New Zealanders are far more likely to have visited Australia or the US than their own national parks, according to a new survey.
"Don't leave town until you've seen the country" was the catch cry of the last big domestic tourism campaign in the 1980s.
However, the results of an unscientific Facebook survey of 6000 New Zealanders showed that three decades later, while almost two thirds of people had visited Australia and one third had been to the US, only one quarter had been to Fiordland National Park - a world heritage site consistently ranked as one of the great national parks of the world.
The survey was conducted in October and November this year and found almost three times as many North Islanders had been to Australia as Fiordland National Park.
A similar proportion of South Islanders had visited Australia over New Zealand's first national park - Tongariro.