which was reported in the Sydney Sun: "Record by the Kyarra. Mr. S. H. Jeffryes, wireless operator on the A.U.S.N. Co.'s Kyarra, which was fitted up by the Australasian Wireless Co., Ltd., has put up a record for overland wireless messages between ships. His report says:— "Coming into Adelaide on the 18th Instant, distant from Adelaide 140 miles, I picked up the Cooma. This exceeds the records of that of the Cooma and Riverlna four months ago from Townsville to the Bight by a small margin of about 40 miles. The conditions were absolutely normal on the night, a fact which could hardly be said of the occasion four months ago, which was a night on which every operator got good distances, myself and the Levuka getting 2100 miles. It is claimed by the Cooma and Riverina that the distance was 2300 miles. This is not so, as direct it is not more than 1500 miles, but even this is equivalent to almost twice as much by sea. I thus claim to have established an Australasian record for transmission and reception over land, beating the previous one by 40 miles." It was common in this era for ship wireless officers to move frequently between ships. At the time of Jeffryes' appointment to the AAE he was reported as having been most recently on the SS Westralia. Antarctic preparations The AAE expedition was the first Antarctic expedition in history, and the only one during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, to maintain radio contact with its country of origin. Only a high power facility of comparable capacity to those recently established at Sydney (VIS) and Perth (VIP) would have been capable of direct communication between Hobart and Cape Denison and this would have been prohibitively expensive and resource hungry for the expedition. It was decided to establish an intermediate station at Macquarie Island, and by halving the maximum distance for each signal to traverse, it was expected that the 2 kW Telefunken transmitters of the Australasian Wireless Co., Ltd. would enable reliable communication. Jeffryes had a keen interest in both Antarctica and wireless telegraphy and when the first call for applications to join the AAE was made, he sought an appointment as wireless operator. But at that time his length of experience as a telegraphist and wireless telegraphist was not great and he was not successful. Douglas Mawson appointed Walter Henry