9/13/2008

New Zealand trivia

Some of this is personal observation, some was blatantly stolen from various websites.

In New Zealand you can get milk from Bulls.

Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, has the largest Polynesian population in the world.

There is no tree on Auckland's One Tree Hill, but there was one until a few years ago.

Most native New Zealand trees are evergreen. Not pretty green, but definitely green.

The only accordion museum exhibition in the southern hemisphere is in Dargaville.

This country is the size of Colorado or the UK and would fit into the Caspian or Baltic Seas.

Lake Taupo, the big lake in the middle of the North Island, is the worlds largest volcanic crater.

There are over ten million beef and dairy cattle in NZ.

The Kiwi bird, which is about the size of a domestic chicken, lays an egg that is almost a quarter of its total body weight.

New Zealand is actually some 1,000 miles from Australia.

We have the world's:

largest flightless birds [ the kakapo],
largest earthworms,
greatest timber volume of any tree [the kauri]
heaviest insect [the Weta].

If you live in Gisborne, you are living in the first city to see the light of a new day.

New Zealand has one of the highest car ownership rates in the world, with 884 per thousand people.

We have the first documented case of 'exploding trousers'.

Unlike most countries around the world, New Zealand Pizza Hut offers chips with its deliveries.

New Zealand is one of only three countries that have two official national anthems.

The Wildfoods Festival is held in Hokitika, New Zealand each year. You can sample icky cuisine like possum pate and fried duck tongue.

Bungee jumping was invented here, as were
tranquilizer dart gun,
pavlova,
milking machines,
ear tags for animals,
disposable syringes,
blokarting and
zorbing--
THUS proving that there's not much to do here when it's raining! 

Here, same sex marriages, prostitution, soliciting, and brothel keeping are all legal.

Ninety-Mile Beach isn't.

New Zealand oversees two overseas territories, Tokelau and Ross Dependency (in Antarctica). We also keep an eye on the Cook Islands and Niue.

Wellington, the capital city, is windier than Chicago!

New Zealanders consume 4kg of chocolate per capita annually.

The Maori name of New Zealand is Aoteroa, which means "Land of the Long White Cloud."

New Zealand has 6000 kilometers of coast line and nowhere is more than 120km from the coast.

There are no native predators here--no snakes or lions or tigers or bears, oh my!

New Zealand has every climate in the world.

Each year New Zealand has about 100 to 150 quakes that are big enough to be felt. The last fatal one was 2016.

The longest road bridge in New Zealand is the Rakaia River Bridge and is 1,757 metres long.

The population of the city of Sydney, Australia, is greater than the entire population of the country of New Zealand.

We have one ski resort called The Remarkables and one called The Aspiring.

Ernest Rutherford, who is known as the father of nuclear physics for his orbital theory of the atom, is from New Zealand.

7 comments:

BPOTW said...

Amazing facts! A friend of mine has vacationed there twice and now I'm dying to go :)

Thanks for sharing with BPOTW!

Brenda said...

I have so many questions. . . how heavy is the worlds heavy insect? What is the size of the largest earthworm? What are exploding trousers? how does the kiwi bird lay that egg?

And congratulations on eating all that chocolate! Love this post :)

Confessions of a Wandering Soul said...

I miss living in New Zealand. Spent 4 years there. 2 years in Dunedin and 2 years in Palmerston North.Used to head down to Taranaki every February for the Light Festival.Miss it heaps.Give it a big hug on my behalf will ya :)

Bitsa Lit said...

My favorite country just became even more favorite...if thats possible! Wettas scare me though..and giant spiders...*shiver* but I will eventually go there for a huge outdoors vacation. me a tent and my fishing pole lol!

LadyFi said...

Love all this trivia!

And what on earth are exploding trousers?

Joe Todd said...

Sounds like a fun place to be. Tooooooo many people in Ohio

Unknown said...

we also have the world's only alpine parrot (Kea) and the largest percentage of two Australian frog species.