Friday, February 5, 2010

My Country 'tis of Thee

Today is Waitangi Day, or NZ's national day. So Happy Birthday, New Zealand.



(btw. i'll have something soon but it's not typed-up yet.)

cheers

4 comments:

Alastair said...

Well, yes, happy birthday to all of you. Are you going to enlighten us poor higgorant foreigners and tell us where "Waitangi" comes from?

Anonymous said...

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

The founding treaty. For once the Brits seem to have at least tried to behave decently, not sure they really did though…

david said...

Hey! You beat me to it, Anon. Thanks for that.

And yes, they did try. There many reasons for the Treaty, one of which was that Victoria's people didn't want the Maori to get the ball-beating that the aborigines got in Oz.

Also, the French were sniffing around, they'd started a settlement in Akaroa, so the Brits had to move to stop them from taking possession.

cheers

Alastair said...

Brits behaving decently? That's not like us at all - I expect someone wasn't feeling well that day, or something like that...