Before an oncoming winter turned the sea to solid ice, the author made a voyage to Antarctica aboard the 12,000-tonne Russian 'breaker Kapitan Khlebnikov, with the objective of reaching 'Farthest South' than any ship before it. From Hobart, the journey took them across the wild Southern Ocean to the historic Ross Sea region and ultimately to a mysterious destination at the far edge of the Great Ice Barrier.

En route they would encounter BI5, the world's largest recorded iceberg, in area more than four times the size of the Australian Capital Territory, or almost as big as the State of Connecticut, U.S.A. Excitement increased as Khlebnikov broke through dense pack towards the Bay of Whales where vast 'bergs calve from the face of one of the world's geographic wonders, the Great Barrier cliffs which flank the enormous Ross Ice Shelf.

From bases on the Barrier explorers set forth to conquer the South Pole. Here the U.S. Navy rehearsed to fight World War III under Arctic conditions and Australia staged a bizarre rescue mission to find an American millionaire who had attempted to fly across Antarctica. As the ship forces her way south, the book recounts the lives of the men who figured in these timeless adventures.

David Burke is an Australian writer, the author of 18 books, who has made six visits to the White South. His previous Antarctic works were the novel Monday at McMurdo and Moments of Terror, the Story of Antarctic Aviation. He wrote the lyrics of Great Scott!, the world's first Antarctic musical, which has been performed in Australia and overseas. Extracts from various of his reports as a newspaper journalist, reaching back to his first polar assignment in 1958 appear in Voyage to the End of the World. He lives in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.