In reply to:

When did radio and international telephones arrive in New Zealand Max? Within the lifetimes of the children of the first large influx of Europeans?

The major European settlement took place between 1840-1865, so when the telephone appeared it was probably in the lifetime of the grandchildren of those first settlers. NZers have always been passionate about new communication technologies, tools to overcome their isolation. Within a decade of the invention of the automatic telephone exchange, NZ had the highest proportion of phones on automatic exchanges, and today, NZ is high in the top 5 for per capita internet access.