 His first collecting trip was to the Graaff-Reinet district where he had spent his youth with his brothers Ben and Scheepers.A prominent rock ridge (85°12'S 177°06'W) on the west side of Shackleton Glacier, between Bennett Platform and Matador Mountain, in the Queen Maud Mountains in Antarctica is officially mapped 'Kitching Ridge' in his honour.Invited to join the Ohio State University Institute of Polar Studies 1970-71 geological party to the Queen Maud Mountains as part of the US Antarctic Research Programme, he, together with James (Jim) Collinson, was the first person to identify and collect therapsid (proto-mammal) fossils there, of Lystrosaurus Zone age, confirming the former continental link between southern Africa and Antarctica.