Humble servant of the Nation

Lyne is only real danger seat

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I have a confession to make. I may be a secret New Zealander. I was born in Melbourne and my father was a fifth generation Australian. However, my mother was born and raised in the world’s most southern city, Invercargill. I know this because when I was at primary school, I had a pencil case purchased from Invercargill which boasted this important fact.

Just quietly I think Invercargillers or whatever they call themselves might have a challenger from Punta Arenas in Chile but let’s not get bogged down on the finer points of geography.

Invercargill isn’t the arsehole of the world but if you clamber out to Bluff at the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island, you can see it from there. Just up the road is a town called Gore, a place so windswept and uninteresting that even the locals look embarrassed. I guess Gore would be the perineum of the world.

My mother arrived in Australia in 1954 and became an Australian citizen a decade later. She claims that process required her to renounce her NZ citizenship so she could vote in Australian elections. Her memory is based on the fact that her mother, who was visiting Australia at the time, took serious umbrage.

Full column here.

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