From Godzone to the Quid Sod

Press, 5 January 1980, Page 9

From Godzone to the Quid Sod

A South Pacific Television film project could lead to the establishment of a New Zealand-Irish Society in Dublin, New Zealanders who have settled permanently in Ireland are being asked to contact a West Coast journalist, Bob Messenger, now rugby correspondent for an Irish newspaper. The idea grew out of the filming of “Godzone Too?”, a magazine programme which looks at a crosssection of Ireland’s kiwis, some of them settled there for 20 years. It will he shown on SPTV at 9.40 p.m. tomorrow. SPTV’s Irish-born - Head of Presentation and Publicity, Maurice Smyth, heard of two New Zealand achievers in Ireland shortly before he left Auckland with his family for a private visit home. “I launched into some swift research when I. arrived and the number of New Zealanders who had reversed the tradition of emigration from Ireland amazed me,” he said. He hired a film crew and, with only a week available, drove through the Republic in search of exiled kiwis. He interviewed a wealthy pleasure boat operator from the Bay of Islands in a blizzard. Recent current affairs programmes have looked at expatriate New Zealanders who tend to attract unfavourable publicity in Australia. But Smyth’s film shows "kiwis of a different feather, including one of the world’s top yacht designers, a town planner who plays for and captained the Irish squash team, a trio of journalists and an equestrienne. Comparisons between West Coasters living in Christchurch and New Zealanders living in Ireland are made in the programme. Bob Messenger, a former West Coaster, describes the attitudes he found some years ago at a school reunion in Christchurch to New Zealanders who have left home to settle overseas.

He also discusses the similarities between life on the West Coast and in the south of Ireland. Also on the programme is a former pupil of Christchurch Boys’ High School, Brent Parker from Shirley, who is now a music teacher and composer in Dublin. Parker talks about the efforts he is making to become -an international concert pianist. His second concerto was performed late last year over the Irish state television system, with him at. the keyboard. But his ambition is to play one of his own works in the Christchurch Town Hall. Other South Islanders who talk about why they have settled in Ireland are Ken Johnson, a journalist from Invercargill; Jeannie Wardell, a professional equestrienne from the Mount Dasher high country station inland from Oamaru; Mrs Ann Ryan, mistress of Scarteen House, Limerick, seat of the Ryan family for 300 years, and

her mother, 93-year-old Mrs Nora Peter, a member of one of Geraldine’s pioneer families. Maurice Smyth also asked passing Dubliners if they knew exactly where New Zealand was — with hilarious results, depending on your sense of humour. Smyth recalls telling Bob Messenger: “If there were only two exiled Irishmen within ‘what’ll you have?’ of each other, they’d be together at least on St Patrick's Day. I wagged him about how New Zealanders could talk of national pride when in Ireland they hadn’t even organised a barbecue to celebrate Waitangi Day or an All Black victory.” “He shouted me a glass of stout and said he’d try to do something about it.” “Godzone Too?” gives New Zealand exiles an opportunity to talk about what happens to the New Zealand identity in another country and what they miss about home.