If you ask, you’ll be told, “Oh, New Zealand is more like Canada; Australia is more like the United States.” While that may be true, politically and geographically speaking, there is one major difference — no Canadian I know dislikes Americans as much as some New Zealanders dislike their Aussie neighbors to the North. But here’s a quick comparison of the two countries — apart from the rivalry.
As a tourist, the biggest factor in deciding whether to like New Zealand over Australia has nothing to do with humans but rather to do with the native animals. As the resident New Zealander, whom I met on a double-decker bus in Rome, said, “You should visit New Zealand because there is nothing that 
will bite, sting or kill you in New Zealand.”
He’s right. And I am glad we took is advice. My husband and I just completed a 14-day cruise that took us on an extensive cruise ship tour around New Zealand, beginning in Auckland and ending in the Fjordland sounds. From there we traveled up to the eastern shore of Australia.
In New Zealand, a human can walk anywhere, at anytime and not worry about an animal attack, while Australia is home to some of the world’s most deadly predators. In fact, Australia is home to the top 6 most venomous snakes in the world like the taipan and the brown snake (see these live at Sydney’s Wildlife World on Darling Harbour), the tiny yet deadly red-backed spider, the furry funnel-web spider, the massive saltwater crocodile, and wild dogs or dingoes (so much a problem they necessitated the longest manmade structure in the world – a wire fence 3,500 miles long engineered to keep domestic cattle safe from voracious wild dogs). And if a visitor ventures into Australian waters, they run the risk of bumping into one third of the world’s species of sharks, including 25-foot Great Whites, the fiercest and most terrifying predators of the world’s oceans. But back to our human issues.
It was uncomfortable and mystifying to hear the animosity in our New Zealand taxi driver (David’s) voice when we accidentally identified his accent as Australian. He quickly, and with great vehemence, corrected our error informing us that he was a “Kiwi” not a “bloody” Aussie. As a visitor, I liked both nationalities just fine.
I asked him about the term, “fair dinkum.” “Just an Aussie bullshit line,” he said. “It usually follows a story that an Aussie wants you to believe.” Instead of fair dinkum, you might hear an Aussie end his or her story with, “true story,” as though they are used to being doubted. And perhaps they are. At least by New Zealanders.
But back to the tourist attractions.
New Zealand is home to the world’s southernmost winery (Black Ridge Wines), but Australia has camel races across the desert. New Zealand has the fiordlands of the Southern Island, while Australia’s northeastern coast is home to the magnificent Great Barrier Reef which covers 120-thousand square miles.
Here are some factors you may want to consider when deciding between New Zealand and Australia as vacation travel destinations. Or do what my husband and I did and take a cruise around both countries: safe, secure and absolutely delightful.
Travel the curvy roads of New Zealand through mountainous emerald terrain, and never run out of signs of civilization, or trek across the hot barren Australian Outback, 2000 kilometers between Perth and Sydney, and rarely run into another living thing, except maybe a triple-trailer transport truck.
Australia has cornered the market on camels, playing host to 500-thousand of the gangly imported beasts, while New Zealand boasts of being home to the endangered Kiwi, a bird with feathers more like a cat’s fur.
Australia has a bronze boar out front of a Sydney hospital that, if you rub his nose, will bring you good luck. New Zealand was just lucky in being the chosen location for Peter Jackson’s hugely successful Lord of the Rings movies. (Many tours like the Flat Earth and the Trails of Middle Earth are available that will take you to old film shooting locations like Hobbiton and Lothlorien.)
New Zealand plays host to the world’s only Antarctic Interactive Centre, compete with a fabricated Antarctic winter storm; Australia has the Sydney Opera House, and the huge Powerhouse Museum, currently hosting a tribute to the late Princess Diana (this one deserved its own blog entry).
Whichever country you choose to explore, give yourself plenty of time; we found 14 days a ridiculously short time to visit even just a couple of the cities on our itinerary, let alone, BOTH countries.
Cheers,
Sheree Zielke
