New Zealand: A Braver New World?

New Zealand’s South Island, where we’ve been for three weeks now, is a fabulous place to visit. It’s probably an even better place to live and raise a family. New Zealand is one of the best countries in the world for mothers and babies. The nurses and volunteers of the Royal Plunket Society have seen to that for more than a century!

The landscape is strikingly beautiful here. Parts of the South Island—such as the enormous Fiordland National Park in the southwest—are vast and mysterious. Hollywood has discovered that NZ makes great sets for fantasy films. We got a little taste of this awe-inspiring beauty on a boat trip through Milford Sound (technically a fiord).

For several days we stayed in Te Anau, a lakeside community. We moved on to Queenstown, a larger community on another, impossibly blue lake. It's a ski town (now in the off-season), not unlike Aspen or Breckenridge—only the mountains, the trees, the birds are not what a North American expects to see. Queenstown is an antipodean version of an Alpine paradise.

The New Zealand landscape is wide-open. More sheep than people live on the South Island. It’s peaceful to meet their ovine gaze and watch them graze, or to see them dotting distant hillsides like dabs of paint. Some herds have had their haircuts; others are waiting for the summer shearers to find them.

Not only is New Zealand’s landscape appealing; its society is too. New Zealand was fortunate to be relatively recently settled (both by Polynesians and then by Europeans). European settlers who came here were determined to avoid human exploitation (of slaves, as in North America, or of convicts, as in Australia). It's not an accident that New Zealand women were the first to vote.

As recently as a couple of decades ago New Zealand was widely regarded as a classless society. Now editorials, talk shows, and blogs bemoan the widening gap between rich and poor in New Zealand, its growing child poverty, the declining quality of its public schools, and a host of other social issues that mirror problems the US has in spades.

Nevertheless, New Zealand seems (to Jan and me) to be much better off than America currently is. It’s hard to find a piece of trash, or a homeless person, anywhere. Rivers and oceans are absolutely pristine. Healthcare is virtually free. Local food is proudly grown, sold and purchased. Roads and infrastructure are well maintained, with thoughtful provisions for cyclists and the disabled. Public toilets, beaches, trails ("tracks"), and picnic areas are plentiful and spotless.

People are friendly and happy in New Zealand. Where folk feel safe and cared for, open spaces make open hearts. Everybody wears bike helmets here—and a smile. The society is proudly multicultural. Maori place names and cultural practices are valued and embraced, even though people of indigenous backgrounds are reported to still fall behind their counterparts of European descent on most measures of well-being.

We are told, however, that ostentatious materialism continues to draw more derision than admiration in New Zealand. Kiwis appreciate hard work, but not greed—or gain at the expense of others. Back in the gold rush days fortunes were made by newcomers, and that was okay because it took plenty of hard, dirty work and self-sacrifice to grub out a “bounder” [i.e., a homeward-bound ticket]. I read all about the South Island’s gold rush days (and a great deal more) in a fabulous novel, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, the youngest writer ever to win the Man Booker Prize.

In Dunedin, where we lived for a week, we could not believe how well preserved its many Victorian and Edwardian buildings are. Jan and I are suckers for the architecture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Dunedin is truly magnificent in this regard—Savannah’s equal, if not its better. Not only the city center but also the residential suburbs feature block after block of gems. We’ve never seen so much leaded glass in one city. (Dunedin boasts that it’s the fourth largest city in the world in terms of area!) There’s even a castle out on the Otago Peninsula, on the way to the albatross and penguin sanctuaries.

Dunedin also offers, for free, its magnificent Botanic Gardens (150 years old!) and a newly renovated, beautifully presented “Settlers Museum.” Like San Francisco, Dunedin is a hilly city. (It used to have cable cars, and still has the world’s steepest street.) It was a challenge for Jan to manage on her TravelScoot, but she soldiered onward, and upward, and (scariest of all!) downward.

The weather suits our clothes and skins here in the New Zealand summer. It can be rainy and windy, or sunny and bright—all in one day! Layers are needed. But it’s neither too hot, nor too cold—now or hardly ever. New Zealand is just right. That’s how it was planned, and that’s how it seems to be!

Relaxing on Waitangi Day, I watch Lake Wakatipu sparkle below, craggy peaks scratch the sky in the middle distance, and a faint half moon pierce the blue sky overhead. A thought I've had before comes to mind: If Al Gore had won that election in 2000, would American be as far behind New Zealand as we are today?