Download or read book Body at the Melbourne Club written by David Burke and published by Wakefield Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertram Armytage, son of a wealthy squatter, a popular sportsman who rowed for Cambridge, was the first Australian-born member of an Antarctic expedition. An expert horseman, he was given charge of the ponies in Ernest Shackleton's great 1907-1909 expedition, narrowly escaping the jaws of killer whales. In London he was decorated by royalty, but on coming home to Australia he went to his part-time city residence, the exclusive Melbourne Club, put on his dinner suit and polar medals and, at the age of 41, shot himself. This mystery-cum-biography provides a new perspective on one of Shackleton's greatest expeditions.