New Zealand History As Told By An Idiot
Some light relief.
A shambolic guide to the history of New Zealand. All you are about to read is a fabrication. Any facts gleaned from this article are purely coincidental.
New Zealand.
Land of the long cloud and a few straggly bits stuck on the end. A place with so little imagination they named one island North and the other South. Not much happens in New Zealand which is why this is a brief guide to the key events that shaped life at the arse-end of the Southern Hemisphere.
1000–1200: You spell it
Sometime before and slightly after Christ had his big moment in the sun and demanded a ladder, the Chinese arrived in New Zealand.
It’s unclear what they named the place but it likely rhymed with pit. A hundred years later and the Irish would appear on the scene and eat all the Chinese. The Chinese lasting gift to the land was a gooseberry. Unable to spell gooseberry, the Irish renamed it kiwifruit except they couldn’t spell, write or read.
A hundred years after the Irish gobbled the Chinese, the Morimori turned up. Lost and a little startled to be confronted by redheads, they duly slaughtered the inhabitants and ate them all for lunch over a barbie (NZ slang for BBQ).
1300–1840: The discovery years
It all kicked off with Kupe discovering New Zealand. He was hungry too. After a long and exhausting journey possibly from the Pacific Islands, Kupe ordered his Maori tribe to light a bonfire and go to town on the Morimori.
The as-yet-unnamed set of islands was then ‘discovered’ by Abel Tasman who voiced an opinion that it looked like a prettier version of Zeeland. The sailors, suffering from years of scurvy didn’t pay him much attention. They continued to sail until they got completely lost and nobody could remember what Abel was blabbering about.
A century later, Jimmy Cook misheard the pronunciation and claimed to have discovered New Zealand.
“This cannot be Zeeland, chaps!” said the highly decorated Captain Crook of the Seven Seas. “We passed that shithole weeks ago. No. This, I do declare, is New Zealand!” It wasn’t new and it was no longer Dutch either. It was all about land rights and colonization.
Having no appetite for eating the inhabitants like the Irish, Chinese, Morimori and Maori, Cooksey had bigger plans. Offering trinkets and a couple of guns, the illiterate Maori tribes agreed to sign the Treaty of Waitangi and hand over all their land to the crown.
“Good on you lads! No need to check the translation. Our lads all speak the Queen’s English!”
1840–1886: Location, location, location
Nobody wanted to visit New Zealand. It was too far and the capital was a shit hole called Russell.
Who the fuck wanted to travel by sea for nine months only to end up in a place called Russell? Realizing the error of their ways, the government moved shop to Auckland. Turned out, Auckland was a larger version of Russell and just as shit. In 1865, the capital was relocated to Wellington, it was still shit.
The last tourist attraction that amazed everyone, Rotorua's pink and white terraces, crumbled under a quake. The remnants were dismantled and sold to the Chinese as ‘dragon-penis’. Only a single photo exists of New Zealand's claim to a seventh wonder of the Earth.
1893: Votes for all
In the UK, the motherland continued its not-too-subtle discrimination against Blacks, Irish, and dogs. Everyone agreed women shouldn’t be left out of the discrimination mix.
Progressive New Zealand became the first country in the world to allow women to vote. This caused outrage among the canine community who demanded equal rights. Within two years, dogs of all sizes were granted the right to vote and those bitches elected a Labrador to rule Middle Earth…sorry…New Zealand.
The lab was assassinated after chasing a cat up the wrong tree.
1906: The goose is cooked
Still under the antiquated name of Chinese gooseberry, New Zealand Inc. rebrands its Golden Goose to the less racist ‘kiwifruit.’.Everybody is confused and sales promptly suffer after rumors of millions of Kiwi birds being slaughtered to create a single fruit.
1917–1967: New Zealand makes some noise
A slow day in the office results in Ernest Rutherford accidentally splitting the atom. He was looking for a shortcut to reheat his mince pie.
Sometime later, the world’s most famous Sherpa scales Mount Everest for the hundredth occasion with a lost New Zealander in tow. Edmund Hillary claims the title of the first man to climb a large rock. The celebrations continued until Prime Minister Norman Kirk’s assassination by the CIA with poison.
1981: A triumph of sport
As apartheid raged in South Africa, the All Blacks saw no irony in appropriating a name for a team that featured no Black men.
The South Africans thought it would be great for public relations to crush a team made up entirely of Black men and invited themselves over for a quick game of rugger. Neither side anticipated protests, let alone a full-scale riot. The game became a side-show of human rights versus rugby.
Six years later, the French arrived for a game of rugby and ended their tour by bombing a boat in retaliation for losing to the All Blacks in a World Cup final.
1985 onwards: Fuck all
A couple of devastating earthquakes, some shootings involving one man in bad knitwear, and some bushfires. Civil weddings get permitted and torturing homosexuals with conversion practices finally gets banned in 2022.
New Zealand remains unbeatable in rugby. A game, much like the World Series of Baseball, in which few countries participate and the outcome always has the same result.
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Hang on a sweet minute. You mean to tell me that small humanoids didn't take a golden ring to a volcano in NZ and throw it in thus defeating the greatest evil on that little island. Well colour me shocked!!
Likely not far off the truth. It is a lovely place nonetheless.