70 Fun Facts About New Zealand

What is the capital city of New Zealand?

Auckland is the biggest city by a wide margin, but the seat of government has sat at the bottom of the North Island since 1865.

New Zealand has two main landmasses. Roughly how many smaller islands make up the rest of the country?

The North Island is Te Ika-a-Māui and the South Island Te Waipounamu; the small islands run from the subtropical Kermadecs to the subantarctic groups.

Which Dutch explorer became the first European to sight and record New Zealand, in 1642?

He never landed: four of his sailors were killed by Māori in a waka at what he named Murderers' Bay, now Golden Bay.

Which British explorer became the first European to set foot on and map New Zealand, in 1769?

Cook charted the coastline so accurately on his first voyage that his maps stayed in use for decades.

In which year did British representatives and Māori chiefs sign the Treaty of Waitangi?

It was first signed on 6 February at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, and that date is now the national day.

In 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world to do what?

The petition Kate Sheppard organised carried around 30,000 signatures, and her portrait has been on the ten-dollar note since 1991.

New Zealand has three official languages: English, Māori and which other?

Sign language gained official status in 2006; Māori had been made official in 1987.

What is the most common English translation of Aotearoa, the Māori name for New Zealand?

Other readings have been proposed, but the long white cloud is the one on the tea towels.

The kiwi is the only bird in the world with its nostrils located where?

That placement goes with an unusually strong sense of smell, which the bird uses to sniff out worms and grubs at night.

A kiwi egg can weigh up to roughly what proportion of the female's body weight?

A brown kiwi female may lay a single egg of about 450 grams, one of the largest eggs relative to body size of any bird.

DNA studies show the kiwi's closest living or extinct relatives were which animals?

It overturned the assumption that the kiwi was a small cousin of the moa it shared the islands with.

What is the traditional name of the haka the All Blacks have performed before matches for over a century?

Kapa o Pango, written specifically for the team, has been performed alongside it since 2005.

In which three years had the All Blacks won the men's Rugby World Cup as of 2024?

The 2015 win made them the first team to retain the trophy; the 2019 and 2023 tournaments both went to South Africa.

What is the nickname of the 1905 New Zealand rugby team that won 34 of 35 matches on tour in Britain?

The all-black kit that gave the team its name was already in place by that tour.

In which trade did Edmund Hillary work with his father and brother before climbing Everest in 1953?

The family ran about 1,600 hives, and the seasonal work left his winters free for the mountains.

Who was the first living New Zealander other than the monarch to appear on its banknotes?

He was added to the five-dollar note in 1992 alongside Aoraki / Mount Cook, and stayed on it after his death in 2008.

What is the longest river in New Zealand?

It runs 425 km from Mount Ruapehu through Lake Taupō and over Huka Falls to the Tasman Sea; its name means flowing water.

Lake Taupō, the country's largest lake, sits inside what kind of geological feature?

It fills the hole left by the Oruanui eruption about 25,000 years ago, one of the largest eruptions of the past 100,000 years.

How tall is Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain?

It was about 40 metres taller until December 1991, when a rock avalanche took the top off the northern peak.

Which superlative does the capital of New Zealand hold among the capitals of the world?

It also claims to be the windiest city on Earth by average wind speed, sitting on the funnel of Cook Strait.

Auckland is built on a volcanic field that has produced roughly how many volcanic centres?

The most recent eruption built Rangitoto Island in the harbour around 1450 AD, well within Māori memory.

Auckland is home to the world's largest urban population of which group of people?

About 29 percent of all New Zealanders live in Auckland, and its Māori name Tāmaki Makaurau means Tāmaki desired by many.

How many Academy Awards did The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King win, from how many nominations?

The clean sweep tied Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most wins ever, and it was the first fantasy film to take Best Picture.

The four red stars on New Zealand's flag represent which constellation?

The design has been in use since 1869 and gained statutory recognition in 1902.

