MISGUIDED PITY

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1934, Page 12

MISGUIDED PITY

“THE SHAKY ISLES.” AUSTRALIAN ATTITUDE. From time to time New Zealanders returning from Australia state that in the Commonwealth New Zealand is widely regarded as “the Shaky Isles” and that Australians expect to read one day that the Dominion has been submerged. A Dunedin passenger on the Maheno who returned from three months’ holiday in Victoria on Monday told a Southland Times reporter that almost everywhere she went she was pitied because she lived in such an unnatural country as New Zealand. She agreed that the Australian papers were to some extent to blame, but she considered that New Zealanders who had settled in Australia were still more culpable. “At first I used to be rather amused at these expressions of pity,” she said, “but later it annoyed me. The fact that I came from the South Island made Australians even more sympathetic. All that seems to appear in the papers over there about New Zealand are reports of storms, earthquakes and crimes. It really is astounding the poor opinion the Australians have of New Zealand. It is a wonder that any tourists come from there at all. “Yet we New Zealanders are to a large extent to blame. When the members of the New Zealand Association met the Maheno at Melbourne I was surprised to hear almost every ex-New Zealander declare that he would never go back to the Dominion again. The remarks they added were anything but complimentary to New Zealand and could certainly not be calculated to add to the prestige of the Dominion in Australian eyes. “I am convinced there is great scope for tourist publicity in the Commonwealth, as well as for a campaign which will eradicate the wrong impression so generally held in Australia concerning New Zealand. In scenery the Dominion is much ahead of the Commonwealth, and the distance separating the two countries is short” .