120 Fun Facts About New Zealand

What is the capital city of New Zealand?

Wellington has been the capital since 1865, when Parliament moved there from Auckland for its central position; Auckland remains the largest city by a wide margin.

Beyond its two main islands, roughly how many smaller islands does New Zealand have?

Over 700 smaller islands lie beyond the North and South Islands, from the subtropical Kermadecs to the subantarctic Auckland and Campbell groups; Stewart Island is the largest of them.

Which country's secret agents sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in 1985?

France sent the agents because the ship was about to lead a protest against its nuclear tests at Moruroa; the bombs killed photographer Fernando Pereira, and France later apologised and paid reparations.

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

James Cook landed at Poverty Bay in October 1769 from the Endeavour and charted the coastline so accurately that his map stayed in use for decades.

Which national day does New Zealand mark on 6 February?

Waitangi Day recalls the first signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands on 6 February 1840; about 500 more signatures were later gathered at other places around the country.

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

Grant all women the right to vote: the governor signed the Electoral Act on 19 September 1893 after a petition bearing nearly 32,000 signatures, and women voted in a general election ten weeks later.

Alongside English and Māori, which of these has official status in New Zealand?

Sign language, in full New Zealand Sign Language, became official in April 2006 under an act that lets deaf people use it throughout the legal system.

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

"Land of the long white cloud" is the usual reading of ao tea roa; in one tradition the navigator Kupe's wife cried 'He ao!' (a cloud!) on sighting the land.

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

At the tip of its beak is where the kiwi's nostrils open, unique among birds; it probes the soil and sniffs out worms and grubs by night.

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

20% is the usual figure, against about 5% for a human baby; the reward is a chick that hatches fully feathered, like a miniature adult, and needs little feeding from its parents.

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

Madagascar's elephant birds were the kiwi's closest relatives, a 2014 ancient-DNA study found, overturning the old assumption that the kiwi was a small cousin of the moa.

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

Ka Mate is said to have been composed around 1820 by the Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha after he hid from pursuers in a kūmara pit and climbed out alive; the All Blacks took it on their 1905 tour.

At which stadium did the All Blacks win both the 1987 and 2011 Rugby World Cup finals?

Eden Park in Auckland staged both finals: the All Blacks won the first World Cup there in 1987, fell short at the next five tournaments, then scraped home 8–7 on the same ground in 2011.

What nickname is given to the 1905 All Blacks, the first national New Zealand rugby team to tour the northern hemisphere?

The Originals won 34 of their 35 matches, losing only 3–0 to Wales in Cardiff, where a try claimed by Bob Deans was not awarded, a ruling New Zealand rugby lore has disputed ever since.

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

Beekeeping was the family trade: he joined his father and brother full-time in 1938, tending more than a thousand hives each summer, which left his winters free for climbing.

In 1992, who became the first living person other than the monarch to appear on a New Zealand banknote?

Edmund Hillary has been on the five-dollar note since 1992, and the mountain beside his portrait is not Everest but one of his favourite New Zealand peaks.

What is the longest river in New Zealand?

The Waikato runs 425 km from Mount Ruapehu to the west coast, but until late in the last ice age it flowed north to the Firth of Thames instead, before built-up debris turned it aside.

Lake Taupō, New Zealand's largest lake, sits inside what kind of geological feature?

A volcanic caldera holds the lake: it fills the hollow left when the enormous Ōruanui eruption emptied the volcano beneath it more than 25,000 years ago.

Which New Zealand mountain lost 10 metres in a 1991 rock avalanche?

Aoraki / Mount Cook, the country's highest peak, lost about 10 metres when millions of cubic metres of rock and ice fell from its summit in December 1991; erosion has since trimmed it to 3,724 m.

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

Southernmost of any national capital, it sits at about 41°S beside the strait that splits the country, a gap that funnels the Roaring Forties westerlies and makes it famously windy too.

Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, is built on a field of about 50 of which landforms?

Volcanoes, about 50 of them, dot the Auckland field; the youngest, Rangitoto, rose from the sea only about 600 years ago, and human footprints survive in its ash on the island next door.

Auckland is often described as the world's largest city of which group of people?

