Desc: Douglas Mawson: The Survivor: Directed by David Parer. With Douglas Mawson. A dramatised reconstruction of the tragic 1912 expedition of Professor Sir Douglas Mawson to Antarctica. Australia owes its claim to 40 per cent of Antarctic territory to Mawson, who died in 1958 at the age of 76. During the 1912 expedition, two of Mawson's team died, leaving a weak and ill Mawson to struggle alone back to a base camp at Commonwealth Bay. His feat is regarded as the greatest story of lone survival in the history of polar exploration.