Dairys

A staple of the New Zealand shopping scene is the "Dairy", roughly analagous to the British corner store, less so to the American 7.11 or convenience store. What is amazing to me is how many there are, our compact town boasting 13 in the yellow pages alone, several within a short walk of the big supermarkets.

Most seem to stock the usual line of groceries, milk, papers and lottery tickets, but I would be interested to know if their real popularity is down to the New Zealand love affair with the meat pies they all sell!

Foreign Influence

I've been a little slow it getting this blog populated, mainly because the weather has been great and we've had lots to do exploring the great outdoors. However I have a few topics to cover and this is one that keeps coming to mind.

As I normally do I'll preface the discussion by noting that:

a) in our area there are less expats or Kiwis who've spent a lot of time abroad than you might meet in more cosmopolitan parts of the country.
b) I haven't visited Australia so I can't comment on that influence.

Obviously New Zealand is physically a long way away from most of the world's population, so some of the influences are ingrained while others come from the modern media of TV, radio and internet.

Sport

Totally British in influence, our town abounds with bowling clubs (the genteel kind of Bowling on perfectly tended grass), cricket squares, rugby pitches, tennis courts an artificial (field) hockey field and even a croquet club. While there is some basketball and softball US influence is minimal.

Town Planning

Superficially the town is very British with tree lined streets, well tended gardens, many small shops in the centre of town and walking access everywhere. While the houses themselves may appear more American as I've mentioned before due to weather and population density the environment they are set in is not. Wanganui has also done a reasonable job of intergrating the big stores within the town like in better planned bits of the UK.

Press and Media

A bit of both here. Like in the US many people get their news from a local paper and there is a strong daily local and regional press. However like the UK the TV (and many Radio) stations are national so the major national news stories predominate. It's like the UK in circumstances where a story will get greatly inflated as every news outlet chases a "fresh angle" on the same thing.

TV

Near total domination by the US. The big US shows dominate prime time on the 3 major terrestrial stations (Survivor, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Men In Trees, Two and a Half Men, Ugly Betty... decide for yourselves what that lot tells NZ about the US!). From the UK you get Coronation St and Gordon Ramsey while unsurpringly Neighbours and Home & Away from Australia get on screen daily.

Fast Food

This one gets fought to a tie. We have a number of the staples of the US fast food scene massing threateningly near our house: Burger King, Pizza Hut & Dominos, McDonalds plus Subway downtown (and yes they do make 6" and footlong Subs even in a metric country). However they are outnumbered by the fish and chip shops, while the town also boast those traditional UK eateries the Kebab shop, Indian takeaway and Chinese.

Pubs and Bars

A mixed bag. As in much of the world we have a couple of Irish bars and there is a strong attempt at an English pub atmosphere at the Rutland arms, while elsewhere the sports bar vibe is a little american. However the small towns often boast unwelcoming looking places called things like the "Commercial Hotel" which reminds me a lot of Scotland. Stay tuned for more comments on the bar scene as we get the chance to partake.

One place that was uniquely New Zealand was the sheep themed bar we found up the River...

Roads and Traffic


I've finally found time for more random thoughts on the country, and as we've been hitting the highways and byways I thought I'd start with the road system (where we drive on the left if anyone isn't sure).

While there is ostensibly a motorway/ highway around Auckland, my experience is with the three major roads in the center of the north island: State Highways 1, 2 and 3. These are all well kept (it's summer of course, therefore road work season - here they tend to fix a short section while diverting you around it with single lane traffic during the working day, then leave it covered in gravel with a 30km/h limit until they get around to surfacing) but consist mainly of just two lanes. These are shared by whatever traffic is passing: lorries, cars, cyclists, farm machinery. While the slower vehicles try to move over to the left like in Ireland (an many areas have good hard shoulders) the windy nature of many roads mean overtaking has to wait for short sections where one direction of traffic gets two lanes. These are often on uphills and you have to be ready to hit the accelerator pedal. Consequently NZ has a high level of fatal head on road crashes. On the good side, at night most roads show up well with cats eyes/ reflectors in centre and on the sides.

Most of the roads are not particularly busy, and in town delays are few. Main roads generally go right through town though SH3 manages to bipass the centre of Wanganui just, and you can take an alternative route to skip Palmerston North.

Kids can drive at 15 (though there are many rules for young drivers) and just like my old home in rural England the local youngsters like to roar around in their rides, whether pimped or merely decrepit. Speed limits are pretty typical (100km/h - 62 mph out of town; 50km/h in built up areas). So far one hazard we have not met is livestock on the road.

Cars run the gamut from less than classic UK vehicles of the 1970's (among those I have seen: Mk1 Escort, Vauhall Viva, Morris Maxi, numerous Minis, Hillman Hunter) through to modern Japanese (NZ imports many 3 year old trade-ins as older cars are not allowed in Japan) and Australian imports. Lorries can look like those in Britain or the US.

We have discovered that it's as well to keep filled up with petrol (costs about 52p/l or $4.00/US gallon) as stations to refill are few and far between, even on main roads. A nervous journey was spent hoping the next dot on the map would have petrol, luckily we finally found some before we ran out.