Antarctica is only second to Australia in being so hard to place on a map. For god sakes, we have been there, people are there right now, and yet we can not agree on its shape or even location. What are it's time zones? Does it have a midnight sun? Does it encircle the disk?
We are not living in the 1500s. We have modern devices like satellites, GPS, cell phones, and microwave ovens. And I am pretty sure that it is not necessary to knock on wood when telling someone something that you do not want the tree elves to hear lest they make it not so.