But Dr Philip Temple has the unusual distinction of having his face appear on an Australian envelope, which will be widely distributed later this month to celebrate Australia Day and the 60th anniversary of the first successful ascent of Mawson Peak on the sub-Antarctic Heard Island.
The Dunedin explorer, mountaineer, outdoor educator and author was part of an expedition to the Australian territory in 1964, led by Major Warwick Deacock.
Dr Temple said the expedition set out from Sydney in November 1964 and made the perilous five-week sailing trip to one of the remotest places on the planet, deep in the Southern Ocean, to do scientific work as well as be the first to climb what is one of the highest mountains in Australian territory.
"The expedition was a huge success, although it could have gone badly wrong at any point because we were just 10 blokes on a 64-foot schooner, and in those days, of course, there was no GPS or anything like that.
"I think we only saw one other ship.
"There was this incredible sense of being alone on the planet and sailing in pretty big seas."
He said sailing to the island was dangerous enough, let alone climbing a mountain in the middle of nowhere.
The most challenging part of the expedition was actually getting on to the island, because it had no safe harbour.
"We had to land on this open beach with these huge big swells and we literally got thrown on to the island — capsized — and we were very, very lucky that no-one had a serious injury.
"One of the guys said the capsize set a new record because it was the first ascent of a mountain from below sea level."
The five men made it safely ashore while the other five sailed the schooner to a safer, more sheltered island.
"Of course, we had no communication whatsoever with the ship or anybody else, because in those days it wasn’t possible to set up any kind of radio communication."
The men were only on the island for a month, so they immediately set about climbing the mountain.
The danger of the climb was not lost on them. Two of the team members tried climbing it a couple of years earlier and gave up after almost being buried alive under heavy snowfall.
Mawson Peak is an active volcano with an elevation of 2745m (9006 feet), and it erupts fairly frequently — as recently as May 2023.
"The weather changed all the time.
"The island is completely isolated in the Southern Ocean, so you never knew what was going to happen next, and it’s very high ... and covered in ice.
"The weather could switch around from southwestern heavy snow, but within a matter of a couple of hours, there could be northwestern rain, even at high altitude.
"So we had to be equipped for all this. We carried these massive loads to make sure we were OK.
"The climb wasn’t technically difficult, except for the heavily crevassed areas, but being so exposed, it was dangerous at all times."
The men reached the summit on January 26 — Australia Day.
"It was just chance, rather than design," he said.
In the second couple of weeks, they conducted scientific activities before the schooner arrived to pick them up for an "incident-free" voyage back to Australia in March 1965.
Their expedition was memorialised in a documentary, The Great White Whale, and the 60th anniversary of the ascent will be recognised with a special envelope to be released by Australia Post on January 25.
Dr Temple appears in a picture on the front of the envelope (crouching on the right), taken at the summit of Mawson Peak.
He was delighted with the recognition.
He has been sent a pile of the envelopes to autograph for the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition Club Inc, which they hope to use to raise funds for further scientific research.
"We’ve had this memorialisation sort of non-stop over the last few months and this envelope is the culmination."
While many would remember his face from the envelope, Dr Temple did not expect to be recognised in the street.
His face had changed a lot since then.
