1898. Queen Victoria is still on the throne and Sherlock Holmes still lives at 221B Baker Street. On the other side of the world in Hobart Tasmania, an Anglo-Norwegian explorer named Carsten Borchgrevink prepares to lead the British-financed Southern Cross Expedition not to the south pole, but to Antarctica in general and further south than anyone had gone before.

(No, I had not heard of him either; the later expeditions of Scott, Shackleton and of course Amundsen drowned him out from history.)

This is not him. This is Louis Bernacchi, a member of his crew. Bernacchi was a physicist and astronomer, born to Italian parents in Belgium in 1876 and whose family migrated to... you guessed it, Tasmania in 1884 when he was about 8. (Hence the reason that he gets the statue rather than Borchgrevink. Also his name is easier to pronounce. Well, for me it is, obviously.)

The handsome fella alongside him is his loyal companion Joe. I'm not sure what breed Joe is, but he ain't a Boxer. (Actually Boxers had only been invented 2 years earlier anyway, with the first one coming off the production line in 1896. And even then they were way too smart to freeze their backsides off walking across Antarctica.) Ah; I just read the plaque behind him. Joe was a Husky. Uh, yeah... Joe doesn't look like a Husky to me, but... OK. Artistic licence maybe. It's still a good sculpture in my opinion.

Speaking of which, the sculptor was Stephen Walker and it was unveiled on 10 September 2002. Which doesn't seem that long ago but sigh, it was.

A related sculpture named Seals and Penguins stands close by.

Bernacchi returned safely from the expedition, as did all of them save for the zoologist who fell ill and died.

Bernacchi joined other expeditions, and later moved to England where he died of ill health in 1942.

Joe's fate is unknown.