Jacinda Ardern is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Unlike our Prime Minister, she is competent and cares about people and made correct decisions about how to deal with the pandemic. Another person who was one of the great leaders was 'The Boss': Sir Ernest Shackleton.
In this podcast she talks about visiting the Te Papa museum in New Zealand and coming face to face with a sledge used by Sir Ernest Shackleton - her hero.
Ardern went behind the scenes at Te Papa to see one of the bamboo, ash and hickory sleds Shackleton's crew hauled across the frozen continent on the earlier 1907 Nimrod expedition. It may be a story that takes place offshore, but the Nimrod set sail from Lyttleton and in 1914, Shackleton's ship the Endurance was captained by Cantabrian Frank Worsley.
New Zealand's connection and commitment to Antarctica runs deep, including Sir Edmund Hillary's 1957-8 journey to the South Pole (the first by motor vehicle) and the loss of 257 lives in the Mt Erebus air crash in 1979.
Ardern's passion for Shackleton stems from her father and the book, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. She lists it as her favourite read.
"It was Alfred Lansing’s version of the story that was published in the 1950s where he’d managed to get those eyewitness accounts - it was just such an extraordinary tale and I couldn’t imagine the human spirit let alone body that could have endured that and yet there it was," she says.
Comments