From the perspective of an Australian tourist.

Birds Everywhere

Now I know why so many New Zealand bank notes display birds. The place is filled with them. So many small birds, everywhere. And they spend a surprising amount of time on the ground, hopping around. They don’t seem to be shy of urban areas, either. Annoyingly for drivers, they love to stand on roads and not fly off till the last second, for some reason. The birds are ever-present.

Casually Mountainous

Australia is a very geographically flat place, and New Zealand is not, thanks to tectonic activity. Mountains are often on the horizons of landscapes. Places like Wellington are particularly fascinating; simultaneously mountainous and urban.

Lack of Flyscreen

Flyscreen is apparently not a common addition to New Zealand buildings. Which is crazy, because I wager the quantity of flying insects is greater than Australia. You basically can’t open a window more than 5mm at night unless you want a house full of bugs. (Side note: the bees in NZ are massive, I saw ones as large as a thumb.)

One Lane Bridges

Small bridges with only one driving lane. One direction gets priority, the other has a “give way”, which is marked by a sign on each side. One lane bridges are quite common on New Zealand’s country roads. Initially a cute novelty, after a while I started to wonder why they didn’t just build another lane, given the bridges are so tiny anyway.

Maori Culture

Maori culture is somewhat integrated into everyday life in New Zealand. People use Maori words, many locations are labelled with their Maori names, sites of Maori significance are often called out, and some Maori values are incorporated into the mainstream. I found it interesting to learn about Maori history (there are only so many times you can tolerate hearing yet another exploit of Captain Cook). While there is a long way to go for supporting Maori culture, it is good to see New Zealand moving in what looks to be the right direction. Australia should take a leaf out of NZ’s book for supporting Aborignal culture better.

Killer Heat

A fine 25 Celsius day in New Zealand feels like 30+ in Australia. The sun and heat are particularly harsh and I don’t understand why. Potentially due to higher humidity.

Tsunami Risk

Beaches casually have signs instructing how to identify a tsunami and what to do. High elevation areas are marked as “tsunami safe”. One of my accommodations included a notice on what to do in a tsunami, reassuring me no action was necessary because we were in a safe area.

Fuel is Expensive

Petrol is ridiculously expensive. The price is 30-40% more than Australia in urban centres (taking into account currency exchange rate). This is particularly astounding because the public transport offerings are not great. I thought Australia was bad for being car-centric, but NZ is worse.

Wild Drivers

I also thought Australian drivers are pretty bad; nope, New Zealand may be worse. I have never witnessed so many near-miss road accidents in my life than I have in two weeks in NZ. Interestingly, the road markings and signs are really good - perhaps in response to high incident rate.

Streamlined Tourism

Processes and systems which tourists might interact with are streamlined. E.g. customs, flights, online bookings. I was impressed by the consistency of good experiences. It’s clear New Zealand knows they have a big tourism industry and they try to do it well. Meanwhile in Australia, any electronic government-related system is most likely rubbish, and you still fill in a physical paper form (complete with too-small text fields) for customs!