NZ growing bigger and further apart

Rhys Darby - possibly NZ's answer to Kevin Bacon. Photo / Supplied

It was the balmy summer of 1986 on Waikuku Beach in Canterbury. As we erected our tent about 100m from the shore amid the clamour of caravans and campervans, we could feel eyes upon us. It took less than two minutes for "call me Gazza" from Westport to pop over and - once he'd established our names and what we did during the day - the main cultural welcome started.

Gazza found I'd once lived in Dunedin and then narrowed down the suburb, the street and then came up with: "Did you know the guy in the fish 'n chip shop?" I did. "Yeah - he's my cousin. Best fish and chips in Dunedin."

I still expect that New Zealand is a sort of village and that I'll know people. This village idea seems to pervade my junk mail - judging by recent advertising, creating or reflecting an idealised national identity is the Holy Grail of marketing. If you can strap your brand to core Kiwi values it will translate to money - think Pak'n Save, Whittaker's, Cadbury, Kiwibank and 2degrees. A recurring theme seems to be connection, which is a core part of how we see ourselves.

But I wonder if we are being mesmerised with false images of a halcyon past - or were Kiwis really all connected by two personal links to everyone else in the Land of the Long White Cloud? And why does it matter?

It matters because that's the New Zealand I grew up in: beaches, caravans, knowing your neighbours, feeling I could connect to everyone in Godzone. In a couple of minutes with anyone on the ferry, on Queen St, at the Four Square in Marton, and even once on a bus going to Paris, I could find a cousin, workmate, neighbour or object of affection we could both connect to.

Apparently my great uncle connected with a New Zealander he met in Australia as they both knew the same teacher killed at Mt Erebus.

Perhaps it was simply a function of being a small nation; people from overseas might see it as one degree from dragging your knuckles along the ground and marrying your cousin.

This week, prime ministers John Key and Kevin Rudd cemented closer ties between New Zealand and Australia. While our nations are separated by a wide sea, pronunciation of the word "six" and some different sporting codes, many of us have relatives across the Tasman and we are united by the Anzac wartime experience. The Australian Constitution still has provision for us to join the Lucky Country - but there are far fewer degrees of separation in New Zealand.

The recent marketing push suggests this idyllic society is under threat. We need to make more calls, bank with smiling people who understand us and fly around our nation on a whim more often.

Historian and author Tony Simpson suggests this rosy view of New Zealand has some validity because modern New Zealand has always really had a small population. Hamilton in 1936, he notes, was a provincial town of only 17,000 people.

And, he says, continued immigration has something to do with it. "In an immigrant society no one knows anyone so you have to rely on strangers. So you establish a connection - 'didn't you come over on the same ship' or, 'didn't your sister marry that chap who worked with my brother on the goldfield?"'

Our population reached 1 million in 1952, passed 2 million in 1972, 3 million in 1973 and 4 million in 2003. Today New Zealand is more urbanised, more ethnically vibrant and many city dwellers don't know their neighbours, their post code or even where their kids are at night. There has been a huge drift to Auckland.

Perhaps New Zealand's flavour will be saved when this change settles. Denise McGregor, Statistics NZ population statistics manager, says our natural population increase will stop with a lower childbearing population, smaller families and changes in regional growth patterns.

But other trends are already being felt and reflected in advertising - including a "population mosaic" featuring the growing Maori, Pacific and Asian communities. Statistics NZ's report, Mapping Trends in Auckland, noted that the region will top 2 million people in 2031, and that ethnic enclaves are increasing.

The idea that we are all connected is popular, but has been more commonly understood in the past 20 years when six degrees of separation was popularised by the movie of the same name. Now the idea that everyone somehow knows everyone is firmly embedded in the consciousness of every US sitcom writer and, as I've discovered, every drunk at a party.

Kevin Bacon, it is claimed, is at the centre of all these connections. The genesis of this idea is sourced back to Premiere Magazine where in 1994 he joked that he knew everybody in Hollywood or someone who had worked with them.

If you want to know how you're connected to Kevin Bacon all you have to do is enter the name of a star you've met in one of many web engines. Knowing Jim Moriarty gets three degrees from Kevin: apparently Jim was in a forgotten masterpiece called Night of the Juggler with Lionel Pina who was in the possibly epic Hero at Large with Bacon. Robyn Malcolm is two degrees from Kevin Bacon (via Brad Dourif) and so too is Craig Parker from a movie he was in with Kiefer Sutherland.

The 2degrees adverts seem to be popularising Rhys Darby as New Zealand's answer to Kevin Bacon. Others suggest various Shortland St actors as filling this role, raising the tantalising hypothesis that everyone in New Zealand is connected to someone in that show.

