica and its place within international relations. Whereas Keneally is primarily concerned with the psychology of the explorer from the ‘Heroic Age,’ these younger Australian writers are interested in contemporary political, social, and environmental issues surrounding the continent. Literary critics have hitherto said little about textual representations of Antarctica; this paper opens a space for analysis of ‘Antarctic fiction,’ and explores the changing nature of Australian-Antarctic relations as represented by Australian writers.

As a proper noun, Antarctica has a long pedigree but a short history. It was coined and popularised by the Edinburgh mapmaker J. G. Bartholomew in the 1890s as a label for the supposed south polar continent outlined by John Murray of the Challenger Commission. By 1902 it was ‘slowly coming into use’ and by 1928 had been ‘generally received’ by geographers.