John Riddoch Rymill was born on 13 March 1905 at Penola in South Australia. On completing his education at Melbourne Grammar School, he travelled to Europe. Here he was invited to participate in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology expedition to Arctic Canada in 1929. This was followed by an invitation to join the British Arctic Air Route Expedition, 1930-1931 (leader Henry George Watkins) to Greenland, in which he learnt dog-sledging, navigation and kayaking. Between 1932 and 1933, Rymill participated in the British East Greenland Expedition, during the course of which Watkins was drowned and Rymill became leader.
On his return, Rymill organized and led the British Graham Land Expedition, 1934-1937, sailing in the schooner Penola to the Antarctic Peninsula where bases were established in the Argentine Islands and Debenham Islands. During a reconnaissance flight in August 1936, Rymill detected an ice-filled rift between Alexander Island and the mainland, later named King George VI Sound. The following month, sledging parties proceeded southwards along the Sound to 72°S and eastwards to the high plateau of Graham Land, proving that Graham Land was a peninsula and not an archipelago as previously supposed following flights by Sir Hubert Wilkins and Lincoln Ellsworth. Southern lights, his account of the expedition, was published in 1938.
Rymill was awarded the Founders Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. After service with the Royal Australian Navy in the Second World War, Rymill returned to manage his family sheep farm at Penola. He died on 7 September 1968 at Adelaide, Australia, following a car accident.
Published work Southern lights; the official account of the British Graham Land Expedition by John Riddoch Rymill, Alfred Stephenson and Hugh Robert Mill, Chatto and Windus, London (1938) SPRI Library Shelf Special Collection (7)91(08)[1934-1937]
From the guide to the John Rymill collection, 1936-1937, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
