Drake’s prayer
My name is Drake… Symon Drake. I’m a descendant of Sir Francis Drake. Actually a descendant of one of his brothers, as he never had children. I’ve tracked my direct ancestry back to the 1700s so there is a bit of a gap to get back to Francis – but his name has been in our family for hundreds of years, and one day hopefully the blanks will be filled in.
Anyway – I didn’t even know Sir Francis was a man of faith until today, when I heard a prayer of his.
A brief history lesson:
Francis Drake was an adventurer and essentially a legal pirate (hero of the English, arch-villain of the Spaniards). He wrote this prayer as he departed Portsmouth to raid Spanish gold on the west coast of South America. He eventually returned to England (the long way – via circumnavigation) with loot worth over a half million pounds sterling, and received his Knighthood for it.
Sir Francis Drake’s Prayer (1577)
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.
Pretty awesome great great great+ uncle if you ask me 
New Zealand, the uttermost?
All my life I’ve heard that New Zealand is the farther-most country from Israel. This is rather exciting in the light of scriptures like:
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. (Psalm 2:8)
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
Recently however I’ve been hearing an interesting update on the fact: Not only is New Zealand the ‘uttermost part of the earth’ concerning Israel, but that if one would dig a hole in Jerusalem, bore through the center of the earth, and keep digging, that they would come out almost in Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand. Exciting stuff to say the least, especially if you live there and are aware of the awesome revival prophecies regarding NZ’s North.
Perhaps I’m getting a bit too cynical in my old age (and have received one too many well meaning but absurd viral emails), but I figured there must be some tool available out there that could prove or disprove this fact once and for all.
Antipodr (“Find the other side of the world!”)
It just so happens that the exact opposite of Jerusalem is about the middle of the South Pacific Ocean (see here).
The exact opposite of Whangarei, New Zealand happens to be the town of Tangier, Morocco (see here).
Mythbusted.
Free Willy?
Many years ago I watched old documentary footage showing a blue whale being slowly bitten to death by a pod of killer whales. It had a lasting impact on me as ever since then I’ve always regarded them as extremely dangerous (perhaps the 70′s Jaws ripoff ‘Orca’ influenced me a tad also).
I couldn’t find the footage on youtube but did find a clip where a pod of 15 killer whales spent over 6 hours trying to kill a grey whale calf and leaving the carcass after only eating its lower jaw and tongue.
Killer whales. Beautiful, definitely, but killers nevertheless. People try to make them cute and cuddly by parading them at sea-parks, demand that they be be called Orca and not the dreaded ‘K’ word, and making cheesy kid movies about them, but as we heard last week, Killer whales actually kill (funny that).
Here’s where I am confused.
- Toto the Terrier bites a kid (fictitious but true)… The dog is destroyed.
- Abu the rare White Tiger mauls keeper to death (Zion Wildlife Gardens, NZ)… The tiger is destroyed.
- Tilikum the Killer Whale bites, mauls and drowns trainer (is also responsible for 2 deaths previously making it 3 altogether)… The whale is not destroyed.
In fact, Tilikum is allowed to live as the alpha male of Sea World’s breeding program. How’s that for mixed signals? Poor guy probably thinks that killing humans equals business time with the lady Orcas.
Unlike wild killer whales, captives have attacked and even killed people such as their handlers or pool intruders, with nearly two dozen attacks since the 1970s. Tilikum, an orca, has been involved in three fatalities. (wikipedia)
First they came…
“First they came …” is a popular poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Hidden tunnels under Albert Park
I have always been fascinated by World War 2 history and especially old gun emplacements, tunnels and stuff. A dream I have is to visit France and explore the Axis fortifications along the coast (including the sub-pens). In future posts I will be writing about some of New Zealand’s historic WW2 sites, but first I want to write about the Holy Grail of such sites… Albert Park.
Albert Park is a beautiful and serene park situated in the centre of downtown Auckland, a reprieve from busy city life and frequented by many suit-and-tie guys and students on their lunch-breaks each day.