What share of voters chose to keep New Zealand's existing flag in the 2016 silver-fern referendum?

The alternative was Kyle Lockwood's black, white and blue fern; turnout was 67.3 percent.

The kākāpō holds which pair of records among the world's parrots?

It is also the only parrot with a lek breeding system, and some individuals may live to 100.

The tuatara has what unusual feature on top of its head?

The parietal eye is visible in hatchlings and is covered by scales within months; the animal is the last survivor of an order older than the dinosaurs.

The kiwifruit is native to which country?

New Zealanders called it the Chinese gooseberry until exporter Jack Turner coined the name kiwifruit in 1959.

How many people were killed in the earthquake that struck Christchurch on 22 February 2011?

The magnitude 6.3 quake hit at lunchtime and flattened much of the central city, including the cathedral spire.

Rotorua's famous smell of rotten eggs comes from emissions of which gas?

The city sits inside a caldera, which also powers the Pōhutu Geyser and the boiling mud pools at Whakarewarewa.

A. J. Hackett opened the world's first commercial bungy site in 1988 on which bridge near Queenstown?

He had drawn worldwide attention the year before by jumping off the Eiffel Tower.

Ernest Rutherford, 'father of nuclear physics', won his 1908 Nobel Prize in which subject?

He is said to have grumbled that the award turned him from a physicist into a chemist; his face is on the hundred-dollar note.

Which suffragist behind the 1893 petition appears on New Zealand's ten-dollar note?

A white camellia became the movement's emblem and a variety was later named after her.

How old was Jacinda Ardern when she became prime minister in 2017?

The following June she became only the second elected head of government, after Benazir Bhutto, to give birth in office.

The pavlova, which New Zealand and Australia both claim, is named after a Russian what?

Anna Pavlova toured both countries in the 1920s, and food historians have found early recipes on both sides of the Tasman.

New Zealand's sheep population peaked in 1982 at roughly how many animals?

That was about 22 sheep for every person; by 2023 the ratio had dropped below five to one as dairy took over.

The name New Zealand comes from Zeeland, a province of which country?

Cartographer Joan Blaeu renamed Tasman's Staten Landt as Nieuw Zeeland; Cook later anglicised it.

Before humans arrived, the giant flightless moa had only one predator. What was it?

The largest moa stood about 3.6 metres tall with neck outstretched, and all nine species were gone by about 1445.

The New Zealand Wars between the colonial government and Māori were fought over which period?

They were once called the Land Wars; the biggest campaign was the invasion of the Waikato, and about 1.5 million hectares were confiscated afterwards.

Which is the largest of New Zealand's 13 national parks?

It covers 12,607 square kilometres in the south-west and contains the Milford Track, once billed as the finest walk in the world.

Which writer called Milford Sound the eighth Wonder of the World?

Despite its name it is a fiord, not a sound, and it is the wettest inhabited place in the country.

The glowworm that lights up the Waitomo Caves, Arachnocampa luminosa, is found where?

Local Māori chief Tane Tinorau and surveyor Fred Mace first explored the cave by raft and candlelight in 1887.

On 10 July 1967, the New Zealand dollar replaced the pound at what rate of dollars to the pound?

Traders nickname the currency the Kiwi, after the bird on the one-dollar coin.

Roughly what fraction of Zealandia, the continental mass New Zealand sits on, is underwater?

It broke away from Gondwana around 80 million years ago; its Māori name Te Riu-a-Māui means the hills, valleys and plains of Māui.

The Hobbiton film set stands on a working sheep farm near which North Island town?

Visitors can walk past 44 hobbit holes and drink at a working replica of the Green Dragon inn, opened in 2012.

Tāne Mahuta, the largest known living kauri tree, stands in a forest in which region?

It is named for the Māori god of forests, and its age is guessed at somewhere between 1,250 and 2,500 years.

Since 1996, New Zealand has elected its 120-seat Parliament using which voting system?

