Kiwi's
People in NZ refer to themselves as Kiwi's. It's their national, nearly extinct, nocturnal flightless bird. It's on their one dollar coin, like the Loon is on the Canadian one dollar coin. The Canadians call those Loonies, but they don't call themselves Loonies like the Kiwi's call themselves Kiwi's.
Kiwi fruit is actual the chinese gooseberry that the New Zealanders started growing over here in the later part of the 19'th century and decided to rename the Kiwi fruit. It's not native to NZ.
posted by jts @ 2:03 PM
2 Comments:
it is also the little animal on the front of Kiwi shoe polish. But it looks more like an anteater than a bird.
The story of how NZers became known as Kiwi's is rather interesting and not well known. About a hundred years ago an Australian returned home from NZ and started a shoe polish business and decided to call it Kiwi after learning about the small, flightless, defenceless bird in NZ (apart from the flightless part you can see why it represents NZ so well). During WW1 the British army and ANZAC's (Australia, New Zealand Army Corps) used the Kiwi polish on their boots and NZer's quickly became known as Kiwi's.
Anyway keep blogging mate - your making me very home sick! Lance.
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