Polynesians made Auckland their largest city after the 1950s, when its expanding industries looked to Samoa and other Pacific islands for workers and large-scale migration began.

Which Peter Jackson film won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for, tying the record for most wins?

The Return of the King swept all 11 of its categories in 2004, matching Ben-Hur and Titanic, after the first two films of the trilogy had each been nominated for Best Picture and lost.

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

The Southern Cross appears as four red stars on a flag drawn up in 1869 only to mark government ships; it replaced the Union Jack as the national flag in 1902.

In New Zealand's 2016 flag referendum, voters kept the existing flag over a design featuring which plant?

The silver fern design won a first vote among five options, then lost the March 2016 run-off with about 43% to the existing flag's 57%, so Prime Minister John Key's two-stage referendum changed nothing.

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

Only flightless and heaviest among parrots, the kākāpō had no mammal predators on the ground and so no need to fly, which left it helpless when people brought cats, rats and stoats.

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

A third eye, with its own lens and retina, shows on hatchlings and is scaled over within months; it registers light and dark, and the tuatara is the last survivor of a reptile order from the dinosaur age.

Despite its name, the kiwifruit is native to which country?

China is the kiwifruit's homeland: a visiting headmistress brought seeds to New Zealand in 1904, and growers called it the Chinese gooseberry until the exporter Turners and Growers renamed it kiwifruit in 1959.

An earthquake at lunchtime on 22 February 2011 killed 185 people in which New Zealand city?

Christchurch lost 185 people, more than 130 of them in two collapsed office buildings, although a stronger quake nearby nearly six months earlier had struck before dawn and caused no mass fatalities.

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

Hydrogen sulphide, seeping from the geothermal field beneath the city, gives Rotorua its rotten-egg smell; the same heat powers the Pōhutu Geyser and the boiling mud pools at Whakarewarewa.

Which adventure activity did A. J. Hackett turn into a commercial operation near Queenstown in 1988, a world first?

Bungy jumping went commercial at the Kawarau Gorge suspension bridge in November 1988, the year after Hackett's leap from the Eiffel Tower was televised around the world.

The New Zealand-born scientist Ernest Rutherford won his 1908 Nobel Prize in which subject?

Chemistry was the category, for showing that radioactive elements decay into other elements; the physicist's discovery of the atomic nucleus came only after the prize, in Manchester.

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

Kate Sheppard led the campaign whose 1893 petition carried about 32,000 signatures; a white camellia became the movement's emblem, and a camellia variety was later named after her.

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand's prime minister from 2017 to 2023, led which political party?

Labour chose Ardern as leader only seven weeks before the 2017 election; she became prime minister at 37 through a coalition deal, even though National had won more seats.

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

Ballerina Anna Pavlova toured both countries in the 1920s, which is why each claims the dessert named for her; food historians have turned up early recipes in both.

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

70 million sheep (70.3 million) in 1982 meant about 22 for every person; by 2023 the flock was down to roughly 24 million, under five per person for the first time on record, as dairy took over.

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

The Netherlands' coastal province of Zeeland gave the name when a trading-company mapmaker wrote it in Latin on a 1640s chart, yet no European ship returned to the coast for more than a century.

Before humans arrived, which animal was the giant flightless moa's only predator?

Haast's eagle, the largest eagle known, was the moa's only predator; when the first settlers hunted the moa out within a century or two, the eagle lost its prey and died out as well.

The New Zealand Wars began in 1845 after Hōne Heke and his allies repeatedly cut down what at Kororāreka?

A flagpole flying the Union Jack above Kororāreka was felled four times in eight months; the last time, in March 1845, opened the fighting that grew into wars lasting until 1872.

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

Fiordland covers more than 1.2 million hectares of the South Island's south-west, wild enough that the takahē, a bird presumed extinct for half a century, was rediscovered there in 1948.

Which Nobel Prize-winning writer is said to have called Milford Sound the eighth Wonder of the World?

Rudyard Kipling is credited with calling Milford Sound the eighth Wonder of the World; despite its name it is no sound at all, having been carved by glaciers rather than by a river.

The Waitomo Caves in New Zealand are famous for ceilings lit by thousands of what?

Glowworms, the larvae of a fungus gnat found only in New Zealand, hang sticky silk threads from the cave roof and shine blue-green to lure flying insects into them.

