One of the bigger differences between the BBC's natural history programs and those made within Australia is the matter of scale. Where blue-shirted David Attenborough pops up all over the globe with his inexhaustible revelations, Tim Bowden, for example, reserves his reflective whimsy for subjects which, while no less attractive, are perhaps closer at hand and more familiar.

Not that Breaking the Ice rigidly conforms to the precepts of natural history. Also in Australian fashion, the tale Bowden sets out to tell is amiably discursive, straying into the nation's social and pioneering history and giving the impression of being more relaxed and even improvised than comparable offerings from the U.K. or USA.

It's not, of course. Bowden sets out with the firm itinerary of visiting the Australian Antarctic stations at Macquarie Island, Casey, Davis and Mawson, and cuts his timing fine enough on occasion to make one wonder what his prospects of survival might have been had he been a minute or two late.

He finds a rich and varied array of Australians, Canadians, Chinese and more going about the business peculiar to the deep south. And while the penguins, seals and other zoological fringe dwellers strive mightily to steal the show, Bowden's is essentially a human tale of survival and triumph - and the occasional death.

How do people get on when living cheek by jowl for a year, for months lacking any contact with the outside world except by radio? Bowden goes abseiling, biking and spends plenty of time aboard the icebreaker Aurora Australis to find out. There's even a little archaeology when Bowden visits the abandoned Wilkes Station, which Australia inherited from the U.S. in 1959 and ultimately found uninhabitable.

Witnessing the measures scientists and others have taken to meet the challenges posed by one of the most hostile environments on Earth is fascinating, as is the scale of the place itself. The viewer learns quickly just how easy it might be to lose your bearings in this wilderness of white, and how you could be courting death in doing so.

Bowden's first words on this DVD are "it's one of the last great adventures". This nicely understated production, originally presented as six half-hour T.V. programs, bears out Bowden's assertion admirably.