The ‘Aurora’, under the command of Captain Æneas Mackintosh, sailed from Hobart for the Ross Sea on December 24, 1914.  The ship had refitted in Sydney, where the State and Federal Governments had given generous assistance, and would be able, if necessary, to spend two years in the Antarctic.  My instructions to Captain Mackintosh, in brief, were to proceed to the Ross Sea, make a base at some convenient point in or near McMurdo Sound, land stores and equipment, and lay depots on the Great Ice Barrier in the direction of the Beardmore Glacier for the use of the party that I expected to bring overland from the Weddell Sea coast.  This programme would involve some heavy sledging, but the ground to be covered was familiar, and I had not anticipated that the work would present any great difficulties.  The ‘Aurora’ carried materials for a hut, equipment for landing and sledging parties, stores and clothing of all the kinds required, and an ample supply of sledges.  There were also dog teams and one of the motor-tractors.  I had told Captain Mackintosh that it was possible the transcontinental journey would be attempted in the 1914-15 season in the event of the landing on the Weddell Sea coast proving unexpectedly easy, and it would be his duty, therefore, to lay out depots to the south immediately after his arrival at his base.  I had directed him to place a depot of food and fuel-oil at lat. 80° S. in 1914-15, with cairns and flags as guides to a sledging party approaching from the direction of the Pole.  He would place depots farther south in the 1915- 16 season.

The ‘Aurora’ had an uneventful voyage southwards.  She anchored off the sealing-huts at Macquarie Island on Christmas Day, December 25.  The wireless station erected by Sir Douglas Mawson’s Australian Antarctic Expedition could be seen on a hill to the north-west with the Expedition’s hut at the base of the hill.  This hut was still occupied by a meteorological staff, and later in the day the meteorologist, Mr. Tulloch, came off to the ship and had dinner aboard.  The ‘Aurora’ had some stores for the Macquarie Island party, and these were sent ashore during succeeding days in the boats.  The landing-place was a rough, kelp-guarded beach, where lay the remains of the New Zealand barque Clyde.  Macquarie Island anchorages are treacherous, and several ships engaged in the sealing and whaling trade have left their bones on the rocky shores, where bask great herds of seals and sea-elephants.  The ‘Aurora’ sailed from the island on December 31, and three days later they sighted the first iceberg, a tabular berg rising 250 ft. above the sea.  This was in lat. 62° 44´ S., long. 169° 58´ E. The next day, in lat. 64° 27´ 38´´ S., the ‘Aurora’ passed through the first belt of pack-ice.  At 9 a.m. on January 7, Mount Sabine, a mighty peak of the Admiralty Range, South Victoria Land, was sighted seventy-five miles distant.