Sir Douglas Mawson's expedition set the foundation of Australia's modern presence in the Antarctic and signalled a new field of scientific research.

But a lesser-known story is that of Sidney Harry Jeffryes, who had a diagnosis of schizophrenia and was later forgotten in a Victorian lunatic asylum.

Sidney Harry Jeffryes joined the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, which provided more geographical knowledge of Antarctica than any other campaign at the time, during its second year in 1913.

Despite being regarded as insane by his colleagues, Jeffryes connected the first two-way wireless communication with a relay station on Macquarie Island, 1,500 kilometres south of Hobart, helping establish a crucial link that eventually assisted in their rescue.

But a year later, Jeffryes would be found wandering naked through bushland near Stawell in Victoria.

Arrested and later buried in an unmarked grave near the notorious J Ward prison for the criminally insane, Jeffryes has now, almost 80 years later, been honoured.

'The home of blizzards'

Picking ice in the wind at Mawson's Huts, Cape Denison, Commonwealth Bay during the first Australasian Antarctic Expedition. ( Supplied: State Library of NSW/Frank Hurley )

Jeffryes was overlooked in his original application to join the expedition, with Sir Douglas Mawson writing that he was "a very decent sort of man" but "very small and certainly would not do as a sledger".

Jeffryes wrote back: "Thank you for the manly courtesy shown to me and I wish the expedition every success" and was later recruited as the wireless operator on board the ship Aurora, which was meant to take the explorers home in early 1913.

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition reached its base at Cape Denison in January 1912 but during a three-man, 500-kilometre-long sledging mission, two of Mawson's colleagues died.

Sick and starving, Mawson made it back to camp on his own, but not in time to reach the ship Aurora, which had left just few hours earlier.

The six crew, including Jeffryes, who stayed behind and waited for Mawson, would endure another harsh winter in Antarctica, facing winds of up to 350 kilometres per hour, in a place nicknamed 'the home of blizzards'.

'I must die a martyr': Jeffryes' descent into 'polar madness'

Sidney Harry Jeffryes joined the historic Australasian Antarctic Expedition in 1913 but would live out the rest of his days in a prison for the criminally insane. ( Supplied: Mawson's Hut Foundation )

There appeared to be no indication of Jeffryes' mental health problems until July 1913 when he got into several fights with his colleague Cecil Madigan, he stopped washing himself, and began collecting bottles of his own urine.

The expedition's medical officer wrote that Jeffryes was hallucinating and suffering from "delusive insanity".

Tensions grew further when another crew member found that Jeffryes had been telling Macquarie Island, via morse code, that he was the only sane member left on the expedition.

Mawson intervened, stating "Censor all messages Jeffryes insane" via morse, and removed him from most active duties.

Mawson Antarctic Expedition: Steam Yacht Aurora photographed in 1913 on the edge of the ice shelf off Queen Mary Land. ( Supplied: State Library of NSW/Frank Hurley )

In a letter declaring his sanity to his sister, Jeffryes wrote: "I am to be done to death by a jury of six murderers who are trying to prove me insane originating possibly from the jealousy of the six of them".

"I am unable to prevent their folly and so must die a martyr to their bloody mindedness."

When the Aurora finally returned and took the men to Adelaide in early 1914, the ship's Second Officer Percy Gray wrote that "poor old Jeffryes, the wireless man, is beginning to go dotty again".

"The fellows were at the braces, they all rushed from one to the other and Jeffryes, whose cabin is on deck, thought they were coming to put him in his coffin, and leapt out of his bunk and barricaded the door."

"Poor chap, I am very sorry for him."

From glory in the Antarctic to life in an asylum

Researcher at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, Elizabeth Leane, said the stressful conditions of the expedition could have triggered Jeffryes' schizophrenia.

"Not just the isolation and the cold and the dark but also the difficulty of receiving wireless messages in that situation," she said.

Using the flying fox to get stores from the Aurora during the establishment of the Western Base in February, 1912. ( Supplied: State Library of NSW/Frank Hurley )

"It was faint and really hard for him to hear and when he was in the asylum he kept on thinking he was hearing wireless messages."

Upon returning to Australia in early 1914, Jeffryes travelled from Adelaide to Stawell in Western Victoria and wandered the bushland for almost two weeks.

He was arrested and spent a year in several mental asylums before he assaulted a staff member at Sunbury and was sent to J Ward — a prison in Ararat that housed the criminally insane, including murderers and rapists.

The family of Sidney Harry Jeffryes wrote to Sir Douglas Mawson multiple times but Mawson's Huts Foundation has not found any record of him responding. ( Supplied: Australian Antarctic Division )

"His sister wrote to Mawson very angry letters about his having let his brother get on a train without anyone accompanying him … and his mother wrote to newspapers, his family were quite active and wrote for him years and years afterwards," Ms Leane said.

"He never wrote back, he wasn't in a state in which he could."

Jeffryes died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1942 and Ms Leane said burying him in an unmarked grave was "just wrong".

"Mental illness was highly stigmatised — particularly in men who were meant to heroic and stoic types — so you can understand why his story was hushed up."

"I just think we're past that in our history of Antarctica, that we can move beyond the idea that everybody who goes to Antarctica or who went to Antarctica has to be this heroic type."

Honoured after 76 years in a forgotten grave

Mawson's Huts Foundation has been raising around $5,000 to pay for a bronze plaque commemorating Jeffryes at his grave in the Ararat cemetery.

CEO of Mawson's Huts Foundation, David Jensen, is crowdfunding $5,000 to pay for bronze plaque honouring Antarctic explorer Sidney Harry Jeffryes in Ararat. ( ABC Ballarat: Sian Johnson )

The foundation's chief executive, David Jensen, said "all members of the expedition were heroes and pioneers of the day including Jeffryes".

"It was just a very sad and tragic story that this very clever person, who happened to suffer from a mental illness, contributed so much to the final year of the expedition and kept the party in touch with the rest of the world."

"When I heard that he was just lying in an unmarked grave and nobody had ever visited, we thought it very appropriate that he be recognised in some way."

Mr Jensen said letters from Jeffryes' family to other members of the expedition, including Mawson himself, appeared to have been unanswered.

This bronze plaque commemorating Sidney Harry Jeffryes now lies at his previously unmarked gravesite in Ararat. ( ABC Ballarat: Sian Johnson )

Mr Jensen said the foundation had records of more than 100 relatives of the members of Mawson's expedition, but have not found any of Jeffryes' living relatives.

Jeffryes was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, never married or had children but had seven siblings.

"We'd love to hear from a relative," he said.

"[They should] be very proud, very proud of what he did."

Editor’s note 19/10/18: This article has been amended to clarify and modify some reported descriptions of mental illness.