OT:Whatever happened to Old Zealand?

I must have missed too many geography classes and after 65 years it finally sunk in that I never questioned what happened that they had to start a New Zealand. Leo

Think it has something to do with who discovered it called after a place back home, kinda like New York or New Hampshire called after places in England

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealand

Some just can"t leave where they were and go somewhere else. Have to take the old place with them!

Ahhh, Ateoroa... the long black cloud... well, suppose to be long white cloud... started with a series of pacific rim earthquakes... like the one that tore appart its..second? largest city, ChristChurch. And the ones in Japan and Indonesia, (where the US president's last passport was issued from)... all these super quakes make a couple islands if they want too. The polynesians settled there to get away from other polynesians, Able Tasman? A dutchman, named it after the Zealand area in the Netherlands. The French were trying to finally colonize a place with good weather- just outside of the Christchurch earthquake center, then the pommies....ah, English, showed up to colonize a place with even better weather, no convicts, but lots of illigitimate children of the royal families... disgusting, so the French left. Anything anyone can think to grow will grow somewhere in the islands, with no effort and little expense. Some of the best farmland on the planet made even clueless London cityslickers into-if not wealthy, then relatively comfortable farmers. When I lived there, you couldn't afford to spit on the sidewalk, nothing was even a reasonable price, more sheep than people but mutton was like a tee bone steak anywhere in North America. Food, fuel, taxes were insane, so were the (at that time, my age)young peoples' sports- invented bungie jumping there, swim with the bloody sharks? cranky. Nay bloody way mate! I still have a soft spot in my heart for the nutty place, and my old freinds in ChristChurch that are just putting themselves back together, till the next big one.... perhaps new islands in a new place, for another generation to farm in shorts and a tank top... let's hope it is as beautiful- and luckier, than this old one...

Tony in Mass, LOL, please no sheep jokes! And Christchurch Rocks!, its the best city in New Zealand. TSG.

Plenty of room there now if you want a treechange experience.. The majority of them are in Australia..