Looking Back at New Zealand

I arrived back home four days ago after a week in New Zealand. Some random recollections and observations:

Then and Now Ruminations

I was 26 when I first arrived in New Zealand in 1976. I was a freshly-minted husband. My wife was a Kiwi. We had met in California the year before and lived together in Vancouver, BC. Now here I was on a far shore, my whole life ahead of me. I discovered that law was an undergraduate degree in New Zealand and that they paid a modest stipend to students who attended university.

What’s the catch? I wondered. Both my wife and I enrolled at the University of Otago in Dunedin, on the lower part of the South Island. We got our degrees and a baby daughter, but not in that order. Then we headed up to Wellington on the North Island to begin our new careers.

Now, all these years later, my daughter Emily and I were driving on the streets of Wellington. Her son - my 10-month-old grandson - was safely strapped in a child seat in back. She and her husband are doing very well.

“I was just thinking,” I began. Always a dangerous sign. I looked over to the passenger side of the vehicle (which all come equipped with a steering wheel, instrument panel, and pedals) for signs of rolling eyes from my daughter, but they were preoccupied scanning for competing traffic, which I interpreted as a sign to proceed.

If I were age 26 right now, I speculated to her, arriving here in New Zealand for the first time, experiencing a new country as it is now, making a fresh start, what choices would I have made? New Zealand’s film industry got going in earnest in the 1980s. These days, its films and production houses are world-renowned.

Instead of asking in disbelief, “you mean I can go to law school here?” would I have gasped in amazement, “you mean this is where they made Lord of the Rings?” And instead of poking my nose in the nearest available law school, might I have turned up at Peter Jackson’s studio (or, for that matter, Joe Bloggs, the quintessential New Zealand Everyman) and offer to sweep the floors for nothing?

Just wondering ...

Speaking of the Film Industry

When I first arrived in New Zealand back what seems in another lifetime, I had expected to run into a lot of anti-American sentiment. This was immediate post-Vietnam, and resentment ran high in various parts of the world. I had encountered some of this in Canada. But New Zealand was entirely different. “A Yank,” they would exclaim once I’d opened my mouth, as if this were an enviable heritable trait.

Inevitably, it turned out they knew more about my country (and the rest of the world) than most of my countrymen. Nevertheless, some things - our healthcare system, for one - perplexed them. The whole time I lived there, Kiwis were very gracious in opening up their homes - and doors - to me.

But it would be naive to say the American brand has universal appeal. My daughter related how she encounters some people who say they can’t stand anything American, including the movies.

I pondered this for awhile, then replied: “Next time someone says they don’t like American movies, ask them what's wrong with Lord of the Rings?”

How to win arguments and confuse your enemies: Hit ‘em with a non sequitur.

Time to Say Goodbye

It only seemed I had just arrived. It was time to board the plane. Back when I lived in New Zealand, Wellington Airport was a disgrace to aviation. The terminal was basically a drafty over-sized shearing shed - corrugated iron in search of walls and ceiling to hide behind. Electric heaters jerry-rigged to exposed supporting beams burned to a crisp anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck standing in line below. Ten feet on either side, though, and one could easily identify with Scott of the Antarctic penning his final missive to his wife.

We step into a glass-encased building and I feel that I am in a mall in the trendiest part of town. A jazz combo is belting out a tune in the main lobby area. No, I’m not making this up. Outside is a magnificent panorama of planes taking off over the water. There are no boarding calls or other intrusions. We walk past upscale shops and a wine bar and cafe, and next thing I’m enjoying a micro-brew in a snug upstairs pub.

I swear, I could bring a date to Wellington Airport for a romantic evening.

We finish our brews, take some final photos, then head back downstairs. It is time to hand back my grandson. I badly want to pack him in my carry-on and bolt for the boarding gate. My daughter and son-in-law graciously accept the return of their baby. I can’t keep down the lump in my throat as I give them a farewell hug. Time to head back to my world.

I will be back ...