Which currency did New Zealand replace with the dollar in 1967?

The pound gave way on 10 July 1967; names such as tūī and zeal were put forward for the new money before the government settled on the dollar.

Besides New Zealand, which is the main land above water on sunken Zealandia?

New Caledonia and New Zealand are the two main pieces of Zealandia above the sea; about 94% of the continent lies underwater, having slowly sunk after it broke away from Gondwana some 80 million years ago.

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

Matamata is the nearest town to the Alexander family's sheep farm, which Peter Jackson's scouts picked out from the air in 1998; the first set was temporary and was rebuilt to last for The Hobbit films.

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

Northland's Waipoua Forest holds Tāne Mahuta, named for the Māori god of the forest; kauri grow naturally only north of about 38°S, and loggers felled most of the great stands for ships' spars and timber.

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

Mixed-member proportional replaced first past the post after a 1993 referendum; under it coalitions became the norm, and no single party won a majority of seats until 2020.

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

Dunedin's Baldwin Street lost the record to a street in Wales in 2019, then reclaimed it in 2020 once Guinness ruled that steepness must be measured along the centre line of the road.

New Zealand's 85-letter place name, the longest in any English-speaking country, names what kind of feature?

A hill near Pōrangahau in Hawke's Bay bears the name, which locals shorten to Taumata; in the best-known telling it recalls Tamatea, who played his flute there to his loved one.

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

Lorde, born Ella Yelich-O'Connor, began her rise by winning her intermediate school's talent show in a duo with a classmate; four years later Royals topped the American chart.

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

Best Comedy Album went to the duo's EP The Distant Future in February 2008, even as their HBO sitcom cast them as a hapless New Zealand band struggling to make it in New York.

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

Katherine Mansfield died at Fontainebleau in January 1923, a year after The Garden Party appeared; Virginia Woolf admitted that she was jealous of her writing.

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

"Heated rocks buried in a pit" is the method: stones are heated by fire, baskets of meat and kūmara are lowered onto them and covered with earth for hours, the classic way to feed a crowd at a marae.

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

"Pressing their noses together" (often foreheads too) is the hongi, understood as sharing the ha, the breath of life; tradition traces it to the god Tāne breathing life into the first woman, Hineahuone.

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

The Cook Islands have governed themselves in free association with New Zealand since 1965; because islanders kept NZ citizenship, far more Cook Islanders now live in New Zealand than at home.

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

India lost the final by eight wickets at Southampton in June 2021, two years after New Zealand had lost the 2019 World Cup final to England on a boundary countback.

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

Glowing skies probably refers as much to the aurora australis as to the island's long sunsets, though another tradition reads the name as the deep blush of a chief, Te Rakitamau.

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

The Whanganui became a legal person under the Te Awa Tupua Act of March 2017, with two guardians appointed to speak for it; Te Urewera had been given the same status in 2014.

Interislander ferries from the North Island dock at which South Island port?

Picton lies deep inside the sheltered Sounds, so although the strait between the islands is only 22 km wide at its narrowest, the ferries sail about 93 km to reach it.

Roughly how far is mainland New Zealand from mainland Australia?

About 2,000 km of open sea separate the two countries, yet both shrug it off as 'the Ditch', and flying between them is 'crossing the Ditch'.

In Māori tradition, from which ancestral homeland did the first canoes sail to New Zealand?

Hawaiki is the homeland of Māori tradition and the place spirits of the dead return to, leaving from Cape Reinga at the North Island's northern tip; the first canoes landed around 1300.

In 1907 New Zealand's status within the British Empire changed from colony to what?

Dominion status took effect on 26 September 1907, yet New Zealand waited until 1947 to adopt the Statute of Westminster, which had offered full legal independence back in 1931.

In the 2023 census, which was New Zealand's third-largest ethnic group, just behind Māori?

Asian New Zealanders made up 17.3% of the 2023 count, just behind Māori on 17.8%, after growing by more than a fifth since 2018; Europeans remained the largest group at about 68%.

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

The Garden City nickname reflects its many parks and gardens, above all the 165-hectare Hagley Park; the city has also been an Antarctic gateway since Scott's Discovery expedition sailed from Lyttelton in 1901.

