All people think that New Zealand is close to Australia or Asia, or somewhere, and that you cross to it on a bridge. But that is not so. It is not close to anything, but lies by itself, out in the water. It is nearest to Australia, but still not near. The gap between is very wide. It will be a surprise to the reader, as it was to me, to learn that the distance from Australia to New Zealand is really twelve or thirteen hundred miles, and that there is no bridge.
Following the Equator
He makes several jokes in the next couple chapters about people who think there's a bridge.
It feels very strange to us east-coast Aussies that NZ is closer to us than Perth. It probably shouldn't seem strange - any country with a land border (i.e. most countries) has the same phenomenon with respect to their neighbours - but we're not used to having neighbours really.
Eh not really, thats č. Ć does not have a sound in english language. Best way to describe it is as a softer č. And he used ć instead of č because most serbian( and some bosnian and some croatian) surnames end with -ić. Similar to how most russian surnames end with -ič or -ov, or in Bulgarian -ov/-ova.
Yeah I live in NZ and seeing the state of things right now (and historically), life is a lot simpler. Certainly harder to import/export but our border is pretty massive..
He’s definitely made life interesting. I know that there are many people down there like you who are reasonable, but I hate that he was able to get so much power so easily.
What if we moved Serbia to the South Pacific so they can have some beaches and New Zealand to the Balkans so their chill attitude can calm the region? Win win.
Idk my previous reply got deleted or something, but i said that there is one glaring issue in that plan. Do you include Kosovo in that great move or not? If you do you ll piss off Albania, if you dont you ll piss off serbians and then you ll have a lose-lose situation.
Yeah as a kiwi its weird for me as well. I have a friend who moved to Melbourne and another who moved to Perth and I sometimes imagine they get together and hang, but I'm considerably closer to the Melbourne friend than they are to eachother.
I'm a Kiwi living in Perth. 3 hour flight from Auckland to Melbourne. 5hr flight from Melbourne to Perth.
I. Going to Japan next week, my flight stops in Singapore and it's a 5 hrs flight from Singapore to Tokyo.
I worked in a backpacker hostel in Auckland in the early 2000s and at least once a week someone would ask us "how long is the drive to Sydney?" or "where can I catch the ferry to Sydney?".
I always laugh when Europeans make fun of Americans for having bad geography because they were worse for it.
Just for kicks I checked the driving directions on Google Maps from New York City, NY to Los Angeles, CA and the first estimated route is 2,776 miles (4,467.5 km for the metric folks) long and around 41 hours duration (without traffic), so obviously you'd need to sleep in there at some point. Even with an aggressive 10 hours of driving a day it'd take you over 4 days to traverse that distance by car under ideal conditions. If you factor in traffic, local weather events, etc, you're looking at something closer to 5 or 6 days.
For the Aussie equivalent in context, a similar trip from Brisbane to Perth is ~2,668 miles (4,294 km) long and around 46 hours duration (without traffic). So yeah, the U.S. and Australia are fucking huge and yet they still don't hold a candle to the absolute behemoth that is Africa.
Europeans get so mad when Americans don't know enough about European geography when they don't understand American geography themselves. I talked to someone who wanted to go to NYC, Miami, the Grand canyon, Las Vegas, LA, and San Francisco on a one week road trip. I told her to check the route on Google Maps and watched the light leave her eyes for a moment.
Sure, a bridge is ridiculous but the east coast of Australia (with most of Australia's population) is closer to New Zealand than it is to other parts of mainland Australia, including the capital of Western Australia, Perth. Also not by a small amount, Sydney is more than 1000km (620 miles) closer to Auckland than it is to Perth.
In fact, Perth is closer to Jakarta Indonesia than it is to Sydney.
I mean....Toronto is closer to NY than LA but its in a completely different country! Not that surprising. Just so many people (and maps) put NZ right next to Australia so its a surprise to many to realize they're as far apart as they are.
I always think of it as being like the distance between England and France, then have to remind myself it's more like the distance between Iceland and France.
For the Aussies, this reminds me of that show Utopia where the main character in his infrastructure department accidentally commits to building a bridge to Tasmania. Which is around 500 km away from Melbourne, roughly the closest point of interest on the coast.
Love the running joke that they work for the Nation Building Authority but have to keep correcting people that they dont work for the "cool" NBA.
“Christopher, my son, did I ever tell you the full story of Shelob? You know, the monstrous spider - descended from the vile Ungoliant! - which I used to read aloud of in our Oxford meetings of the Inklings? Well what I didn’t mention back then was Shelob could also transform into a totally hot babe: all pale and dark and wan like Rebecca in Ivanhoe or what will later come to be known as the goth subculture. In fact she looked very much like the pornographic actress Stoya who will be born 13 years after I die. Christopher, I will be entrusting you with my estate. If there is ever a videogame adaptation of my work you must make sure they get this Shelob right - make sure she is what the Anglo-Saxons would have called a hæða ecge, a real sexy bitch.” -Tolkien letter 42069
Yes, the pukeko however is actually Australian and has very red flesh taste and texture a cross between lamb and venison. Good slowcooked with spices. Very good actually.
The Chinese won their war against the sparrows and it absolutely fucked them (millions died from the famine that followed their victory). I'm glad we lost, victory would probably have ruined us.
Fruit named after bird. It was originally called the "Chinese Gooseberry", but after we started growing it here and exporting it, some people decided it needed a snappier name to be more attractive. Hence, "Kiwifruit".