Relics of the Past: Porirua Psychiatric Hospital

Yesterday, I paid a visit to the remains of Porirua Psychiatric Hospital, just outside Wellington, New Zealand. What prompted the visit was the documentary film, “Asylum Pieces,” by Kathy Dudding, which premiered a couple of weeks ago in Auckland and was shown at the Wellington Film Festival the night before.

I happened to show up on the one day of the week the museum (above) was open. The building was originally a residential villa for women classified as “hopeless.”

Originally classified as a “lunatic asylum,” the facility was opened in the 1870s. The founding principles were enlightened, in the spirit of the asylum movements in the US and Great Britain, based on “moral improvement” in surroundings conducive to healing. The buildings (two pics below) were amongst the grandest in New Zealand, in a beautiful rural setting, on vast acreage, with residents working a farm (with two dairy herds) and doing other chores.

Also in the pattern of overseas, underfunding and overcrowding pushed enlightenment aside, along with misplaced hope in ECT and meds as magic bullets. It turned out the main buildings were built of shoddy materials and were condemned in 1942, following an earthquake. In 1960, the farm was closed. The facility shut down in the 1990s.








Above: Farm equipment used by the residents.




Above: Ancient ECT apparatus.



Above: Meds dispensary, circa 1960s.



Above: Portable cast iron tub. Note the handle and wheels.



Above: Isolation unit.




Above: Enlightenment occasionally creeps back in. A splendid example of deco-type architecture from the 30s, based on functionality and light spaces. The building is now used by a soccer club.

iPhone Photo of the Day: New Zealand Fish and Chips Shop

Island Bay, Wellington, NZ.

Headed Out the Door

I'm headed out the door very soon. I'll be boarding AMTRAK for LA. Late this evening I fly out of LAX to New Zealand to see this little guy and the production team responsible. I know seeing my grandson for the first time will give me new insights into our never-ending enquiry of who the hell are we?

Stay tuned for blog posts from New Zealand ...

Emigration Ship

"The Star of India", in San Diego Harbor, is the oldest active sailing ship, christened in 1863. The other day, I bought a ticket and hopped aboard with my trusty iPhone.


For 25 years beginning in the 1870s, as "The Euterpe", the ship took emigrants from Great Britain around the Cape of Good Hope to New Zealand. A typical voyage lasted four months. These days an LA to NZ flight takes about 13 hours and I always bitch about it. I lived in New Zealand back when Carter and Reagan were President. My daughter was born there, and calls New Zealand home.


A second class cabin. Try not to imagine steerage.


A deckside view.


End of voyage. The Euterpe docked in Port Chalmers in the port of Dunedin on New Zealand's South Island. I once owned a house about three miles from here.

New Zealand and the US: Clearing Up Some Misperceptions

Two people who know me well sent me a story from yesterday's Washington Times, entitled New Zealand Rated Most Peaceful, US 83.

I hold dual citizenship. I lived in New Zealand for 11 years during the 70s and 80s. My daughter calls it her home. Naturally, I was interested in reading further:

"Americans pining for a peaceful existence might consider moving to New Zealand, the most peaceful nation on Earth, according to the 2009 Global Peace Index released Tuesday by an Australian-based research group that counts former President Jimmy Carter, Ted Turner and the Dalai Lama among its endorsers."

The article went on to say that the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace rated the relative tranquility of 144 nations according to 23 indicators, including gun sales, the number of homicides, the size of the military, the potential for terrorism and the number of people in jail.

I don't take much stock in this type of information, and, frankly, New Zealand's number one ranking surprised me. If you want to see a New Zealand the tourists don't see, rent one of my favorite (and most disturbing) movies of all time, "Once Were Warriors." (Check out the YouTube highlight above.)

New Zealand has a reputation as a Pacific Shangra-la existing in splendid isolation. The impression is some sort of National Park Middle Earth (I wonder where that came from?) populated by smiling white people, plus 60 gazillion sheep (is that why they're so f-ing happy?).

