Austin Mitchell - The Pavlova Omnibus

Dear Keith,

Good luck in Gods Own Country. He probably wasnt able to welcome you in person. The Wellington Airport Authority was no doubt a satisfactory stand-in. If he had been there, hed say the same as I do: youre a lucky man.

Its a wonderful country. Not quite paradisethe Labour Party hasnt been in that longbut probably the best country in the world. Certainly the best in the Southern Hemisphere. Having made this deference to New Zealand sales, I must in all honesty warn you. Its a funny country. The natives have their own tribal customs and ceremonies. They also have their own susceptibilities. If an Englishman like yourself didnt find them different to the folks back home in all sorts of endearing little ways the natives couldnt bear it. Different means better. Let your indulgent smile turn into a laughonce imply that certain things are better handled in Britain and youll get the ritual excommunication: If you dont like it why dont you go home? Ignorance of the lore is no excuse.

As a country New Zealand has one major preoccupation: New Zealand. The rest of the world ignores it, so it compensates by more and more frantic navel exercises of national belly-button studying. Later youll be able to exploit this endearing insecurity for gain, like the other Englishmen there. At the moment you might not know how to handle it. Youll have met the first manifestation of obsession already, having been asked a thousand times how you like the country; two thousand times if youve already left the airport tarmac. This is not designed to elicit information. It is a request for reassurance, encouragement, admiration and all the other things assisted immigrants are brought in to provide.

Above all dont try to be funny: a psychiatrist might as well heap filthy jokes on patients anxious about impotence. An illustration. When I arrived in New Zealand, the first words of my kindly boss were a warning not to be critical when asked how I liked New Zealand (henceforth referred to as question number one). A reporter arrived for the routine interview with all new university staff (this being Otago, where there is little else to fill the papers). I, being young and anxious to build a reputation as the David Frost of academe, answered question number one by saying that the lavatorial graffiti was at least more literate than in Britain (although cruder). The only thing wrong with New Zealand, I added, was the number of people asking how I liked New Zealand. There duly appeared a photograph of a leering sex maniac almost certainly arrived in Dunedin to form the Otago branch of White Slavers International. This headed an article which hinted in scarcely veiled fashion that I had come to New Zealand because of my inability to get a job in Britain. This was, of course, true of all university staff arrivals. It had never before been made explicit, for this was before Mr Muldoon.

You must make the proper replies. An American matron might get away with saying its cute. An Englishmans response is, Its a great improvement on where Ive just come from. This will be either Fiji or Australia, but no one will realise. You could also try, Well, its a great place to bring up children. This does not commit you to any view and has the added advantage of hinting that you will take early steps to make yourself normal (thats to say as miserable as the rest) by producing progeny. If youre still single and the predatory New Zealand girls returning home on your plane have not managed to get their claws into you, then this answer gives a subtle indication that you are suitably ashamed of your unnatural single status and are on the look-out for a decent New Zealand girl (i.e. any).

You walk a delicate tightrope, avoiding culture shock without frightening the natives. There is no one to advise you. The great sociological-anthropological machine of the American universities hasnt yet processed New Zealand, boiling it all down to a book full of tables, every generalisation significant statistically. Nor have the experts who package a country and distil its essence into a few hundred pages, or even a generalisation, plasticised New Zealand. John Gunther didnt add New Zealand to his volumes on the USA, USSR and the other major powers, and his successor went home after two days. Margaret Mead never lived with the natives in their tin-roofed huts. Raymond Postgate never sampled the Rose Cafe on Lambton Quay, to confer three stars on its Egg on Toast and none on its Egon Ronay. The authors of SeetheWorldonFiveDollarsaDay managed only a quarter of an hour in New Zealand after the last General Wage Order. Googie Withers went back to Australia after a weeks visit, complaining that she had no idea what New Zealand was like. It had been shut.

Foreigners are too taciturn, the natives too verbose. They have their gurus, though they can only afford one in each field. You could always consult Don Clarke on aesthetics, Ralph Love on poetry, Tom Skinner on etiquette or Charles Brasch on rugby. This would take too long, and pontificating for the NZBC makes heavy demands on their time.

Similarly you would never be able to wade through the books about New Zealand. Production of books about the country is the major local industry, after plastic tikis. Books about New Zealand In Colour provided the original impetus for the Japanese economic miracle. New Zealand presses pour out books on New Zealand, if they arent lucky enough to get the Labour Party raffle ticket account. To mention New Zealand in a book title is a guarantee of massive sales.

The main purpose of all these books is therapeutic, not diagnostic. They are the literary branch of the vast local reassurance industry. They portray New Zealand as the best place in the world, its people as the greatest blokes. Every characteristic from boozing to boorishness has to be catalogued as both endearing and admirable. Look at the abridged version of the New Zealand Encyclopaedia, also known as From N to Z, and youll see what I mean. It bears as little relation to life in New Zealand as that section of the London telephone directory masquerading under the same title, though its not quite as funny.

If New Zealand were as the New Zealanders see it, it would be a tourist Mecca. Every international airport from Auckland to Wanganui would throng with jumbo jets coming on trunk routes to bring American tourists to view the native customs. The Hop Indians can stage their ghost dance at the drop of a travellers cheque. New Zealand should restore its sacred customs for the same consideration. The mystic invocations at the rugby club down-trow would be almost drowned by the whirr of movie cameras. The rich linguistic legacy of the election rituals would draw thousands. Coaches would tour vivid re-enactments of the six oclock swill, staged by Richard Campion and choreographed after extensive interviews with survivors. Portrayals of native courting habits in the back of reconstructed heaps in the dunes would be an attraction. All a dream. The tourists are a trickle not a flood.