Sound clip: an immigrant describes NZ

Hear assisted migrant Ken Swann describe life in New Zealand.

Transcript of this interview

Ken : A lot of English people, I think, were not accepted as well as they might have been because they themselves tended to think anything that was in New Zealand that was different to what they had been used to was by definition worse. This is manifestly not so, so I tended to restrict any thoughts of differences so that I wasn't tarred with this brush of continually harping back to things English.

Interviewer: So called 'whinging Poms!?'

Ken: That's right, yes.

Interviewer: And did you find that people kept asking you whether you liked New Zealand?

Ken: Very much so, yes. — usually the first question that you were asked when you met somebody new — and this continues!

Interviewer: Did you find that quite wearying?

Ken: Well, one could understand it — it was really a question on how you interpreted their question. I mean were they just making polite conversation, or were they for some reason or other genuinely interested?