Bottom's up

It’s time Aotearoa New Zealand took its rightful place at the top of the world, says Lindsay Wright.

- Lindsay Wright

For decades, countless maps, statistical analyses and lists have started out at the skinny northern end of Aotearoa New Zealand and worked their way south.

TVNZ's nightly weather forecast begins at Aotearoa's slender prow and descends southwards through Tāmaki Makaurau, Tauranga, Te Whanganui a Tara and on to where the country's broad buttress intrudes towards the Southern Ocean.

We've had at least 150 years of almost everything starting in the north; every list of statistics, road maps and official publications, beginning at the north end of the country and wending their way to Bluff (Motupōhue).

But maybe it's time to put the country back on its feet. Because that's the way it used to be before the hordes of European immigrants came swarming over the horizon from their Northern Hemisphere homelands.