ABSTRACT
There is a Mexican folk saying that exhorts us to ‘Pity poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States’. New Zealand lies on the other side of the Pacific, far away from both Mexico and the USA; hence references to it as ‘God’s Own Country’ might be said to exhibit an endearingly antipodal symmetry. Austin Mitchell’s (1972) satirical but affectionate The Half Gallon, Quarter Acre Pavlova Paradise signalled that this claim to have been divinely blessed was at one time both semi-official and thoroughly popular; part of the stock-in-trade of the nation’s politicians as well as an article of faith for some of its more complacent citizens. Small size, low population density and great scenic beauty all played a part in providing the legitimating grounds for such an assertion. It was, however, their homeland’s remoteness from the assorted Babylons to the North that was arguably most crucial to New Zealanders’ disposition to accredit their country with Eden-like properties. The associated assumption was of a nation that was largely exempt from the troubles of both the Old World and the New; an assumption that, through the contrasting binaries of cultural nationalism, was formalised as the doctrine of New Zealand exceptionalism.
