in the 19th century where there is still a Bechervaise Line. His paternal great-great-grandfather John Béchervaise (b. 1790, d. 1867) was born in Jersey, but migrated early to Gosport, Hampshire, England married twice and raised his children there, while spending many years as a sailor. As a sailor of many years in Arctic waters, he was one of many awarded the first British Arctic Medal of 1818–1855. He published an anonymous memoir Thirty-Six Years of a Seafaring life by An old Quartermaster in 1839 which was widely distributed and well received. Some sources misspell his name Berchervaise. His paternal great-grandfather William Philip Béchervaise (b. 1831, d. 1907) was born in Hampshire and was amongst the tens of thousands who travelled to Victoria in the 1850s in search of gold, but then decided to remain. He was the first of that surname to arrive in Australia. He was nearby to the Eureka Stockade and professed to having been "bunted" by a trooper. Appointed to the Victorian Posts and Telegraphs Department in 1856, he was soon promoted as Telegraph Master at Ballarat in 1858, later combining the role as Postmaster. He remained with the Department in Ballarat till retirement in 1892, excepting for two years when he was transferred to Melbourne to reorganise that office. One of Australia's earliest telephone and telephony experimenters in 1878. As a member of the Telegraph Electrical Society of Victoria from inception in 1874, he was a contemporary of Samuel Walker McGowan, Peter Robert Challen and Henry Sutton. Famously exposed, in parliamentary enquiry, the nepotism within Victorian Posts and Telegraphs in the 1880s. Honours and legacy Béchervaise was first awarded the MBE and then in the New Year's Day 1993 honours list further awarded the Order of Australia Medal OAM for service to Australian Antarctic exploration. Béchervaise Island (or 'Bech' to locals), was named on 1 January 2000 in his honour. It is the largest, central island of the Flat Islands, about 2 km WNW of Mawson Station. Mount Béchervaise is a great massif of brown rock in the Athos Range, Prince Charles Mountains which was first visited in November 1955 by an ANARE party led by Bechervaise and named in his honour. Béchervaise Plateau is the plateau surrounding Federation Peak which he was the first to climb with a party of schoolboys in 1949. But his greatest legacy was hundreds of mountain climbers and bushwalkers inspired