What name did the first European to sight New Zealand give it in 1642?

Staten Land (Staten Landt) was the name because the explorer thought the coast might join land sighted off South America; mapmakers dropped it once a 1643 voyage showed that land was only an island.

Which South Island region's sauvignon blanc put New Zealand wine on the world map in the 1980s?

Marlborough was sheep country until its first large commercial vineyards were planted in 1973; by 2020 the region held about two-thirds of New Zealand's vineyard area.

A 1950 law abolished which part of New Zealand's system of government?

Upper house members, a 'suicide squad' the new National government had appointed for the purpose, voted their own Legislative Council out of existence; Parliament has had a single chamber since 1 January 1951.

In 1882 a sailing ship carried the first cargo of what from New Zealand to London, launching a major export trade?

Frozen meat, mostly mutton and lamb carcasses, left Port Chalmers on 15 February 1882 and reached London more than three months later still frozen, showing that distant farms could feed Britain.

As late as 1960, which commodity still earned about a third of New Zealand's export income?

Wool earned about a third of export income in 1960; then competition from synthetic fibres sent its price down 40% in late 1966, and it never recovered for long.

Before 1920, New Zealand competed at the Olympics in a combined team under what name?

Australasia was the joint team with Australia in 1908 and 1912, so the New Zealand swimmer Malcolm Champion won his 1912 relay gold alongside three Australians.

Which New Zealand alpine parrot is notorious for prying the rubber parts off parked cars?

Kea are nicknamed the clown of the mountains, and the same curiosity sends them after backpacks, boots, skis and snowboards.

Which giant New Zealand insect gave its name to the effects workshop behind The Lord of the Rings?

Wētā are giant flightless crickets, some among the heaviest insects in the world, and the workshop calls the wētā the coolest little monster in the world, a fitting name for a company that makes monsters.

Which Greenpeace flagship was sunk by French secret agents in Auckland's harbour in July 1985?

Rainbow Warrior was due to lead a protest against French nuclear testing at Moruroa when two limpet mines sank it, drowning photographer Fernando Pereira.

Which All Blacks winger ran in four tries against England in the 1995 Rugby World Cup semi-final?

Jonah Lomu scored seven tries in five matches at that World Cup, a year after making his All Blacks debut aged 19.

Which sailing trophy did Team New Zealand's yacht Black Magic win off San Diego in 1995?

America's Cup victory came with a 5–0 sweep of Dennis Conner's team, and New Zealand went on to become the first country outside the United States to win and then defend it.

Which New Zealand ice cream flavour studs plain vanilla with small lumps of honeycomb toffee?

Hokey pokey is simply the New Zealand term for honeycomb toffee, and until about 1980 the ice cream used solid toffee before Tip Top switched to small honeycomb balls.

Which Māori greeting, literally a wish of good health, do New Zealanders use for hello and for thanks?

Kia ora translates literally as be healthy, and a speaker can add koe, kōrua or koutou to aim it at one person, two people, or three or more.

Which coastal tree is nicknamed the New Zealand Christmas tree for its crimson December flowers?

Pōhutukawa belongs to the myrtle family, and a conservation trust named Project Crimson works to reverse the decline of the tree in the wild.

What name was given to the New Zealand merino that hid in caves for six years to avoid being shorn?

Shrek carried a 27 kg fleece when he was finally caught in 2004, about six times the weight of an average merino's, and he was later shorn again on a floating iceberg.

Which dog from Donaldson's Dairy stars in the picture books of New Zealand's Lynley Dodd?

Hairy Maclary first appeared in 1983, and Lynley Dodd drew him as a caricature of several terriers she knew instead of copying one real dog.

Until humans brought rats, dogs and livestock, which animals were the only land mammals in New Zealand?

Bats could fly to the islands, and the lesser short-tailed bat took to hunting on the ground there, folding its wings to use them as front legs.

Which mountain range, raised by colliding tectonic plates, includes Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest peak?

Southern Alps rock has been pushed up about 20 km over the last 45 million years, although erosion has carried much of that height away.

Which 2002 New Zealand film follows Paikea, a Māori girl determined to become chief of her tribe?

