Our guest speaker in March was Susanna Burton-Thompson, author of A Life of Surprises: random stories of a photojournalist.
Her stories were interesting, sometimes verging on the miraculous – from rescuing Vietnamese boat people and freeing a death-row inmate from a Zambian prison, to surviving a shipwreck. There was a loose chronology to her stories and the award-winning photographs she screened, but she presented them as stand-alone anecdotes of her life. Her title for the talk was Serendipity. I suspect she would translate it as God in Action.
Susanna’s photography career began at age 16 on the New Zealand Truth newspaper where she was taken in hand by legendary rugby photographer Peter Bush. After later professional training she had a short career as a wedding photographer, then served for a few years as a volunteer aboard MV Logos, a 2391-ton former cruise ship converted to a floating book fair. The ship was owned by the Christian missionary organisation, Operation Mobilisation, and carried 41 crew and 98 missionaries – plus 100 tons of religious and educational literature. During 1987, they visited 15 nations in the Caribbean and South America, before running aground in the Beagle Channel.
Beagle Channel is a 240 km long waterway through the Tierra del Fuego archipelago connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Shortly before midnight on 4 January 1988, in “severe weather conditions”, the two local pilots left the ship about 35 km short of their normal drop-off point at the end of the channel.
The ship, with its engines idling for a prolonged rough-weather pilot disembarkation, was swept by wind and current onto the rocks of a tiny island.
Her stories were interesting, sometimes verging on the miraculous – from rescuing Vietnamese boat people and freeing a death-row inmate from a Zambian prison, to surviving a shipwreck.
Susanna showed photographs of the prayer meeting in the dining room, as they waited in the dark, hoping to float off the rocks with a 5 am high tide. However, the ship developed a 200 list and serious flooding so they abandoned ship with life jackets and only the clothes they were wearing. All were accommodated in the lifeboats and Chilean Navy torpedo boats escorted them ashore.
Serendipity, in the form of the insurance settlement, enabled the purchase of another ship, Logos II – bigger and better than its predecessor.
The guest speaker at our May 22 meeting is Prof Chris Hollis, speaking on the geological record of climate change and geoscience education. Please join us.
The South Wairarapa Rebus Club meets at 9:45am on the fourth Friday of each month, at the South Wairarapa Working Men’s Club in Greytown. The club prides itself on the quality of its guest speakers. Reviews of previous talks are included in newsletters which can be found on the club’s website at <southwairaraparebus.com>. Retired people are invited to attend a meeting as a visitor. Introduce yourself at the door from the West Street carpark, or contact John Reeve on 021 560 461 for more information.
