The old Antipodean mix-up
I’m often confused for being an Australian. But yeah, nah, it’s OK bro’.
When 28-year-old Kawakawa local Chloe Phillips-Harris was detained at the Kazakhstan border by officials who were skeptical that New Zealand was a country, Kiwis were flabbergasted.
I’m not sure that anybody bothered to check if she’d made it out of the Kazakhstani immigration cell. Such was the exaggerated scoffing from Kiwis that blundering border bureaucrats could believe New Zealand was actually the seventh state of Australia and use this to bar her from entering the Central Asian nation.
The cheek of it! Did they learn geography from a souvenir shop bumper sticker?
We’ve all been there though haven’t we? Not an immigration cell in Kazakhstan: the old Antipodean mixup. Market stall holders in Paris thinking you’re more Melbournelooking than Masterton-looking. Tour guides in the Tower of London telling you about the lovely time they had in Tropical North Queensland. Italian taxi drivers giving you the wink-wink, nudge-nudge when Kylie Minogue comes on the radio.
All of the above followed by a wallowing apology – and obligatory haka impersonation or landscape compliment – when I divulge my passport says New Zealand and thus have little opinion on kangaroos or tennis player Lleyton Hewitt.
An apology due especially as we fine Kiwi geographers can differentiate Vietnamese from Chinese and Lebanese from Jordanians with ease. Try and stop me from naming all the capitals of Africa.
‘‘Ohhh, I’m so, so sorry I know how much New Zealanders HATE being called Australians,’’ they say. ‘‘It’s worse than suggesting a Canadian is a Yank or a Scot an Englishman, isn’t it?’’
Is it? Do we get in a huff en masse? I don’t. I hate to think our country’s stereotype is to get a bit aggro when someone foreign mistakes us for somebody like Alf off Home and Away. Stone the flammin’ crows, indeed.
Confuse us for Brits and we’ll likely be a bit taken aback: ‘‘Oh, we must sound so posh and proper,’’ we think. If they know we don’t sound that sophisticated and, instead, guess South African, we still shrug it off.
‘‘Well, I suppose I am looking rather tanned.’’ If we are mistaken for an Aussie? We’re flabbergasted and confused: ‘‘Who, me? How dare you!’’
As much as we may cringe at the association, we are tied together more obviously by an Antipodean twang and total disregard for most consonants than our Anzac battles, sporting history and Queen Elizabeth as our shared Head of State.
Speaking of whom, we dutifully look to Australia on important issues like becoming a republic, urban planning and the distance from the beach that we can still wear togs – but to be compared to those Speedo-loving drongos on tour? Apparently that’s a barbecued shrimp too far.
I can’t help but think, like the Canadians to Americans, Irish and Scots to the English, this is our country’s forgotten-younger-sibling syndrome kicking in.
Eager to eke out our own national identity (are we ‘‘on the map’’ yet?), we are hyper-sensitive to being incorrectly labelled as Made in Australia: cue arguments about Phar Lap, pavlova and Crowded House.
I thought with the Lord of the Rings differentiator we may have grown out of this phase, but it seems to take a while to shake off.
I’ve been privy (and, yes, even a part of) some rather boisterous groups in foreign lands where Melbournites and Sydney-siders were in the majority, so I get the cultural cringe that can set in when associated with the crowd wailing Waltzing Matilda. You can’t miss them. Even if you wanted to (and in many cases you’ll want to).
But when you’re in the middle of nowhere, tired of train-hopping and sick of being scammed and hear that familiar nasally twang from the Land Downunder, it’s not so bad to have an Anzac brother in arms to yabber away to.
So I’ll remain a happy little Vegemite if you confuse me for one.
As much as we may cringe at the association, we are tied together more obviously by an Antipodean twang and total disregard for most consonants than our Anzac battles, sporting history and Queen Elizabeth as our shared Head of State.
Email if you have a travel issue you’d like Josh Martin, a London-based travel journalist, to write about.