Join curators from the National Library of Australia with station leader Rebecca Jeffcoat and expeditioner Stephanie Pfennigwerth on a journey through the National Library’s Antarctic collection. Drawing on highlights from the pictorial, manuscript and oral history collections, the panel will reflect on the universal experiences of life in Antarctica and what has changed over centuries of exploration and discovery.

Rebecca Jeffcoat is a former senior Navy officer with specialisations in meteorology and oceanography. She has held significant appointments within the Navy, including Command of HMAS Kuttabul, Garden Island, in Sydney.

Over the past 10 years, Rebecca has had extensive leadership experience in isolated, high‑risk and extreme environments, leading teams at three Australian Antarctic stations—Casey, Mawson, and Macquarie Island. Rebecca works with the Australian Antarctic Division as Director of Expeditioner Training and Capability. She hopes to deploy as Station Leader to Davis later this year.

Rebecca holds postgraduate qualifications in Maritime Policy and in Disaster and Emergency Management and is currently the President of the ANARE Club, the national organisation representing Australian Antarctic Program expeditioners which is dedicated to preserving polar history and fostering the Antarctic community

Stephanie Pfennigwerth worked as writer and editor in Sydney's publishing industry for 14 years before she escaped to the Antarctic Peninsula in 1998. Smitten by its transcendental beauty – and worried about how to protect it – she moved to Hobart to undertake Antarctic and Southern Ocean studies at the University of Tasmania.

Her thesis was published by the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre and led to a role in natural and cultural history management for the Australian Antarctic Division. In 2002 she co-managed a conservation expedition to Mawson's Huts Historic Site but could not go ashore due to the region’s notorious weather. Unperturbed, she detoured 1600 km to Casey Station, where she spent the summer as a field assistant. Stephanie is currently a curator at the Museum of Australian Democracy but thinks about Antarctica every day.

Image credit: Expeditioners form a line on the sea ice off Davis Station to farewell the Aurora Australis and wintering expeditioners returning home, Antarctica, 29 October 1998, Felicity Jenkins, NLA PIC Cold Store Row A1/2/4 Folder 1 #PIC/3049/25