The National Library of Australia (NLA) in Canberra has uncovered a rare image of the arrival of Roald Amundsen's 1911 expedition at the South Pole.

The small, brown photo is the only print in the world taken from the original negatives of the event.

The image was discovered by National Library of Norway curator Harald Ostgaard Lund while he was searching the NLA collection on the internet.

NLA picture curator Linda Groom says the photo was part of an album entitled 'Tasmanian Views' which was catalogued and scanned in 2002.

"We knew then it was a photograph of the Amundsen expedition at the South Pole, what we didn't realise was that it was the only one in the world," she said.

Ostgaard Lund found clues to its origins from the NLA's catalogue, including the print's dimensions.

From those he was able to work out that it was taken directly from a negative.

He flew to Canberra and confirmed its value which Ms Groom says was an exciting moment.

"He had seen other copies of the print cropped, doctored so that the flag flew much more prominently and doctored so that Amundsen's stomach was much trimmer but he had never actually seen the original," she said.

"He was thrilled, and he's decided to request the loan of the album for an exhibition in Norway."

Developing the images

Amundsen's first port of call on returning from the Antarctic in 1912 was Hobart, where he gave his negatives to well-known Hobart photographer JW Beattie.

Ms Groom says it appears Beattie gave the job to his young assistant Edward Searle, who later compiled them in an album of career highlights.

"Some of them are very nice Tasmanian views, as you would expect and then there are two pages of photographs related to Amundsen expedition," she said.

The album was purchased by the NLA from Searle's family in 1965 but they believe the negatives no longer exist.

Ms Groom says it is poignant that another almost identical photo was taken by Robert Scott's expedition five weeks later.

"His diary records the moment, it says 'Great god this is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority'," she said.

"The comparison of those two photos really tells a story."

Worth the effort

The NLA is currently digitising its entire image collection and making it available on the internet.

Ms Groom says many early photo albums were catalogued as one volume which makes it difficult to identify individual images.

So far the library has scanned 100,000 of its 700,000 image collection but Ms Groom says it is discoveries like Ostgaard Lund's that make the painstaking project worthwhile.

"When you see the effect of what we've done, and people as far away as Norway in the quite unlikely situation that this photograph should be hiding in an album of Tasmanian views, that's part of what makes it so satisfying."