Nice shots of NZ, pity they're in the wrong place

By JEREMY REES and TONY VERDON

An Australian-produced guidebook to New Zealand is playing havoc with our geography.

The 120-page guide, produced in Melbourne and put into hotel rooms up and down this country, praises our "unique adventures and a host of visual delights."

The problem is the unique adventures and visual delights are in the wrong place. Some of them hundreds of kilometres wrong.

The front of the guide claims it is distributed annually to guest rooms of "prestigious international hotels."

The Herald has counted at least eight mistakes of geography in the book, called Welcome to New Zealand.

The mistakes range from the odd minor misspelling to true howlers. The central North Island, famed for its "extreme thermal activities" says the book, is illustrated by what looks suspiciously like Fiordland.

The page on sub-tropical Northland in fact shows people mountain-biking through the dried grasslands of Wakatipu Basin, central Otago.

Then there is the small matter of our botanic gardens. The same garden graces both Taranaki and Canterbury, according to the tourist guide.

Mona Vale, the elegant Victorian homestead surrounded by gardens in the very English Christchurch, turns up in the very Scottish Dunedin.

But perhaps the biggest snafu is in the section on Rotorua, the tourist centre of the North Island.

There is a picture of Pohutu Geyser at Whakarewarewa. The problem is that it is next to what looks like Deep Cove, Doubtful Sound.

The publishers of the guide have admitted that the guide contains problems and said they were already revising the error-ridden edition.

The executive editor of Waiviata, Grant Arnott, said staff responsible for the edition had left the company, and a revised edition would appear in September.

Mr Arnott said the publishers were not aware of the number of errors in the New Zealand guide until its own staff members began revising it.

"We are not going to let that happen again," he said.

"The new edition is being produced by a new editor, and a new management team is in place to ensure the same mistakes are not made again."

A former New Zealand journalist had been hired in Melbourne to help produce the new edition, and New Zealand writers were also involved.

"The previous management had rehashed the books for years and years, re-using old material."

"We have an entirely new editorial and management team in place to ensure the same mistakes are not made again," he said.

He hoped the revamped guide would restore its reputation.

A spokeswoman for Tourism New Zealand, Cas Carter, said she had tried to contact the publishers after reading the book in a hotel.

"We think it is good that private companies are publishing books to promote New Zealand.

"It would be a lot more useful if they got their facts right."