There’s South America, on the map over there, and on this side there’s Australia.
But, in the big expanse of blue stretching between, our home islands are missing.
Then you get those maps which appear to have been done in haste, with New Zealand sitting far too close to Sydney or looking like someone has attacked its rough edges with sandpaper. Sometimes we are in the tropics, sometimes we are in the sub-Antarctic, and sometimes the North Island is far bigger than the South Island, and Cook Strait is about 500km across.
It’s all rather upsetting and mildly insulting.
After all, this is our home, and depicting it poorly shows the same slipshodness as not bothering to check and spell someone’s name correctly.
No wonder the Wizard of Christchurch’s upside-down New World Map, with the southern hemisphere at the top and Aotearoa in prime position, was such a hit.
Unfortunately, it is not just the rest of the world which forgets about us from time to time.
South Islanders have always been sensitive to being overlooked by their busier, more bustling, North Island cousins.
Many of us will be able to remember the only slightly tongue-in-cheek "cut the cable" campaign when it was felt that North Islanders were benefiting unreasonably from cheap South Island hydro-electricity (of course, the benefits of the Cook Strait high-voltage cables run both ways these days).
The trouble for any government wanting to provide a fair network of national infrastructure is New Zealand’s shape and geography.
We are a long and mostly skinny country with a high mountainous backbone, cut in two by a narrow, volatile and deep strait, and frequently hit by severe weather.
Population-wise, we are totally top heavy. Of our 5.2 million people, one-third lives in Auckland and more than half are in the top third of the North Island.
No wonder we in the South feel excluded or overlooked by the rest of the country at times.
That seems especially the case at the moment, given how northern-centric this government is, not only just in policies but also in its composition.
The lack of interest from the Beehive appears to extend to a lot of things going on beyond its limited horizon of Cook Strait.
If only Wellington were in the South Island, that might make quite a difference.
Meanwhile, it gets more difficult, and more and more expensive, to travel from the South to other parts of New Zealand to do business and visit family and friends.
Without a national rail service, South Islanders are reliant on increasingly pricy Air New Zealand flights, slow and spasmodic coach services, or their own vehicles to get anywhere.
You could drive the length of the island to Picton, but there is still no cast-iron guarantee you’ll get to the capital and beyond, what with the state of the ships and the frequency with which they are either breaking down or being steered off course into things.
The ongoing interisland ferries debacle is a national disgrace and is the "biggest pothole on State Highway 1", according to Transport Minister Simeon Brown when he was opposition spokesman in February 2023.
My how views can change, especially when there is still no clear plans for improvement from the government.
Air New Zealand has thrown another cat among the pigeons with its recent announcement that it is shrinking its offerings into the South.
Faster, larger Airbus aircraft are being replaced on most routes by the slower ATRs, which will make it nigh-on impossible for business people from Dunedin, Queenstown and Invercargill to spend just a day in Wellington.
If skyrocketing expense and deteriorating frequency are the signals from Air New Zealand and the government that it is time to change our transport modes in response to environmental concerns, then it’s long overdue that somebody in power, not tied to the electoral cycle and with foresight and brains, starts work on providing us with a decent rail network.
