No place, however cold or wet, or hot or high or deep is beyond the quest of man's ingenuity" (Gibson-Watt, 1967).

The above quote is attributed to a member of the Parliament of Great Britian and Northern Ireland during the 1967 Third Reading of the Antarctic Treaty Bill. It was prompted by debate regarding whether it was actually true that tourists were already traveling to Antarctic (Codling, 1982, as cited in Hall & Johnston, 1995).

Indeed, to some at this time this notion appeared too incredible to be true. What is incredible is that history has evidence of four tourists traveling to Macquarie Island, a sub-Antarctic island in 1891. The idea of an Antarctic cruise was proposed as far back as 1910, but it took until 1966 for regular tourist cruises to be established (Reich, 1980).