Michael Dillon’s Great White Whale documentary on first crew to climb Big Ben on Heard Island shown in Albany

A documentary revealing the journey of the first crew to summit Australia’s highest peak almost 60 years ago will screen in Albany next week. Michael Dillon’s film “Great White Whale” will play at Orana Cinemas next Tuesday, following the adventures of the 10-man crew that left Albany in 1964 to climb Big Ben — the 2745m mountain rising out of Heard Island. The mountain, which lies 2000km southwest of Albany, is Australia’s highest, standing 500m taller than Mt Kosciuszko. The film features interviews with eight of the 10 men who completed the expedition — a diverse crew of doctors, engineers, authors and school teachers with differing amounts of sailing and mountaineering expertise. The men recount the building of their boat, a Tasmanian crayfish schooner called the “Patanela” in Sydney, the voyage to Albany and then the harrowing journey of arriving and trying to climb the mountain in subarctic conditions. Dillon describes three members of the group’s first disaster-stricken attempt to climb the peak in 1963, and their “Moby Dick-Captain Ahab” like obsession to reach the summit at whatever cost. “They had attempted it the year before and it had almost killed them,” he said. “They called it their white whale — partly for the obsession and partly because when you approach it from the sea, all you see is this amazing white mass rising from the ocean, like a whale. “It left such a big impression on them afterwards, with one man John Crick, writing dozens of songs about it, and another Malcolm Hay — wanting young people to have an adventure at sea, just as he had — building the Fremantle-based Leeuwin training ship.” Though he started filming 14 years ago, Dillon’s part in the story actually began at its inception, when he volunteered to help repair some of the crew’s rubber lifeboats when the ship was still docked in Sydney. Having created adventure documentaries for the past 50 years, Dillon said he couldn’t finish his career without telling this story. “(It’s) this amazing, forgotten, Australian story,” he said. “It’s one I knew about from the beginning as I was one of many who volunteered to get the boat ready to sail on time. “I realised the men were getting into their 80s and knew I needed to sit them down into armchairs and get this story out. “I felt my life had gone full circle and I knew that Western Australia should be the place where this film should first be widely seen”. Albany is essential to the expedition’s story, serving not only as the last land port before the 2.5 month-long voyage to Heard Island but with half a metre of its railway track welded to the Patanela’s anchor. Dillon thought some of the town’s older residents might remember when the boat set sail in November of 1964, with meetings held in the Town Hall and the Rotary club performing a send-off. The film has won several international awards, including the Grand Prize at the International Mountain and Adventure Film Festival in Bilbao, Spain last December. The film will be screened at Orana Cinemas at 6.30pm on Tuesday, September 17. The trailer for the Great White Whale can be seen on Michael Dillon’s website.