Paging Mr. Toad

 You can't go more than three sentences in any New Zealand travel guide before reading the trope that the Kiwis are "more British than the British." (Of course, you can read the same trope over the years about people and places all over the former Empire, including here and here and here. Even beyond the former Empire.)

In "En Zed," however, I think they beat out all the others for the title, starting with the "Zed" thing, and continuing on through driving on the left side of the road. Then there's the "God Save the Queen" on ANZAC Day. And the way the woman at the cash register in a pharmacy or a supermarket adds a weirdly formal if clipped and staccato bit of politeness to every part of the transaction: when she gives you the total ("Thirty dollars and sixty cents thank you"); when when she repeats back at you the total you've handed her ("Forty dollars, thank you"), and finally when she tells you how much change she's handing back ("Nine forty, thank you."). And the ubiquity of free tea (and coffee), such that every tour boat we've been on has proudly and repeatedly notified us that it's on offer, to the point that you feel guilty if you don't go have a cup, and there's such a slavish devotion to the belief in tea time itself in every hotel and motel that the handover of a free bottle of milk for the guest's tea is a standard part of the registration process ("Do you prefer whole or skim?") Then there's the fact that New Zealand took 16 years to even ratify the Statute of Westminster which granted their Parliament equality with the UK's (One MP in the 30s - from the New Zealand National Party, no less - said he'd rather be a "British subject" than a "national of the British Commonwealth.")

But the real clincher in the "more British than the British" competition for me is the stoats.

(from Wikipedia)

No other former colony trying to hold their upper lip stiffer than the Queen's on Coronation Day can claim to have a stoat and weasel and ferret infestation, one that rivals that of Toad Hall, like the Kiwis can. Drive around the national parks a little bit and you'd think you'd stepped straight into the pages of The Wind in the Willows: there are stoat warning signs everywhere. And why are they here? Because all those colonists trying to make the place more like home had imported British rabbits. Which created a rabbit problem, which the colonists decided required the importation of British rabbit predators. Thus, stoats. Unfortunately, the stoats did not do such a bang up job on the rabbits, but developed an enormous appetite for the eggs and hatchlings of the native flightless birds, including the kiwi itself, which had had no mammalian predators before the Europeans arrived. Now multiple species of kiwis are in danger of extinction thanks to status envy.

Comments

[beth]

you will hit the coffee and tea, always free all over australia too! "smoko" time is sacred every morning all over this continent as well.

[Loretta]

Beth is right, Chip. The Australians even have tea time in the schools! When I visited the elementary school, all the teachers had tea and "biscuits" at 11am in the faculty room while the kids were taken outside for a snack. I tried to initiate the custom in NM but didn't get very far!
Mom