Green and pleasant land?
Thursday October 5, 2006
Steve MatthewsWe all know New Zealand: lakes, mountains, Maori, hobbits. It's 100% pure, with a population two-thirds that of London in a country bigger than Britain. Anyone who has been on holiday here might have been awestruck by the mountains. They might have been bungee-jumping, whale watching, jet boating, or just enjoyed hot water bubbling up through a golden sandy beach.
Add in that everyone speaks English and drives on the proper side of the road and, for a holiday, it's unbeatable. But now we live here. We didn't come in search of paradise, but a less stressful lifestyle. Ten months later, we've bought a house and a dog and have two sons happily embedded in school, so I suppose we're settling in. And we're learning the everyday things we need to know, but aren't in the travel brochures.
For example, New Zealand has the coldest houses in the developed world. They don't seem to have proper heating and most houses are wooden and uninsulated, with tin roofs. Here in Wellington we've apparently just had the coldest winter in years. It was actually milder than we were used to in England - outside, anyway. Some days it was colder inside than out, and with energy prices rising all the time it's easy to run up massive bills.
Prices are usually lower, but then so are salaries. Mortgages hurt - the official cash rate is 7.25%. You pay for trips to the doctor and claim it back on health insurance. If you've got children you'll pay hundreds of dollars in contributions, even if it is a state school. Unless you have enough equity to buy a house without a mortgage ? which is easier away from the booming cities - New Zealand isn't the low-cost dream it seems.
The country presents a picture of ethnic harmony. English and Maori are official languages; the Waitangi Tribunal is righting colonial wrongs and Maori have more rights than white New Zealanders in some respects. You only have to look at the plight of Australian Aborigines to see how bad things could have been. Yet Maori are under-performing in school and over-represented in unemployment, crime, violence, child abuse, addiction, disease - like the underclass everywhere. There is dire poverty, most extreme among Maori and Pacific islander communities, and there are shameful pockets of welfare-funded squalor. Meningitis and pneumonia thrive: children need three meningitis jabs, and they hurt. Gang violence is rampant in some towns. Meanwhile our political leaders are locked in a poisonous slanging match. You want to tell them to shut up and do something that matters.
Environmentally, too, the reality can be far from 100% pure. There are rivers and lakes in the North Island so polluted with agricultural waste that they are a health risk. Virgin beachfronts are being concreted over. And in a stridently anti-whaling country you can still see a performing dolphin, at an aquarium in Napier. There were two, but the lucky one died. Now the locals want new dolphins. A British friend here said to us: ?The country's only clean and green because there aren't enough people to mess it up completely.?
I haven't mentioned earthquakes, power cuts, the price of imported goods, homesickness, Kiwi TV or my vegetarian wife's top grumble, the poor quality and choice of supermarket veggie food. But I don't mean to trash our adopted land: every country has its problems. The flipside is that I have a beautiful house in a superb, sophisticated city. On a clear day the snowy mountains of the South Island seem close enough to touch. On a clear night there are more stars than seems possible. On our doorstep are forests, hills and beaches. The boys are happy in a superb school and they have lots of healthy outdoor pursuits. I can walk to work in the centre of the capital, and come home at midnight without getting mugged. There's less crime, no terrorism, no Jade Goody, no nuclear weapons. The kowhai trees are bursting into yellow and the tuis are singing their mad song. If you've never heard a tui, that's reason to come in itself. But don't expect paradise - just life, further south.
Photograph: Judith Thomas
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