Here begins the South Pole

The entrance to Castle De Gerlache was located down in the village of Mullem until the municipal merger of 1976. This was inevitable since the inhabitants, Baron Gaston de Gerlache and his wife, Baroness Anne-Marie (Lily) van Oost, succeeded each other as mayor of Mullem. Up to the Rooigemsebeek, a little further on, you are still on the territory of Huise.

However, Gaston made his way into the history books not as a mayor but as a South Pole explorer. 60 years after his father, he led an expedition to the South Pole to establish, among other things, the King Baudouin base. Father Adrien had shown him how from 1897 to 1899. With the expedition ship Belgica, he overwintered there for the first time in the Antarctic region, together with his crew.

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