“It is not possible to travel over this earth and see its magnificence and magnitude and not realize the existence of God. The consciousness of this is perhaps the most conspicuous thing that has developed in my mind as a result of my lonely sojourns in the polar regions.”

At the end of World War II, Wilkins was hired by the US Army to design equipment and to train soldiers in polar survival. Although based in Washington DC, the work continued to take him around the world.

Wilkins was employed by the US Army Quartermaster Corps which, in 1952, moved its headquarters from Washington to Natick, Massachusetts. Wilkins continued to travel continuously but, because he frequently had to work at Natick, he permanently rented a hotel room at nearby Framingham.

Throughout his life, Wilkins had sought answers to spiritual questions and the truth about the possible existence of God. That enquiry had led him to attend seances and visit spiritual churches.

While he had searched for the lost Russian aviators in 1937/38, he had also conducted experiments in thought transference with a practicing spiritualist, Harold Sherman. When he was in the Arctic, Wilkins had sent ‘thought messages’ to Sherman in New York. Sherman had recorded his impressions and, at the completion of the search, the two men compared notes. The results were remarkably accurate and they jointly published the book Thoughts Through Space.

Sherman also introduced Wilkins to the Urantia Foundation, which was a group of people, based in Chicago, who were studying messages supposedly received from extra-terrestrial beings. The messages told of worlds beyond the known universe, and offered a scientific explanation of Christianity. Adam and Eve had been interplanetary travelers, sent to start a colony on Earth.

Later, as the colony grew, Jesus Christ had been sent to explain God’s message. In his dual quest for scientific knowledge and spiritual understanding, Wilkins studied the messages. He later donated money so that the Urantia Foundation could publish the messages as the 2,000-page Urantia Book in 1955. For the remainder of his life, Wilkins carried a copy of the book wherever he went.

During the 1950s he returned to Australia on a number of occasions to visit his family and the remains of his homestead at Mount Bryan East.

Early in 1957 he flew over the North Pole with the US Air Force. Later that year he made his last trip to Antarctica as a guest of the US Navy, during the International Geophysical Year.

On his return from Antarctica, he was a guest on board the US Navy nuclear submarine USS Skate, which was planning to cross the Arctic by travelling under the ice. At seventy years of age, Wilkins was seeing many of his plans and dreams come to fruition.

A few months later, he was living in his hotel room at Framingham, Massachusetts. It was 30 November 1958 and the ground around the hotel was covered in snow. Wilkins was working outside on his Chevrolet station wagon and, about 9.00 p.m. went up to his room. He suffered a heart attack and died.

Hearing of Wilkins’ death his many friends in the US armed forces organized for his ashes to be carried in the nuclear submarine Skate to the North Pole, where on 17 March 1959, they were scattered.