“I“If Antarctica were music, it would be Mozart,” Australian radio host Andrew Denton once wrote after one of his many (at least seven) trips to the continent. “Art would be Michelangelo. Literature would be Shakespeare. And yet it is something even greater; the only place on Earth that is still as it should be. May we never tame it.”

And yet it is not as it should be: last year, Antarctic sea ice cover declined for six months.

Antarctica is understandably on the bucket list for many, but therein lies the problem. The more people visit, the stronger their desire to protect it from human impact. And yet everyone who travels there inevitably contributes to its destruction: the BBC estimates that the average carbon footprint of an Antarctic tourist is 3.76 tonnes – about the same as a human normally produces in an entire year.

But tourism in Antarctica has been booming since the 1990s. In 2019-20, 75,000 tourists came, and in 2022-23, 104,897. If each traveler melted 75 tons of snow just by visiting, that would be almost 8 million tons turning into slush.

Hobart is Australia’s gateway to Antarctica and home to the vast majority of our Antarctic and Southern Ocean researchers. Many of those scientists are roaming Hobart’s waterfront this week as part of Hobartica, a new element of the annual Beaker Street science and arts festival.

Like many of us, Beaker Street founder Dr. Margo Adler has never been to Antarctica – but she consciously decided against it.

“I’ve always been really fascinated, but I don’t really have a good reason to go there,” she says. Through Hobartica, she hopes we can get there – by immersing ourselves in the experiences of those who have been there.

For many Antarctic researchers – including Adler’s partner – a big part of their job is sharing their experiences.

“We want people to think of Antarctica as an incredible place that we need to protect and cherish, but not necessarily a place we need to visit,” she says. “I don’t think it’s a place that people should necessarily have on their bucket list. I think it should be something that we’re really proud to protect together.”

“Not everyone has to go there. The people who go there can say, ‘This place is pristine. We have to keep it that way. But let me tell you about it. Let me show You.'”

Hobartica features visual and sound art inspired by the continent, talks by artists and scientists, Finnish sauna tents, and a unique Antarctic ice diving experience: participants enter water that matches the temperature of Antarctic water that day, then transition into water that matches the temperature predicted for 2050.

“It feels like something you can experience without actually being there,” Adler says. “I’m sure some people who have been there would say, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ You can’t go into space in a planetarium. But I think there are elements of that experience and what makes it so special that we can bring here.”

Antarctica has long inspired artists: dozens of residencies are offered worldwide, increasingly aimed at artists willing to go there to raise awareness of the region. Trips to Antarctica have resulted in novels by Kim Stanley Robinson, Thomas Keneally and Favel Parrett, documentaries by Werner Herzog, and artwork by Sidney Nolan and Ken Done. Lawrence English and David Bridie have both composed music there.

And then there’s Helen Garner, who wrote Regions of Thick-Ribbed Ice about a trip she took to Antarctica on a tourist ship. “I can say now, 26 years later, that it was one of the most mind-clearing and heart-warming experiences of my life,” she told the Guardian. “And I will never stop being grateful for it.”

Popular children’s author Alison Lester has been to Antarctica five times so far, “which feels a bit rude,” she laughs.

On her first trip as an Australian Antarctic Arts Fellow in 2005, she sent nightly emails to children and teachers around the world, sharing her daily experiences. Her travels continue to be an important part of her work, and her new book, Into the Ice: Reflections on Antarctica, is due out in October.

She says Antarctica is like no other place: “It’s so remote. It’s almost like traveling into space. When you’re down there, you’re so insignificant and part of such a vast, untouched world. And I guess because it’s so inaccessible, there’s always this feeling: if you can’t do something, you want to do it all the more!”

Lester believes that art has the best chance of getting the conservation message across to the public: there is value in not going there yourself. “The more people know about it, the more they will love it and they will want to protect it, and I think that’s what art can do, in a way that science often can’t. You can fall in love with the place.”

Elizabeth Leane is Professor of Antarctic Studies in the School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania. With a background in science and art, she has been to Antarctica six times and directs Creative Antarctica, an epic survey of Australian art and literature examining the continent. An exhibition is planned for 2026.

“I’ve acquired a taste for it like everyone else,” she says. “It’s incredibly beautiful and at the same time a real dilemma because I want everyone to be able to see what I’ve seen because it’s spectacular.” It’s hard to put into words.

“It’s one of those ironies that if too many people go there, it loses its specialness. But I don’t want no one to see it, or only scientists to see it, because I believe it’s a part of our world that we all need to know. Some of us second-hand, some of us directly.”

Philip Samartzis, a sound artist whose work is on display in Hobartica, has been to Antarctica twice to document the industrial sounds of station life and, apart from that, the famous wind. He has observed a real shift in artists’ focus over the last decade and a half, away from the historical ideal of man conquering a wild landscape.

“Recently there have been questions about gender equality, the ethics of being there and the impact we are having on what is essentially the world’s last pristine wilderness,” he says. “Artists are addressing the impact of climate change, which is part of my focus as conditions there become increasingly volatile and less predictable.”

Do these accounts and artists’ works really help us understand Antarctica without going there ourselves? Leane thinks so: “I’ve come to the conclusion that you can write a great novel about Antarctica without going there, and a terrible one if you do go there,” she says.

“I think we need to get away from the idea that you’re only a real Antarctic resident if you go there and are on the ice.”