Actually, last time I checked, New Zealand had one of the highest rates of depression and teen suicide in the world. But the tourist industry there creates an entirely different impression. Indeed, "Once Were Warriors" played brilliantly on this. In the opening shot we see a pastoral mountain scene. Then the camera pulls back to reveal the image as an illusion: We are really looking at a billboard situated in an ethnic urban slum.

The Washington Times piece raised a very interesting animated discussion on what an ideal country should be. Some of the comments were extremely intelligent and perceptive, but a lot of it was embarrassingly stupid and jingoistic. Some examples of the latter:

"When payment comes due it is Americans who have to shed blood to protect those knuckle headed morons who think everyone in the world wants to sit in a circle with them singing campfire songs. How long would New Zealand last without the nations such as US, Britain, Australia, Japan, Canada, that rally to the 'peaceful' nation's defense?"

"So two of the indicators are gun sales & size of the military? If that's the case, then I'm proud the USA comes in at #83. I don't want to be at the top of a list like that."

"Face it folks....the Reason New Zealand & those other countries are ranked so high is the clear & obvious LACK of mexicans & blacks...sorry but sometimes the truth hurts, but somebody has got to acknowledge it."

Okay, time for the facts:

New Zealanders fought in World War I three years before the US entered that conflict. They and the Australians were used as cannon fodder and suffered more casualties per population than the other allied nations. (Check out my ANZAC Day blog piece.) New Zealanders fought in World War II two years before Pearl Harbor, in all theaters but the Russian front. Again, their sacrifice was way out of proportion to their population. New Zealanders also served with distinction in Korea and Vietnam, and currently the country has elite forces serving in Afghanistan.

Some 15 percent of the New Zealanders are indigenous Maori and 7 percent Pacific Islanders, plus a fair percentage of Asians and recent Europeans. These cultures are responsible for a vibrant and dynamic melting pot society that is the pride of nations like the US. But the downside is the type of social tensions well-known in the US.

One major difference between New Zealand and the US, as I see it, is that in New Zealand religious and "patriot" extremists are confined to the lunatic fringe. Similarly, special interests have a much more difficult time writing social, economic, and health policy. Not surprisingly, the public discourse there is far more to my liking.

The other major difference is that because New Zealand is so small (with a population of 4.3 million) it has no margin of error should things go wrong. Think Iceland. The country cannot afford to ignore obvious signals and it doesn't. The US, until recently, could and did. This creates the irony of isolated New Zealand being outward-looking and highly adaptive. The US is still learning.

Of course, as has always been the case, if the US sneezes, New Zealand (and the rest of the world) catches a cold. These days, we are all holding our breath.

Both the US and New Zealand were founded on and continue to operate on ideals that are the envy of the rest of the world. I am proud to hold citizenship in both. The US is a great country, but not for the reasons the right wing fringe here would have you believe. New Zealand is one of the best spots on earth, but not for the reasons its tourist industry would have you believe.

The bottom line is that any place that calls itself a country has to figure out what kind of society it wants to be and what kind of world it wants to live in. We don't always get the answer right, but the important thing is we are asking the right questions. God bless America, God defend New Zealand.

ANZAC Day - Quiet Remembrance

It was supposed to be a quick and easy campaign. But British military incompetence blew the element of surprise. On April 25, 1915, British allied forces - including a large contingent of Australian and New Zealand units (ANZACs) - landed on the beaches of the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey only to encounter waiting Turkish forces dug in on the heights.

The intention had been to quickly knock Turkey out of the war (World War I), thereby rendering Germany vulnerable to invasion from the south. Instead, the allies found themselves on the defensive, clinging to the small bits of land they had gained in the early days of fighting. In one desperate battle, 17,000 ANZACs held off 42,000 Turks.

Several months into the campaign, ANZAC troops spearheaded an offensive to seize the high ground. New Zealand's Wellington Brigade managed to fight its way to the summit of Chunuk Bair, only to be swept off the top by a force led in person by Mustafa Kemal, who would later become known as Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey. Of the 760 ANZACs who made it to the top, 711 became casualties.