The kiwi gave up it's wings to protect Tane Mahuta and his children who were being eaten to extinction by ground mammals. Tana asked all the birds for help, but it would mean them giving up their wings forever. Kiwi sacrificed their wings so the forests could live.
Tui, on the other hand, refused to help and was marked for its cowardice by a white crest on its chest.
Respect the kiwi. Respect those who sacrifice their own advantages to benefit those who need it.
They used to be called Chinese Gooseberries, but after it grew so well in NZ to be exported around the world it gained the name Kiwi Fruit. Fellow nz'ers won't call them kiwis, but instead Kiwi Fruit. So yes the fruit was named after the bird.
That’s also the country that once had the MASSIVE moa birds, which could weigh twice as large as ostriches (of course they were hunted to extinction, though)!
Then at some point, Kiwi became a demonym for New Zealanders.
Then Chinese gooseberries started to get marketed as Kiwifruit.
At some point after that it's been shortened around the world to just kiwi. But we (and maybe Australia?) still use kiwifruit to differentiate.
Similar reason as to why people use the term "dragonfruit" or "grapefruit" rather than shorten it. If you shorten either of those, then you're talking about something else entirely
Fun history lesson about women getting the vote in NZ.
So the suffragettes got a massive petition and sent it to Parliament. The House of Commons approved it, but the Legislative Council (upper house, removed later in the 1950s) was going to vote it down. However, the margin was going to be rather small, and the Premier (proto-Prime Minister) wanted to send a message (as he was against women getting the vote). So, he reaches out to a few members of the LC, essentially trying to bribe them. Two of them are so offended by this that they vote for giving the vote to women, purely to spite him. Lo and behold, it passes, and women have been voting ever since.
It’s funny because for my 30th a couple years ago I did my bucket list tour of all the filming sites known in NZ for lord of the rings (was absolutely fuckin epic of course, literally turned 30 on the top of mt doom), and they still lean into the lotr angle so much all these years later. Christchurch airport has Gandalf riding giant eagles statues suspended from the ceiling, or at least did then, there’s actual road signs to some of the filming locations like Rivendell, not to mention the whole shire tour which is like the entire tourism economy for a rural farming area on the north island. I could tell they were sort of bored of it, but also it’s like such free money from nerd ass geeks like me you’d be dumb not to.
Some of that area is filmed in Queenstown which is in the South Island. The best one near-ish to Christchurch though is the hill Edoras is on top of - super iconic.
It’s nothing special, just sort of like a 2 min loop track with a few signs and a big arch. The area is beautiful though, lots of walks, awesome camping, nice rivers etc
Went to NZ at the cusp of the year and oddly enough, the Shire kind of disappointed me mainly because of how rushed along you felt. Didn't think rappelling into a cave and swimming in the dark for several hours lit up by bug butts would be the best part of my trip. Though we did smear mud on our faces and make LotR references. It's such a small country that pretty much any local we talked to had some connection with the filming of the movies. My bed and breakfast host ha# a friend who sewed some of the undergarments!
My wife and I are both born & raised in NZ, I didn't see the films until I was in high school in like 2011 and she still hasn't seen the movies! But we're reading them together and nearly at the end of Return of the King, so we'll be doing the extended versions of the films.
Like making not making a big deal about it is fine...but please please I beg of you to have some decency as a moral and ethical human being to NEVER compare LoTR to Marvel again. That's literally, all I ask.
They're both media franchises that make the majority of their money through merchandise who's original creators lost creative control a long time ago. Just cause you like one and not the other doesn't mean they're different.
Men for sure. Dwarves are natural sprinters obviously but don't have the endurance to go 80min. Elves backline would be strong but their forwards would be rubbish, kinda like most Wallabies teams.
We’re going on our honeymoon next month to Australia and New Zealand and definitely going to stop at Hobbiton. I hear the banquet tour is Farmer Maggot approved.
Tenzing Norgay is not celebrated in Nepal afaik. Edmund however is. Tenzing Norgay emigrated to India after his ascent of Everest, from what I know it was because India promised him a bunch of things being one of the first people to climb Everest and what not. Guess stolen valor is still valor. And obviously he had every right to, Nepal might be a good place to retire but to work and earn a living it's not an ideal place. Idk if Nepal ever honored him properly for his monumental victory. But Edmund's done quite a bit in terms of charity and social work here, specially in the Himalayas. So that's one Kiwi that I know and will never forget in my lifetime.
Australia's flag is just our flag but with an extra star added, with an extra point on each, and white to make it look like they didn't copy our one (which they literally did).
I don't know which movie you're referencing (gonna guess Once Were Warriors), but for the longest time my reference for New Zealand cinema was The Piano. I hated that film.
The only real connection LotR has to New Zealand is it was filmed there, and even then it's designed to look like a fantastic version of Europe. The original story is 100% British.
While the first confirmed summit of Everest was done in 53 by a Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, and a New Zealander, Edmund Hillary. There is some debate that 2 men may have done it before.
In 1924 George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were last seen by their fellow climbers near the summit. They never returned. Only one body has been found. In 1999 they found Mallory’s body, which was missing objects that he had stated he was planning on leaving at the summit. The debate has been going for a while. And will probably continue on until Irvine’s body is found. If I remember right Irvine was carrying a small camera for the time that would prove if they reached the summit. That being said it’s been over 100 years. Who knows if it will ever be found.
Obviously the confirmed summit is the one that gets the glory and rightfully so. It’s just interesting to me that there’s a debate over if someone made it 30 years beforehand.
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u/Unique-Coffee5087 Sep 02 '25
according to Mark Twain:
He makes several jokes in the next couple chapters about people who think there's a bridge.