The low down on Aotearoa / New Zealand

You never know who you are going to meet at the next funky Chinatown party. So if you run into the boys you're going to want to sound hip on your Kiwi general knowledge. Here's a few key cultural references (which every Kiwi knows before they are 10) to get you started!

Firstly, & importantly, the name of the country is, in Maori (the original inhabitants of the country), Aotearoa (pron: 'ayy-o, tay-a, row-a'), translates as 'Land of the long white Cloud' (and there's only one thing that comes from clouds).

So, reading between the lines, you could presume correctly that it rains a lot in New Zealand (in parts of the West Coast of the South Island, up to 300 days a year).

L&P (Lemon & Paeroa)

Well known to all Kiwis, and particularly enjoyed by young kiwis, is L&P (Lemon & Paeroa) an iconic Kiwi softdrink. The, surprisingly, refreshing fizzy drink is best enjoyed on a long hot summer's day (it mixes well with Bourbon too).

What has helped make it an institution in Kiwi culture has been it’s tongue in cheek mantra of “World-famous in Paeroa since aaagggeeees ago”. Paeroa being a fairly non-descript town in the middle of the North Island, famous for… erm… making L&P.

To capitalize on the town's increasing fame, they had a huge fibreglass bottle of L&P plonked into the middle of the main road for tourists. 10'ish years ago they had to move the it further away from the road, since too many idiots kept having traffic accidents while trying to drive and gawk at the bottle at the same time.

A cool advert can be seen online which actually has Jemaine Clement doing the voiceover. The advert, which has become a bit of a classic Kiwi culture itself, references L&P and ‘Stubbies’ which were a very popular style of shorts worn by every young boy back in the 70’s. Check out the YouTube video here.

If you’re ever in NZ, make sure you try some L&P to wash down your Rashuns (an indigenous ‘cheese & bacon flavoured corn snack'). Yummy.

The All Blacks

New Zealand is quite a sports mad country, especially in respect of its population size (which is about 4 mil, give or take the odd Qantas flight). The national sport is rugby - although a lot more young kiwis play Soccer, Netball or enjoy competitive Swimming. As for those who do play rugby, a high percentage of those junior level players come from Auckland (pop 2 mil, give or take the odd traffic jam on the Bombay Hills). The All Blacks are fairly good and are often ranked, & acknowledged, as the number 1 team in the world. Having said that, most Kiwis would begrudgingly accept that their team is “the best rugby team between World Cups” i.e. they have a habit of cocking it up when it comes to the biggest global tournament, where anything short of winning the tournament outright is considered as failing national expectations. The Rugby World Cup has been held every 4 years since 1987 (the only time NZ won it) and is presently being played in France (the All Blacks haven't cocked up... yet).

click on the picture

If you want to see Kiwi pride in a nutshell check out this YouTube clip of the Haka, a traditional war dance that the Maori’s used to perform before entering battle. It is now performed by the All Blacks before the start of every match. This clip comes from Paris before a game against the French (in this case the Haka could be translated to: "G'day froggy, thanks for all those nuclear bombs you used to test near our country...").

Australia and the Underarm Bowl

Although rugby is the national sport, in summer attention turns to cricket (comparable to Baseball, but with a running, overarm style of ball delivery). As with most sports for Kiwis, New Zealand’s greatest rivals normally come in the form of those bloody Australians and the most infamous sporting incident between the two countries happened in 1981 during the final of the World Series Cup.

On the last ball (pitch) of the Final match of the tournament, New Zealand needed to hit the ball out of the park to tie the game. The Australian bowler (pitcher) Trevor Chappell, brother of the captain of the team, bowled that last ball underarm, thereby making it impossible to hit it properly.

Naughty, naughty Australians (still regarded as the lowest point in the long history of cricket). In Kiwi vernacular - "a lot of shit went down after that one" and has to this day (a day would not go past in London where it does not come up in some bar, somewhere).

Here's a 30-second clip of incident on youTube as seen live on TV in NZ & Aus (watched, heartbreakingly, by most Kiwis who were alive at the time). To be fair, there ain't that many Australians out there who are chuffed about it either, when all is said and done.

The National bird - the Kiwi

The much loved national bird of New Zealand is, of course, the Kiwi – a small, flightless, nocturnal bird which lays an egg which is about ½ the size of the poor mother. Very cute, but very rare and there less than 1,000 of them left in the wild. They are naturally a protected bird, but introduced animals have completely wrecked their habitat and present a multiple of threats to which they have no resistance, nor defence.

Prior to human arrival in New Zealand, there were no mammals in the country at all. The whole country was only populated by birds & insects, as it remained until the arrival of the Polynesians and their dogs, about 700 years ago. Things got a lot worse for the Kiwis when the Europeans came with Captain Cook, from 1779 onwards, bringing horse, sheep, cats, rats and other pestilence.

Another cultural icon in NZ for decades was the ‘Goodnight Kiwi’ cartoon which played as TV shut down around midnight every night, as it used to do up until not so long ago. Here’s a Youtube video of the cartoon clip which every Kiwi knows & loves.

The key difference between Aussies & Kiwis
(convicts / settlers)

The whole world often dumps Kiwis & Aussies in the same geographical blob, but there are numerous & vast differences between the two countries (although, admittedly, a huge amount of similarities too).

Firstly, NZ & Aus are a good 2000km apart and it takes 3 hours flying time in a jet plane, over nothing but water, to get to Australia (and that is just to get to the most Easterly point of that huge land mass, equivalent in size to Europe). Australia is sun baked, dry & flat – NZ is cooler, wetter & mountainous.

Australia was already being settled by 'convicts & prisoners' of Britain (often for menial crimes) a good 50 years before British ‘colonialists’ started to settle in New Zealand i.e. Anglican church in Christchurch (considered the most English city outside of England), the Scottish in Dunedin (Dunedin being the old name for Edinburgh, Scotland)...

Australia is full of crap that will bite you, eat you or have a good old go at killing you. Even after all this time the most dangerous thing in NZ are bumblebees (every year there a few folk who get stung and discover they are allergic to them and have a bit of a bad reaction). Short of a cow going to sleep and falling on top of you, you’re pretty safe in good ol' NZ.

Jaffa or Jafa

Both equally well known in NZ.

The first is a hard coated lolly with a chocolate center and the other is an antagonistic term for Aucklanders (people from the biggest city in NZ, by far). Half of the New Zealander population lives there along with a very high number of folk from South Pacific Islands, notably Samoa (more Samoans live in Auckland than Samoa), but also Fiji, Tonga and Rarotonga.

The term 'Jafa' means "Just Another Farkin’ Aucklander".

Sheep

Whoops, oh dear, i've run out of room for this one (ask any Kiwi - we love people banging on about this one).

If you have any questions about New Zealand feel free to email them on through (to contact [at] flightoftheconchords.com). You can also send questions on Australia too (but I'll probably just lie to make them sound bad).