The campaign ground down into brutal trench warfare. The troops, exposed to the heat and appallingly unsanitary conditions, were mowed down this time by dysentery. By the end of summer it became apparent that the campaign was a failure, but it took until early January 1916 to organize and complete an evacuation.

More than 10,000 ANZACs lost their lives during the Gallipoli campaign, which ushered in a coming of age for both nations. In the wake of that senseless bloodbath in distant Turkey, men and women in a far-flung corner of the British Empire came to regard themselves as Australians and New Zealanders rather than mere British subjects.

ANZACs also saw service as cannon fodder on the European front, where they suffered more casualties per population than the other forces in the war.

It is dawn in New Zealand right now, one day ahead of the US. New Zealanders of all ages right now are gathered at the war memorials that grace every town there, large and small. Simply counting the names of the dead inscribed into those memorials is a sobering exercise. The ceremony is simple and solemn.

I lived in New Zealand for 11 years, Australia for 5. As well as my US citizenship, I also hold New Zealand citizenship. My daughter was born and raised in New Zealand. She resides in Wellington with her husband, another New Zealander. Any children they may have will be New Zealanders.

The sun is rising in New Zealand right now. A bugler is about to sound Last Post. It is time for two minutes of silence, a quiet remembrance.

Happy Anniversary, Emily!

A year ago, I was in New Zealand to attend my daughter's wedding. Her first anniversary is in two days, technically tomorrow factoring in the International Date Line.

I lived in New Zealand for eleven years, back in the 70s and 80s. I met Gail, my first wife, in San Francisco. Gail is a Kiwi, and 18 months later we were in New Zealand. We settled in Dunedin, at the bottom of the South Island, and both of us enrolled in law school (law is an undergraduate degree there).

In our second year of law school, we had Emily. We spent the rest of law school handing off Emily like a football to each other between classes. Since males don't have breast milk, I had to be especially inventive in keeping Emily happy.

After graduation, we moved to Wellington, New Zealand's capital. Gail went into law and I found my way into financial journalism. A year and a bit later, our marriage broke up, and five years later I headed to Melbourne, Australia to take up a post as feature writer for the business section of a daily newspaper.

Six months later, thanks to a mixed manic episode, I found myself a stranger in a strange land, broke and friendless and unemployed. I managed to scrape by for the next five years, then returned to the east coast of the States just in time for a crushing depression and more lost years than I would care to admit.

Those lost years involved missing out on a lot of my daughter's growing up. Her mother did a great job raising her. Emily wound up getting a law degree from the same place her mother and I did, plus a marketing degree, then went to work in New Zealand's wine industry.

Fathers, of course, always ask questions they shouldn't. On the phone, I got Emily to own up to the fact she was dating. "Is he a keeper?" I asked. Let's put it this way - it was the kind of "yes" every father wants to hear.

I later met Hamish when he and Emily were visiting the States. I couldn't have picked out a better mate for her, myself. Her mother says the same thing.

I hadn't been to New Zealand since the early nineties. In many ways, it was the same country. In so many other ways, though, it had transformed itself. Back when I was living there, New Zealand was full of smart and sophisticated people working to fashion a society in their image. By the time I returned, they had largely succeeded.

I harbored a bit of regret that I wasn't part of that. Indeed, I spent a lot of time facing down - and ultimately exorcising - ghosts from my past. I was a different person now, but this distant place in a distant time shaped me, gave me an education, got me started on a career. And, of course, gave me Emily.

Funny thing about Emily's wedding day, the thing I recall most vividly is chatting with the taxi driver on the way back from the reception. He was from Somalia. Here he was, an immigrant, in a new country. A new start, a young man with a future. That's how I felt when I arrived on this distant shore more than 30 years before.

Now, here I was, looking back at my past. But also into a future that involves a wonderful daughter and her fine husband.

Happy first anniversary, Emily and Hamish!