John Tasker

Hiding in the past of every country are little pieces of information that have never really seen the light of day. This book is like a vacuum cleaner, reaching into all the little cracks and crevices of New Zealand's past and sucking out information which has largely been unknown and unsuspected until now.

The hobby of collecting telegraph and power insulators began in the United States in the early 1960s and has since spread right around the world. They became desirable objects to collect when the line systems began to be placed underground. Slowly the insulators were stripped from their poles and taken to the nearest tip. But thousands of people around the world thought they were interesting enough to rescue and to study, and in so doing, helped to rescue yet another piece of our social history.

Do small bush moa still inhabit the wildeness areas of the South Island? Does an otter-like creature frequent the waterways of the lower South Island? Do large black cats the size of an Alsation dog roam around the back country of Canterbury and Otago? What was the crocodile-like creature seen by so many in the Waikato River in the 1880s? Do Plesiosaurs live in the sea along the east coast of the North Island? Do hairy ape-like creatures roam around isolated areas of New Zealand bush? And who can explain the various unidentified life forms reported by the pioneers in the nineteenth century? There are many unanswered questions. This book presents all the material and leaves it to the reader to reach their own conclusions.

Many new versions of the Christian belief system have arisen in recent times to challenge the faith of our fathers. So how is it possible to assess their validity? The general rule is that if new ideas are held up against the searing light of Scripture and found to be wanting, they should be discarded. Which is exactly what this book does with Bishop John Spong's utterences and writings.