Drinks from 6.30 pm lecture starts 7.30 pm

HK$100 RGS HK members and HK$150 Non Members

Tim Jarvis to lectures on "To the Edge of Endurance".   Mr Jarvis has undertaken unsupported expeditions to some of the world's most remote regions, including to the South and North Poles and across Australia's largest desert, the Great Victoria Desert.  He has also taken a kayak passage to the dry centre of Australia, lived on the largest uninhabited island in the South Pacific and recreated the polar survival journey of Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson.  He held the record for the fastest unsupported journey to the South Pole and the longest unsupported journey in Antarctica.  

In 2007, Mr Jarvis's retraced Australian polar explorer Sir Douglas Mawson's polar survival journey of 1912/13.  Mr Jarvis's modern re-enactment of this expedition is unique for using exact replica 1913 clothing, equipment and starvation rations as Sir Douglas's expedition had used.  The documentary made of the expedition, Mawson in Antarctica, was the flagship of the Film Australia 'Making History' series and fronted Channel 4's highly acclaimed 'Edge of Endurance' series.  The expedition's patrons were then Australian Prime Minister the Hon John Howard and the Hon Alexandra Shackleton, the granddaughter of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

In January 2013, Tim Jarvis is to lead a re-enactment of British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1916 rescue expedition, perhaps the most famous rescue in history.  Sir Ernest's rescue expedition was audaciously planned following the sinking of his original expedition ship, The Endurance, which left his 30 expeditoners stranded on Antarctica.  Mr Jarvis is to sail a small wooden boat, the Alexandra Shackleton, an exact replica of Sir Ernest's original 22.5' whaler the James Caird, from Elephant Island, off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, 1,500km across the Southern Ocean, in the first attempt at the feat using entirely original equipment.

After crossing the roughest ocean in the world with just five companions in an open boat without navigation equipment to South Georgia, Mr Jarvis is then to scale, like Sir Ernest, the island's precipitous peaks with no mountaineering equipment to reach the same remote whaling station.  For Sir Ernest this led to the rescue his 22 men still stranded in Antarctica, whose rescue depended on his success. A documentary film to be shown worldwide is being made about the expedition, with major educational/science linkages including highlighting Antarctic ice cap melt.

Tim Jarvis is an explorer, environmental scientist, author, adventurer and public speaker.  Mr Jarvis holds Masters' degrees in environmental science and environmental law.  In addition to being an explorer, he uses his public speaking engagements, films and books about his expeditions to promote thinking about climate change and biodiversity loss.  Mr Jarvis also works as a sustainability adviser on multilateral aid projects for organisations including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and AusAID.  He was awarded the Australian Geographic Society's 'Spirit of Adventure' medal for his kayak journey across Australia's largest salt lake, Lake Eyre in 2004.  He was conferred a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to the environment, community and exploration in the 2010 Australian honours list and made a Fellow of the Yale World Fellows Programme.  He is Director of an outcome-focused environmental initiative Do-Tank.  He is the author of three books about his expeditions.