I'm glad you enjoyed the first part of the guide!
Many years ago a bloke called Maui went fishing with his brothers, using his grandmother's jawbone as a fish hook (apparently his grandmother's jaw fell off through overuse, an object lesson in verbosity). He caught a big fish and hauled it to the surface. It was a big fish (man). Like, really really big. About as big as the North Island. In fact, if the truth be told, it was the North Island. But that's okay, because Maui's canoe was pretty large as well, as big as The South Island (get the picture?) Maui's brothers, seeing the size of the fish, became jealous and laid into it with their meres and axes, thus conveniently terraforming it into a fairly rugged bit of heavily forested fish (or land, as geologists prefer to call it).
A bit after that, in a huge migration from Hawaiiki (probably no relation), the Maori people arrived in this new land of Aotearoa, The Land of The Long White Cloud. After spending about 1000 years not inventing the internal combustion engine, nuclear weapons, those horrible guttering systems which get clogged up with leaves and twigs and dead sparrows and need to be cleaned out every six months, or Unix, the country was colonised (invaded) by Europeans, bringing blankets, muskets, whaling ships, God, syphilis, tuberculosis and guttering systems.
The Maoris, overwhelmed by the European's staggering generosity, occasionally went berko and killed some settlers, but to no avail. By 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi - popularly advertised as New Zealand's founding document - was signed by the Governor of New Zealand (representing Queen Vicky of England) and various Maori chiefs, representing each tribe.
After another thirty years of bloodshed, things began to settle down a little bit and the real business of farming sheep and building towns like Bulls could begin in earnest. Bulls was built. It still exists today. Aaaaaargh.
The capital was moved from Russell to Auckland to Wellington to London to Washington. There was speculation during the 1940s that the new capital might be Berlin or Tokyo, but such rumours were unfounded in the cold impartial light of military superiority and nuclear weapons.
World War One came, and with it came the battle of Gallipoli, in which heaps of Kiwis and Aussies got dropped on the wrong beach by a Pommie Idiot who was probably marinating his brain in gin at the time. A battle that should have lasted about twelve hours lasted six months, and cost Gunner Spinley (Mollusc's grandad) his face, which stopped a Turkish bullet. World War Two rolled around, and thousands more Kiwis died displaying the refreshing lack of self-preservation that Allied High Command was so enamoured with.
The score stands at New Zealand two, Germany nil.
Nuclear ships stopped coming in 1984 with the election of The First Labour Government in a Very Long Time. America loves New Zealand slightly less than it did before. The French blew up a Greenpeace ship, The Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland in 1985. Kiwis like the French slightly less than they did before. However, due to the fact that New Zealand export dairy products and beef and lamb to France, they don't dislike them enough to really do anything about it.
The All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup in 1987 and nobody really cares except Westies (West Auckland - pretty rough) and their fathers. We had a sesquicentennial in 1990 (150th anniversary - a point of interest is that the word sesquicentennial did not exist prior to 1990). It was crap and lost lots of money. Probably much like the Millennium Dome.
Final Part later in the week!
L. :)
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