Parliament has had a single chamber since the Legislative Council was abolished, and its maximum term is three years.

Baldwin Street, the Guinness-recognised steepest street in the world, is in which city?

It briefly lost the title to a Welsh street in 2019 and won it back in 2020 after Guinness ruled that steepness must be measured along the road's central axis.

A Hawke's Bay hill has the longest place name in any English-speaking country. How many letters long is it?

Locals shorten Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu to Taumata; it tells of Tamatea playing his flute to his loved one.

Which Auckland-born singer's 'Royals' spent nine weeks at No. 1 in 2013, when she was 16?

She was the youngest artist to top the US chart since Tiffany in 1987, and the song won Song of the Year at the Grammys.

Flight of the Conchords won a 2008 Grammy in which category?

They formed in 1998 and went on to an HBO series that ran for two seasons.

Which New Zealand-born author of 'The Garden Party' died of tuberculosis in 1923, aged 34?

She moved in the Bloomsbury orbit with Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, and her stories are now published in 25 languages.

A hāngī is a traditional Māori way of cooking food using what?

Meat and kūmara are lowered in baskets onto the stones and covered with earth for hours; it is still the way to feed a crowd at a marae.

The hongi, a traditional Māori greeting, is performed by two people doing what?

It is understood as sharing the ha, the breath of life, and traces back to the god Tāne breathing life into the first woman.

Which Pacific nation is in free association with New Zealand, its people holding NZ citizenship?

Its capital is Avarua on Rarotonga; Niue has a similar arrangement.

Whom did New Zealand beat to win the inaugural ICC World Test Championship in 2021?

They won by eight wickets in Southampton, two years after losing the 2019 World Cup final on a boundary countback.

Rakiura, the Māori name for Stewart Island, is usually translated as what?

The name refers to the aurora australis; more than 80 percent of the island is national park and its main settlement is Oban.

In March 2017 New Zealand's parliament granted legal personhood to which river?

It was only the second natural feature in the world given its own legal identity, after the Te Urewera forest.

How wide is Cook Strait, between the North and South Islands, at its narrowest point?

The Interislander ferry takes about three hours to cross from Wellington to Picton.

Roughly how far is mainland New Zealand from mainland Australia?

The Tasman Sea between them is nicknamed 'the Ditch', and crossing it is 'crossing the Ditch'.

In roughly which period did Polynesian settlers first arrive in New Zealand?

They arrived in waves of waka voyages, and moa were hunted to extinction within about a century of landfall.

New Zealand became a dominion within the British Empire in which year?

Full statutory independence came in 1947 when it adopted the Statute of Westminster.

Roughly what share of New Zealand's population identified as Māori in the 2023 census?

That is about 887,000 people; Asian New Zealanders were the next-largest group at just over 17 percent.

Christchurch, the largest urban centre on the South Island, is known by which nickname?

It has also been an official Antarctic gateway since 1901, one of five cities that supply expeditions to the ice.

What name did Abel Tasman originally give New Zealand in 1642?

He thought it joined land sighted off South America; Dutch cartographers renamed it Nova Zeelandia after Hendrik Brouwer disproved the link in 1643.

In which Canterbury town was New Zealand's record high temperature of 42.4 °C recorded?

The record low, −25.6 °C, was set at Ranfurly in Otago; the country's climate is mostly temperate maritime.

In which year was New Zealand's upper house, the Legislative Council, abolished?

Parliament has since consisted of the monarch and the single-chamber House of Representatives.

The first shipment of refrigerated meat from New Zealand left in 1882 aboard which ship?

It opened up meat and dairy exports to Britain, laying the foundation for decades of economic growth.

As late as the 1960s, which commodity still made up over a third of New Zealand's export revenue?

Its price has since fallen so far relative to other goods that wool is no longer profitable for many farmers; dairy now dominates.

In which year did New Zealand first compete at the Summer Olympics as its own team?

In 1908 and 1912 it competed in a joint Australasia team with Australia.