A television soap opera, no matter how well-crafted, is not an ideal rallying point for a nation. The essence of the New Zealand I'm searching for relies on all Kiwis, not just those in a fake medical centre, actually being only a few steps away from each other.

The best people at finding other people are journalists. They are professional experts at finding the person who can find the person to get the number to tell the story, and they do it several times a day.

Nicola Shepheard, a Herald on Sunday reporter at present on a Fulbright scholarship to Columbia University in New York, was trying to track down the family of Mrs Nga Kahikatea of Waiterimu, based on an old photo.

"I expected that with such a significant kuia in Tainui it would be relatively straightforward to find a descendant," she says. "But it took quite a few phonecalls, and some time, as people called around and even generously visited people in remote places to track down the right person."

This professional people finder was not convinced by the myth of two degrees. "The thing is a false perception that conceals the fact that we mix in relatively narrow circles where there are naturally, over time, a lot of crossovers in social connections."

(Nicola Shepheard and Matt Nippert eventually tracked down Nga Kahikatea's family.)

Stunned by this scepticism, I turned to social trends researcher Jill Caldwell, whose Windshift focus group reports have been published for nearly 10 years. Jill identified that Kiwis want to think they connect. "I do come across a desire to cling to a nostalgic ideal of an interconnected past and angst that this has gone, evidenced by a lack of involvement in local clubs and social groups - but people are often confusing this with social cohesion."

Caldwell says the views of ordinary New Zealanders have changed markedly in the past four years. Whereas in 2005 optimism, affluence and confidence for growth were strong, these views have given way to a hunkering down and back-to-basics "safe and stable" mood this year.

And, surprisingly, people feel they are more connected now than any time in the past 40 years, since TV arrived. "I have known people for 20 or so years," she says. "It's only now through social networking, Facebook and LinkedIn, that I know what people are actually thinking and doing."

Wondering about people who don't use Facebook or Twitter, I rang a builder who did some work for me a few years ago. Referred by word of mouth, Morgan Constable is near my ideal image of a typical Kiwi: smart, practical, friendly with a hint of reticence.

My first phone contact with Constable was short and sweet: he said he'd come and look, rather than talk about it, and he turned up shortly after. We talked. Constable clearly knew a lot about current affairs, politics and building. We talked about his daughter and her school; reassuringly, we had other friends in common. He was a thoroughly nice guy.

Constable looked at the job, and said he'd get a quote back to me. It was when I offered him my email address that he said, brusquely: "Don't use email, don't have a computer, don't like them." It turns out he doesn't much like phones either, and his music is all vinyl, played on a turntable. He thinks dealing with people by email lessens personal contact.

Constable admits that if people are physically too far away he struggles to keep in contact, but he prefers and values real contact with people in person. I get the impression Constable still knows most of the friends he had at school over 10 years ago and knows everyone within the suburb he lives in.

I felt reassured by Constable. It seems that people can keep in touch with each other using their communities, and the communication tools they prefer. That was the same 200 years ago, 100 years ago and today.

Kiwis still know at least as many people as they always have but there are more of us. Malcolm Gladwell in his 2000 book Tipping Point classified one type of personality as connectors: people who know lots of people and bring other people together.

In 2006 I was the communication manager at Statistics NZ. To do the census advertising and community campaigns successfully we had to meet people and talk to key organisations and networks. We had meetings with organisations representing the hearing and visually impaired and with key people in the Maori, Pacific, Asian and new immigrant communities. We also needed to find people who knew the geography of isolated rural areas.

For every group, enclave or community there was a way in through a professional or social connector. Each connector was probably one or two short steps - or degrees - from everyone in their community.

From this perspective, the quarter-acre pavlova paradise still exists. The spirit of knowing our neighbours can still live on by picking up the phone, using social media or just chatting to our friends and workmates.

* Separated by time, distance and cyberspace

The Editor's challenge: to find a particular woman whose name was randomly drawn from the electoral roll.

It didn't sound too difficult - until I discovered the electoral roll was 10 years old, and that Gwen from Kaitaia wasn't listed in the phonebook.

Suddenly, Kaitaia seemed a long way away from my Christchurch home.

So it seemed a good opportunity to test New Zealand's old-fashioned person-to-person networks.

I started with a barrage of emails, a note on Facebook, a few phone calls and a message on Twitter.

Did anyone know her?

While there were several responses with names of ex-residents of Kaitaia, progress finally came from a friend of a friend on Twitter.

Jo from Best Bloom recommended a florist she'd had Teleflora dealings with in the area. "Florists in small towns know everything," said Jo - and she was right.

Carol at Charlie's Florist knew Gwen, and was able to give me her number.

It turns out the real distance was not between Christchurch and Kaitaia, but me and Gwen.

Speaking from her retirement home, she didn't understand what I was up to - and wanted nothing to do with it.

Fair enough, Gwen. Silly idea anyway.