As somebody said, there's definitely a rivalry between Australia and New Zealand, which has existed for a long time.
I'm still often surprised how little New Zealand matters to the average Australian (and vice versa), considering from Melbourne several NZ cities are just as close if not closer to some other Australian cities by plane.
Once, our two countries were more 'comrades' - our soldiers fought side by side in war together, and even when I was young, the NZ and Australian passports were on the one passport.
For the future, there has been talk of one shared currency between NZ and Australia.
In NZ, you can see some Australian ads on tv, their music stars tend to have to go to Australia to have any chance at a real career (same for actors), and the rivalry is competitive but friendly (though many Kiwis I met seem to blame current day Aussies personally for once introducing our Possum into NZ.......where there are now 60 million of them and Kiwis love to shoot them and turn them into hats and 'Possum merino' socks & other tourism products). And let's not mention the cricket issue between the two
Living in Oz as a 1/2 Kiwi, I don't participate in any (and try not to get annoyed with) the usual Oz jokes connecting Kiwis and sheep which seem to come up whenever there is a kiwi around (these probably began because sheep in NZ by far outnumber the humans) And then
Aussies just HAVE to tease and mimic the NZ accent (some tv comedy skit shows just love to do this and you learn to take it good naturedly) And also it's probably got to do with the fact that New Zealanders and Australians don't always understand each other - they may look and seem the same and have a similar European discovery and history, but as people my mother is always saying that they're NOT the same and she has trouble understanding the Aussie's
less straightforward ways, even after more than 30 years living here.
remival a Ă©crit :
- La Nouvelle-Zélande meilleure marché pour le logement (Hotel,Backpacker et surtout camping)... Nz 1 Aus 0
Je suis vraiment d'accord avec ca - especially the backpackers, where the only crummy/bad one we had was in Auckland. Otherwise we never paid more than NZ55 for a double room and had all the comforts of a hotel.
remival a Ă©crit :
La diversité des paysages , la splendeur de la nature...incontestablement la NZ. On change de climat , de paysage en peu de temps alors qu'en Australie pour changer de pays il faut faire des milliers de klms et prendre l'avion.
Absolument! This year was my first trip to the South Island and I was amazed at all the micro-climates - being able to see some kind of palm trees and tree fern rainforest right up in the glaciers snow of the alps when I was expecting bare mountains like Switzerland.
remival a Ă©crit :
La NZ a complètement intégré les Maoris qui ont l'air de citoyens comme les autres....en Australie on a aperçu un aborigène en deux mois , qui plus est mendiant à Melbourne....n'étaient ils pas les habitants primitifs de cet île continent ???.....
Many reasons for that of course so I won't try to open up a debate, but from my studies of the Maori, I've come to several conclusions why they managed to be so fully integrated when British policy for these natives was probably the same as they'd carried out already in Australia -
* they were a warrior people (used to inter-tribal war) living in a fortified village society rather than nomads and this put them in a better position to be able to defend their territory
* they were more united and as they had chiefs and heirarchy were better able to understand their enemy. The aborigines were more about sharing than ownership.
* they were a more sophisticated people, with more sophisticated weapons
* some of them were also cannibals (Maori in the Bay of Islands north of Auckland were responsible for killing and eating French explorer Marion du Fresne - and this was merely the result of one mistake being made in a friendship with the whole tribe which had begun many weeks earlier!)
* because of their fierce fighting and cannibal tendancies and the fact they were organised enough to actually go to war with those who wanted to take them over, they managed to hold off NZ being settled by quite a number of years, and were in a much better bargaining position to at least retain some of their lands (or at least the use of them) and have a treaty signed as early as 1840, when the Aborigines didn't get one at all.
(From what I'v read, the Maori often believed that the Treaty wasn't worth much more than the paper it was written on, but it did offer protection).
* it's been easier for them to integrate into mainstream NZ life because of their village society, and they appear to be much more adaptable to living in the modern world.
* When their numbers were and still are so much greater in proportion than Aboriginal minority Vs whites, it's easier to demand to have your say, have your own tv programmes and news, etc, the way they do.
* Maori population is still able to increase substantially from outside migration from Polynesia and surrounding islands, ensuring they won't necessarily ever be a small minority.
I don't believe the appearace of Aboriginal numbers can really increase. Ballarat, a reasonable sized city, has over 600 people classified as Aboriginal, but you could pass some on the street and not recognise them as Aboriginal at all, even if one parent is a full Aborigine. This is the case with one of our friends, who is 1/2 Russian and had Aboriginal twins with his full Aboriginal partner. The twins have light eyes, pale skin and almost blond hair. Might make fitting in with our society a little easier, but surely not with their own.
Some of my thoughts.
Kate