A Land of Two Halves

By Joe Bennett

Joe Bennett is a mildly ubiquitous newspaper columnist/TV presenter sort of guy. He's originally from England, but has lived in New Zealand for many years. At some point he decided to go on a huge country wide road trip in order to try and pin down just what it is he likes about this country (i.e. to go out and find the 'Real New Zealand'). And then he wrote a book about it.

This book seems to be aimed at foreigners. For the first few chapters I was worried that he was pretty much writing a tourism brochure, since there were continual informative asides on the country's demographics, climate and national holidays. This disappeared later on though, and the narrative eventually just becomes a long string of interesting characters met in pubs. Probably not a bad way to gauge the national character.

He never seems to come to a conclusion as to what it is he likes about New Zealand (other than that he thinks he'll stay here), but reading between the lines, I think I have some idea. He doesn't like the bush (too dark, cold and dangerous) he doesn't like the cities (ugly and dirty) (you can tell he's lived in the South Island for a while, he drives right through Auckland without stopping) and he doesn't like the small towns (provincial and boring). The only place he does seem to like is the pub. I think his favorite people are those that exemplify the idea of the 'good kiwi bloke', Barry Crump, the All Blacks (the older the better) and your generic West Coast logger. That's all well and good, but it does mean that he comes off as a myopic conservative old man at times.

It's a breezy enjoyable read though. There are certainly lots of strange and bizarre characters out there that provide endless anecdotes for this kind of book.