A unique project to restore the frozen huts of some of Antarctica's earliest explorers is about to get under way with royal backing. 
Britain's Princess Anne arrived in New Zealand on Tuesday and flies to the frozen continent on Wednesday to launch an ambitious international appeal for funds to restore huts used by explorers such as Britain's Captain Robert Scott and Norway's Carsten Borchgrevink. 
The five-day visit by the princess, the patron of Britain's Antarctic Trust, coincides with the 100th anniversary of Scott's first visit to Antarctica. 
Scott mounted two expeditions to Antarctica but, after hauling heavy sledges across the harsh polar plateau in 1912, was pipped by a month in the race to the South Pole by Norwegian Roald Amundsen. 
Scott and his party perished with his party on his way back to the coast, after using up all their food and fuel. 
The New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust has taken on the role of conserving and restoring four historic huts in the area of the Ross Ice Shelf south of New Zealand -- Scott's huts at Cape Royds and Cape Evans, fellow Briton Ernest Shackleton's hut also at Cape Royds, and the Borchgrevink's hut at Cape Adare. 
"We need to preserve these huts for the inspiration of future generations. Where they are is the only place on earth where humans' first dwellings still survive and their preservation is of global importance," the chairman of the NZ Antarctic Heritage Trust, Rob Fenwick, told Reuters. 
The crude and flimsy wooden huts, the oldest no more than a century old, housed the early explorers for months on end, but are now falling victim to time and Antarctica's harsh climate. The walls, encrusted with soot from the seal blubber burnt by explorers to keep warm, hold shelves containing the tinned food, tools, and equipment left by the original inhabitants. Frozen meat is also preserved by the cold. 

Borchgrevink, a teacher turned whaler and explorer, led the British Southern Cross expedition in 1899 that was the first to winter over on Antarctica, during an unsuccessful search for the southern magnetic pole. 
Shackleton, a member of Scott's first expedition in 1901-04 until he was sent home ill, returned with expeditions in 1907-09 -- which reached the magnetic pole but fell 97 nautical miles short of the geographical pole -- and then in 1914-17 in an unsuccessful attempt to cross the continent. 
The New Zealand government has given NZ$400,000 to the restoration cause and the trust expects to raise much more from other governments, individuals, and organizations around the world. 
No target has been specified but saving and restoring each hut will be a complicated job, Fenwick said. 
Preliminary work has already started on Shackleton's hut, erected in 1908 at Cape Royds near the present day New Zealand Antarctic headquarters at Scott Base on Ross Island. 
Tradesmen and experts will be taken to Antarctica this year to work on the huts, which are dotted around a relatively small area on the frozen continent -- which is about twice the size of Australia. 
Fenwick hopes that at the end of the project, the modern generation will have fulfilled an entry in one of Ernest Shackleton's diaries: "To us and future generations they are a legacy which we now need to ensure remains frozen in time -- forever!" 
Copyright 2002 Reuters . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.