Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Number-Eight Wire
You might on your travels hear the phrase 'number-eight wire' and wonder what on earth it
means. It's a catchphrase New Zealanders still repeat to themselves to encapsulate a nation-
al myth: that NZ's isolation and its pioneer stock created a culture in which ingenuity al-
lowed problems to be solved and tools to be built from scratch. A NZ farmer, it was said,
could solve pretty much any problem with a piece of number-eight wire (the gauge used for
fencing on farms).
It's actually largely true - NZ farms are full of NZ inventions. One reason big offshore
film and TV producers bring their projects here - apart from the low wages and huge vari-
ety of locations - is that they like the can-do attitude and ability to work to a goal of NZ
technical crews. Many more New Zealanders have worked as managers, roadies or chefs
for famous recording artists (everyone from Led Zeppelin and U2 to Madonna) than have
enjoyed the spotlight themselves. Which just goes to show that New Zealanders operate
best at the intersection of practicality and creativity, with an endearing (and sometimes in-
furiating) humility to boot.
'SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF NEW ZEALAND?'
That, by tradition, is the question that visitors are asked within an hour of disembarking in NZ. Sometimes they
might be granted an entire day's research before being asked to pronounce, but asked they are. The question - com-
posed equally of great pride and creeping doubt - is symbolic of the national consciousness.
When George Bernard Shaw visited for four weeks in 1934, he was deluged with what-do-you-think-of ques-
tions from newspaper reporters the length of the country. Although he never saw fit to write a word about NZ, his
answers to those newspaper questions were collected and reprinted as
What I Saw in New Zealand: the Newspaper
Utterances of George Bernard Shaw in New Zealand
. Yes, people really were that keen for vindication.
Other visitors were more willing to pronounce in print, including the British Liberal MP, David Goldblatt, who
wrote an intriguing and prescient little book called
Democracy At Ease: a New Zealand Profile
. Goldblatt found
New Zealanders a blithe people: kind, prosperous and fond of machines.
For the bon vivant Goldblatt, the attitude towards food and drink was all too telling. He found only 'the plain
fare and even plainer fetch and carry of the normal feeding machine of this country' and shops catering 'in the
same pedestrian fashion for a people never fastidious - the same again is the order of the day'.
Thus, a people with access to some of the best fresh ingredients on earth tended to boil everything to death. A
nation strewn almost its entire length with excellent microclimates for viticulture produced only fortified plonk.
Material comfort was valued, but was a plain thing indeed.
It took New Zealanders a quarter of a century more to shuck 'the same dull sandwiches', and embrace a national
awareness - and, as Goldblatt correctly anticipated, it took 'hazards and misfortunes' to spur the 'divine discon-
tent' for change.
But when it did happen, it really happened.
By Russell Brown. Brown is a journalist and manager of the Public Address blog site,
www.publicaddress.net
.