Whale Rider earned Keisha Castle-Hughes a Best Actress Oscar nomination at 13, the youngest ever at that time, and was filmed in Whangara, where the novel behind it is set.

In which athletics event did Valerie Adams win Olympic gold for New Zealand in both 2008 and 2012?

Shot put gold from 2012 reached Valerie Adams late: she was promoted from silver after the Belarusian who beat her failed two drug tests.

Which New Zealand filmmaker won an Oscar for writing Jojo Rabbit after directing Thor: Ragnarok?

Taika Waititi also played the film's imaginary Adolf Hitler, and his first Oscar nomination had come years earlier for the short Two Cars, One Night.

Which national park, New Zealand's oldest, began with a Māori chief's gift of volcanic peaks in 1887?

Tongariro's peaks were conveyed to the Crown by the chief Te Heuheu Tūkino IV on condition that a protected area was established there, so the mountaintops could never be sold.

Which North Island volcano doubled for Japan's Mount Fuji in the 2003 film The Last Samurai?

Mount Taranaki resembles Fuji closely enough to play it on screen, and until 1986 maps called the dormant cone Mount Egmont, after an earl who had led the Admiralty.

Which lake beside Queenstown rises and falls about every 27 minutes, a rhythm legend credits to a giant beneath it?

Lake Wakatipu is New Zealand's longest lake at 80 km, and its standing wave, called a seiche, lifts the water in Queenstown Bay by about 20 cm.

Matariki, whose midwinter rising marks the Māori New Year in New Zealand, is which star cluster?

The Pleiades reappear before dawn in late June or early July, and New Zealand first observed Matariki as an official public holiday on 24 June 2022.

Which New Zealand soprano sang at the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer?

Kiri Te Kanawa sang a Handel aria that day to a worldwide audience estimated at 600 million people.

Who in 1999 became the first woman to win office as New Zealand's prime minister at a general election?

Helen Clark beat Jenny Shipley, who had become the first female prime minister two years earlier by replacing her party's leader between elections.

Which New Zealand prime minister argued against nuclear weapons at the Oxford Union in 1985?

David Lange faced the American televangelist Jerry Falwell that night, and he later called the debate the high point of his career in politics.

Which New Zealand farmer is said to have flown a powered aircraft months before the Wright brothers?

Richard Pearse built a monoplane with wing flaps and a steerable nosewheel, but his witnesses were interviewed many years later and the dates remain uncertain.

Which flightless New Zealand bird, presumed extinct for fifty years, was found again in the Murchison Mountains?

Takahē were tracked down in 1948 by Geoffrey Orbell, a doctor from Invercargill, after a carefully planned search of an isolated valley.

Which marine mammal, among the smallest of its kind in the world, lives only in New Zealand's coastal waters?

Hector's dolphin includes the critically endangered Māui dolphin of the North Island's west coast, a subspecies that a 2023 estimate put at just 48 animals.

From which headland at the northern tip of New Zealand do spirits of the dead leap to the underworld in Māori belief?

Cape Reinga takes its name from the Māori word for underworld, and its other official name, Te Rerenga Wairua, means the leaping-off place of spirits.

Which clicking pull-along toy, a New Zealand icon, did the infant Prince William play with on a 1983 tour?

Buzzy Bee was designed in Auckland in the 1930s by Maurice Schlesinger, and its wings spin and click as the toy is pulled along the ground.

Which New Zealand driver founded a Formula One team in 1963 and died testing a car at Goodwood in 1970?

Bruce McLaren took his own team's first Formula One victory at the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix, two years before the fatal crash in one of his own cars.

What is the name of the traditional Māori tattooing in which chisels carved grooves into the skin?

Tā moko specialists were considered tapu, or sacred, and their chisels, called uhi, were made from albatross bone and struck with a mallet.

The New Zealand soft drink L&P takes the second half of its name from which North Island town?

Paeroa supplied the naturally carbonated mineral water that was first mixed with lemon juice, and a bottle statue almost 7 metres tall now stands in the town.

Which stretch of water separates Stewart Island, New Zealand's third-largest island, from the South Island?

Foveaux Strait is named after Joseph Foveaux, a lieutenant-governor of New South Wales, and its waters are New Zealand's main dredging ground for Bluff oysters.

