While I've been recovering from a piece of minor surgery I've spent a bit of time reading Philippa Mein Smith's A Concise History of New Zealand. Strange reading for a health break, you think? Well, I've spent most of my life in Australia, just a short trip across the Tasman from New Zealand, and yet I'm ashamed to say I know less about the place than about many countries further from me. The closest I have come to visiting is a quick change of planes in Auckland Airport, and before reading Mein Smith's book I knew almost nothing about its history. Like most Australians I guess, I see New Zealand as like a younger sister. They are near us, they were founded by the same British colonialists, they speak the same language, they share a history of displacement of their original inhabitants. Like younger sisters everywhere, they are similar to us, but a bit nicer. Their people are a bit friendlier, their race relations a bit less oppressive, their politics a bit
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson