New Zealand (1907- ) is on the other side the world from Britain and yet it is the most British place on earth except Britain itself. The British settled the islands in the 1800s, their diseases killing off most of the Maori already living there. Today only one in seven is Maori.
It is a small, rich, English-speaking, Protestant country ruled by a parliamentary democracy. Two things keep it safe: its distance from the rest of the world and the warships of larger English-speaking countries.
Although it has about as much land as Britain, it has only half as many people as London. For every person in New Zealand there are 14 in Britain. Or, to put it another way, it is two-thirds the size of California but only has a bit more people than San Francisco. Sheep outnumber people ten to one!
It was one of the last places on earth to be settled: it was uninhabited till 800. Even today it is largely unsettled compared to the rest of the world.
New Zealand is south-east of Australia across the Tasman Sea. It is as far from Australia as Denver is from New York. Close enough to be influenced by Australia, but far enough to be something different.
Most people came from Australia, so New Zealand English is in effect a branch of Australian English, though one with Scottish and Maori influences. To an American ear it sounds like a British English where the short e’s become something close to short i’s, so that eleven sounds almost like illivin and “NZ” like Inzid.
New Zealand has two large islands: the North Island and the South Island. Most people live on the North Island, where it is warmer. It has two large cities: Wellington, the seat of government, and Auckland, where a fourth of all New Zealanders live. The South Island has one large city, Christchurch, noted for its dirty air.
Because it is so far away, when men got there the only large land animals were birds. One bird, the moa, was taller than a man. It walked but could not fly. The Maori ate them all.
The most famous bird of all is the kiwi. It is a small, brown, wingless bird that comes out at night. Somehow it has come to stand for the whole country, so much so that “Kiwi” often means “New Zealand”, as in “Kiwi English” or “kiwi fruit”.
New Zealand has little industry. It makes money especially from milk, sheep and trees, selling chiefly to Australia, Japan and America. Though it is hardly poor, it is not as rich as, say, America or Japan.
The Maori come from somewhere near Tahiti. They call the Europeans “pakeha” and New Zealand “Aotearoa”, the Land of the Long White Cloud. After a long series of wars in the 1800s the British took most of their land – and then destroyed their culture. The Maori live on but many are poor and few know the Maori tongue. New Zealand is divided by race, though not as deeply as America or South Africa.
New Zealand has the highest suicide rate in the world. Women of marrying age outnumber men.
The “Lord of the Rings” was filmed in New Zealand.
The New Zealand flag looks like the Australian flag but it has red stars not white ones.
Its latitude and longitude is 41 South, 175 East. To get the time there add 12 hours to UTC (11 hours between October and March).
See also
Abagond 
bloody straight!
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New Zealand as well as Australia are two of the places I would love to visit.
Maybe someday. 😎
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