THE latest exhibition at the National Archives of Australia is easily the coolest show in town.

And that’s not just because it’s got snow, ice, penguins, seals and huskies, but because “Traversing Antarctica: the Australian experience” is one of the most interactive shows we’ve seen there in a while, as National Archives researcher Amy Lay demonstrated to “CityNews” this week.

While parents can explore important documents relating to Australia’s work in Antarctica, over more than 40 per cent of which we still have jurisdiction, the kids can be off pressing touch-screens that make the waters ripple, that display three onshore and two offshore Antarctic stations, listening on four separate sound systems to the sounds of Adélie penguins and Waddell seals in the bitter winds, getting close to sledger Cecil Madigan’s man-hauling sled and wondering at the lives of some of the animals that died alongside Australians in the most inhospitable of territories, like the faihtful husky “Shep”, killed in a hurricane.

[portfolio_slideshow]

Coolest of all, there’s live-streaming from the present-day camps – it’s the nearest you can get to actually being there.

A collaboration between the National Archives, the WA Museum and the Australian Antarctic Division, the exhibition marks the centenary of Douglas Mawson’s 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition. It will later tour nationally until 2015, with $120,985 in funding from Visions of Australia.

The three-dimensional objects, which include items of clothing, 1950s examples of the taxidermist’s art that would be impossible to obtain in present times, come from the AAD, most of the documents and some of the films come from the Archives. There are photographs and films by Frank Hurley, and a display case of telegrams in which Mawson tells Prime Minister Fisher of the loss of two of his fellows.

It’s an acronym rich exhibition, in which special attention is paid to BANZARE, the British, Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expeditions.

While the Madrid Protocol of 1991, replacing the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, effectively removed foreign animals fromAntarctica, this exhibition makes one striking point – it is the only large land-mass on earth that has no native human population.

That means that, in a sense, we too should be removed. except that in contemporary times, the scientific purposes which motivated many early explorers like Mawson is now to the fore, seen in examples shown of research related to global warming, such as the extraction of ice cores and other kinds of analysis essential to sustaining this vulnerable region.

While this exhibition begins with Mawson’s 1911 to 1914 Expedition, it ends with a look into the future.

“TraversingAntarctica: the Australian experience”, National Archives of Australia 9am-5pm daily (except Good Friday) until September 9. Free entry