Trolling around the H2G2 website, I found this brief, but very much to the point, description of New Zealand which you may enjoy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A165601

It's almost too true ...

Loved that link! Only one complaint. Writer says sesquesentenial was not a word prior to 1990. I was living in/near Texas in the 1980's when they celebrated their sesquesentenial and used to have the car licence plate to prove it

Thanks! Great site!...so now I've toured NZ in a "nutshell" as it were. Is the self-deprecating humor a typical touch of the NZ "mystique."? And, David...they forgot to mention that you are the capital Kiwi! What gives with that!
And they also forgot to mention "pavlova's dog." [wince-e] I was going to say 'the recipe for' but being a dog lover I just couldn't go there

I find this opening line from the Guide entry to be very interesting:

New Zealand is situated the same distance eastwards from Australia as London is from Moscow

My rough calculations based on this extraordinary description, some dabbling around in a geography site (http://geography.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.indo.com/distance/) and assuming that Zild is that far east of the eastern coast of Oz, place New Zealand about half way between Perth and Alice Springs.

Faldage:

Huh??? You said: and assuming that Zild is that far east of the eastern coast of Oz, place New Zealand about half way between Perth and Alice Springs.

Did I miss something? Heading east from the east coast of Australia takes you to NZ, doesn't it? Of course heading west does the same thing, but it's a tad further along.

TTF

Zild is that far east of the eastern coast of Oz

New Zealand is situated the same distance eastwards from Australia as London is from Moscow

OK, let's start at Moscow and head east till we get to London. Oh, I suppose they could mean London, Ontario and Moscow, Idaho.

>New Zealand is situated the same distance eastwards from Australia as London is from Moscow

alternatively, one could take a less curmudgeonly literal approach and read this as:
New Zealand is situated the same distance eastwards from Australia as London is [distanced] from Moscow
rather than:
New Zealand is situated the same distance eastwards from Australia as London is [eastward] from Moscow

OK. I can see I was a bit slow on the uptake. I did miss your point. But even though the sentence structure was not optimum, I certainly didn't have trouble understanding the point, which is that it's a considerable distance betwixt hither and yon.

I think that's because probably everyone here when reading the offending sentence calls up a mental image of the globe and checks the distance from London to Moscow.

i got faldage's point-- and it's right on the money-- tsuwm recast the sentences very readily to say what they meant to say-- Yes, we all sort of figured it out.. but we know english (and geography) and added the missing information. but its bad form to say A:B is the same as b:a-- with out giving a hint you are transposing things.

we need the faldages of the world-- or everyone would write fractures sentences.. [guilty as charged emoticon here]