Which main settlement of New Zealand's Stewart Island is named after a port in Scotland?

Oban was named by Scottish settlers, whose influence was strong in the south of colonial New Zealand, and its ferry is the island's regular link to the mainland.

Te Ika-a-Māui, the Māori name for New Zealand's North Island, casts the island as which creature?

A fish hauled up by the demigod Māui became the North Island in Māori tradition, and the canoe he and his brothers were fishing from became the South Island.

Te Waipounamu, the Māori name for New Zealand's South Island, refers to the waters of which stone?

Greenstone is the everyday New Zealand name for pounamu, mostly nephrite jade, which is found in the South Island and is prized for carving.

Which Hauraki Gulf island, a ferry ride from central Auckland, is known as New Zealand's island of wine?

Waiheke is the most populated island in the gulf and the third most populous in New Zealand, behind only the two main islands.

Which island volcano, the youngest in the Auckland volcanic field, erupted only about 600 years ago?

Rangitoto means bloody sky in Māori, and its eruptions threw out nearly as much material as every earlier eruption in the Auckland field put together.

Which active marine volcano, 48 km off New Zealand's Bay of Plenty coast, was mined for sulphur until the 1930s?

White Island, also known as Whakaari, was named by James Cook in 1769, it is said for the dense white steam pouring from it, though he never recorded that it was a volcano.

Which New Zealand island group, 800 km east of the South Island, sets its clocks 45 minutes ahead of the mainland?

Chatham Islands history begins with the Moriori, the first inhabitants, whose own name for the archipelago, Rēkohu, means misty sun.

The uninhabited Antipodes Islands of New Zealand were named for lying nearly opposite which city on the globe?

London was the reference point for the sailors who named the group, although the true opposite point of the main island lies just off the Normandy coast of France.

Which three-atoll territory of New Zealand has no airport and is reached by a day-long boat trip from Samoa?

Tokelau has no harbour either, so passengers ride a landing barge across the reef, and in 2012 it swapped diesel generators for solar plants built to meet all its electricity demand.

Which reptiles, widespread in Australia, are absent from New Zealand except as rare visitors to its seas?

Snakes are missing from New Zealand just as they are from Ireland and Iceland; only the yellow-bellied sea snake and the banded sea krait occasionally stray into its northern waters.

Anzac Day, shared by New Zealand and Australia, falls on the anniversary of a 1915 landing on which peninsula?

Gallipoli was the first major action of the war for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, who met fierce resistance from Ottoman troops led by Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk.

Which Oscar-winning actor was born in New Zealand but moved to Australia at the age of four?

Russell Crowe won the Best Actor Oscar for Gladiator; his parents were film set caterers who took the family to Sydney.

Which racehorse, winner of the 1930 Melbourne Cup for Australia, was foaled near Timaru in New Zealand?

Phar Lap has been shared out between the two countries: his mounted hide is in a Melbourne museum, his heart in Australia's national museum and his skeleton in New Zealand's.

Australians call them thongs and Britons flip-flops; what do New Zealanders call this footwear?

Jandals began as a trademarked name built from the words Japanese sandals, and New Zealanders now count the footwear as a piece of Kiwiana.

Which rugby union trophy have the All Blacks and Australia's Wallabies contested since the 1930s?

Bledisloe Cup history opens with a dispute: Australia counts a one-off 1931 match at Eden Park as the first, while New Zealand dates the contest from its 1932 tour.

Which band did New Zealander Neil Finn form in Melbourne in 1985 with Australians Paul Hester and Nick Seymour?

Crowded House began life as the Mullanes and took its final name from the cramped Hollywood Hills home the trio shared while recording their first album.

Which Australian marsupial, taken to New Zealand in the 1850s for its fur, became a major pest there?

Brushtail possum numbers in New Zealand peaked at an estimated 60 to 70 million by the 1980s, before control work roughly halved the population.

Which Australian captain ordered an underarm final ball in 1981 so that New Zealand could not hit a tying six?

Greg Chappell gave the order to his younger brother Trevor, who rolled the ball along the ground to the New Zealand batsman Brian McKechnie.

Which New Zealand director won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1993 for The Piano?

Jane Campion also won the Oscar for the film's original screenplay and was only the second woman ever nominated for Best Director.