Albert Park was originally the site of the Albert Barracks, one of Auckland’s early European military fortifications, which was converted into a public park in the 1880s. But it is not Albert Park itself that exudes intrigue… but what lies beneath.What most people don’t know is that underneath Albert Park is over 3.5 kilometres of man-made tunnels built during the war to shelter over 20,000 people in the event of an air-raid. The tunnels consist of a network of shelters, sanitation facilities and first aid posts, all ventilated by air shafts, with a total of nine entrances. Fortunately, the expected air raids did not eventuate, but with the tunnels unused, by the end of 1943 the timber supports were beginning to fail. By February 1945, the tunnels were filled in with unfired clay bricks, the entrances buried and the air shafts and other shafts in-filled.
And so the tunnels remain to this day…
This, my friends is the stuff adventure is made of. I don’t know about you, but the Indiana-Jones-alter-ego in me screams out to throw caution to the wind… to look for an entrance, rediscover long-forgotten places and flee from giant boulders (okay perhaps not flee from giant boulders ). As this site shows, there have been exposed entrances in recent years and intrepid (or insane depending on how you look at it) explorers have ventured inside.
What I am dying to know is:
- Are they still accessible today? (One article written in march 2009 said they still are.)
- Will my wife let me? (Happy wife happy life.)
- If the answer to the above questions is “Yes”, who’s keen for a roadtrip to Albert Park (and beneath)?
Further Albert Park tunnel info: to whet your adventurer’s appetite:
- Large image of the Tunnel Plans
- Google earth image of Albert Park with with the tunnel system superimposed over top.
- Wikipedia’s Albert Park Tunnels entry
- The best Albert Park tunnel site in existence.
Please leave a comment if you have any further information, know of exposed entrances… think I’m crazy, etc.
The Doorway to Hell
Do I believe hell exists? Absolutely. Do I believe it is a physical place somewhere close to the Earth’s core? No… But if it was, no place could better be described as Hell’s doorway than the man-made phenomenon near the town of Darvaza, Uzbekistan.
Several slight variations exist, but in essence the story begins during Soviet times in 1971. While drilling, geologists found a huge underground cavern filled with natural gas, which impeded any further mining activity. The team decided to fire the gas and return when it was totally burned out, but the gas exploded forming a 60m wide, 20m deep crater (which one dramatic retelling of the account says engulfed the entire drilling site with the equipment and camps). Those responsible had hoped the inferno would only last a couple of weeks but it has been burning ever since without pause.
One phrase comes to mind as I ponder these images… “Hot enough for ya?”
Revenge of the Water Buffalo
Lions ambush buffalo family…
Lions catch baby buffalo…
Lions begin to eat baby buffalo…
Crocodiles steal baby buffalo from lions…
Lions steal back baby buffalo from crocodiles…
Baby buffalo’s extended family seek revenge on lions…
Lions get pwned…
Baby buffalo is rescued…
Don’t believe me?
Giant devil fish, rays and panic attacks
She remembers an obviously doctored photo in an old local surf shop of an areal view of a dingy dwarfed by the shadow of a giant manta swimming beneath it. The imagery that fuels nightmares.
In our early years of marriage we had a couple of too-close-for-comfort encounters with rays.
We were having a leisurely snorkel one afternoon at a picture-perfect inlet and I came across one rather large ray basking beside a rocky outcrop. I pointed it out to PJ and couldn’t believe her courage as she she swam right up to it. It wasn’t until it started looking very threatening, did PJ then proceed to have a panic attack. Courage didn’t motivate her to get close up and personal with the ray that day… her mask was so fogged up that she couldn’t see it, until she was almost kissing it.
On another fateful Monday morning, we had only just started a classic surf session when I noticed that the sandy floor a couple of meters below us was quite literally covered with rays. What they were doing I cannot say… basking, spawning? But it was a little unnerving. Why oh why did I point them out to an oblivious PJ? Panic attack no.2.
Alright, so we all know that rays are harmless beautiful creatures. A reassuring fact sure enough, until its believability is shattered when Google reveals pieces of trivia like…
“Simon Pierce of Queensland University’s School of Biological Sciences said there were no accurate records of stingray deaths, but estimated there had been about 30 worldwide in recent years.”
And of course we can’t forget the late great Hunter of Crocodiles… by crikey.
Ever wanted to know how big these suckers get?
The Hawaii Association for Marine Education and Research, Inc. website claims that the largest manta species ‘Manta Birostris’ can have a wingspan of 9.1 meters.
Maybe the photo in the surf shop was real after all.
