"Robert, I've read your entry here with great interest. Do you know you're the very first thing to come up if one types into Google: 'Wales "in New Zealand" Welsh'?
I am something of a mirror image of yourself. I am a 50-year-old New Zealander living in the Dyfi Valley, six miles from Machynlleth, and I left Wellington in 1976. I've been back once, for a nostalgic visit, and that was just three years ago. So I understand this feeling for the land of one's birth. It's nothing peculiar to the Welsh, the Irish, New Zealanders, or any other nationality: going back to the land with which one was once SO familiar is an extraordinary experience for any expat from any country.
But if I may, a word of caution. My parents were from here and they found it much more comfortable to make friends amongst other expats in NZ, whether those people be Welsh, Scots, Irish, or English. They were not, unfortunately, brave enough to reach out fully to the new land and the new people. As a result they spent much time feeling yearning and longing and nostalgia for the old country and this had the effect of making them unhappy at times. It also had a deeply negative effect upon me and my brother: it stopped us from feeling wholly part of NZ, from feeling wholly Kiwi. Deep inside us our parents implanted the feeling that the REAL home was on the other side of the globe and that that was a better place. That is actually why I came here and partly why I am here still.
When I visited the land of my birth, NZ, for the first time in almost 25 years, one of the things I saw was what they had missed. Yes, they appreciated the beauty of NZ and saw much of its massive mountain peaks, incredible glaciers, the subtropical bananna-growing tip, the thermal-geyser wonderland, but what they missed were the wonderful New Zealanders all around - the Maori and the third, fourth, fifth generation descendents of the white "incomers" from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.
We would return to NZ at the drop of a hat to bask in the overwhelming warmth, the friendliness, and the openness of white New Zealanders and Maori were it not for my partner's aging parents. Green and dramatic Mid- and North-Wales is as close to New Zealand in terms of scenery as it is possible to get here in the UK, but the "natives" here in these luscious green hills are very reserved and very cautious, though indisputably genuine. From them I understand why my parents found it very challenging to reach out to New Zealanders and integrate themselves in their adopted country. My parents found it hard to be immediately open and welcoming towards strangers. NZers reached out to our family but my parents found it challenging to respond in kind.
You're living in Wellington, you say. That's one of the craziest places on the planet, I hope you know. 100s of ships have foundered or been sunk out in the strait, you know, on account of the fierce winds and treacherous waters (I was there when the Wahine went down and took 51 people with it).
Wellington lives on the edge of hell, even though it's a bit protected in that bay. And this effects the people. Take it from me (I spent many years in Wellington and Lower Hutt) it's as far from your birthplace in Wales in terms of character of place and people as its possible to get!
Where would a Welshman feel most at home in NZ? I would say in the rich green pasturelands of the glorious Waikato, around Hamilton (in the North Island), or for those who like it more rugged and who don't mind the cold, down in "Mackenzie Country", south of Christchurch (in the South Island), in the wild tussocky foothills to the Southern Alps (think epic Lord of the Rings landscape - which there are hints of here in Snowdonia where I am now).
Anyway, there, at least, are some holiday suggestions for you, when you feel the need to clap your eyes on something akin to old Wales!
Best Wishes."
