Tim Bowden 1937–2024

Tim Bowden speaking at the ANARE Club Macquarie Island 70th Anniversary Commemoration event in Hobart, 2018

Tim Bowden will be known to many ANARE Club Members for his activities with ANARE in broadcasting, writing and researching Australian activities in Antarctica, following his first visit to Mawson, Davis and Casey stations under the Antarctic Division’s Humanities Program aboard Icebird in 1989.

In 1993 the Antarctic Division commissioned Tim Bowden to write the official history of ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) The Silence Calling — Australians in Antarctica 1947–97, published in June, 1997.

Tim Bowden presented six half-hour documentaries Breaking the Ice (on ANARE operations) on the ABC in 1996, and wrote and narrated a second documentary The Silence Calling in 1997, as a companion to the book.  Tim visited Antarctica eight times as a journalist and film maker, and guest historian on tourist voyages to the Ross Sea, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula.  Tim Bowden was a guest on ABC Radio National’s Ockhams Razor on the 22nd June 1997, a related article The Ice Frontier is available on the ABC website.

Tim Bowden received an Order of Australia for services to public broadcasting in June 1994, and the Centenary Award for service as a local radio presenter and as a nationally recognised author in 2001.  In May 1997 Tim was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Tasmania.