What does Kiwi bring to mind?

If you are anything like me if someone was to ask you the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word 'kiwi' you would say 'shoe polish.' Well maybe now you would say 'the weber's great adventure - carpezealand!' but before I told you what kiwi meant you would have said shoe polish.

Well today I broke down and purchased ... shoe polish. I had been meaning to do it for a while just that the stars aligned and I looked down at my shoes when I was near the shoe repair store. So I walked in and asked them for some 'kiwi black shoe polish.'

Guess what. You can't buy the stuff in New Zealand. They stoped selling it a while back. Kind of amazing if you ask me but there you have it.

When I got back into the office I googled the topic. (For those from MoH who are reading this I do not always google personal topics when I get back in the office - sometimes I do it before I leave!) Well this is what I discovered.

KIWI BOOT POLISH - In praise of Kiwianna

New Zealanders are undoubtedly the only nation group whose colloquial identity has been consolidated by a brand of shoe polish. In the early years of European settlement a variety of symbols— predominantly the moa, silver fern, Southern Cross and kiwi—were used to represent the new nation and even by the early 1900s there still wasn't a clear consensus. The silver fern and Southern Cross enjoyed official recognition but the kiwi enjoyed popular appeal, a popularity that was soon to be enhanced by the success of an Australian shoe polish company.

When in 1906 William Ramsay developed a new shoe polish, he named it "Kiwi" in honour of his wife's country of birth. The kiwi had the additional benefit of being an attractive and conveniently rounded image suited to a polish tin and, as well, the name is one that is easily read and pronounced in most languages.

In 1914 the advent of the First World War saw a huge demand for polish for the millions of men under arms—leather booted and belted—and for horses' tack. Ramsay's polish, which had developed a reputation for a quality, deep, long-lasting shine, was the subject of huge orders from both British and US forces.

The transference of "Kiwi" from its shoe polish association to First World War New Zealand soldiers was a simple matter. It was a connection further reinforced by the continuing success of Kiwi polish in postwar markets.

Following the Second World War "Kiwi" came to be synonymous with New Zealanders in general, not just those under arms. (And the shoe polish was to be found just about everywhere troops ventured. The American correspondent Walter Graeber wrote for TIME from the Tobruk trenches in 1942 that "old tins of British-made Kiwi polish lay side by side with empty bottles of Chianti".)

Oddly enough the kiwi has never received official recognition or legal protection as the emblem of New Zealand.The kiwi bird itself is of course one of the wonders of this country's fauna. New Zealand's long geographical isolation, which occurred before the arrival of browsing and predatory mammals in this part of the Gondwanaland super-continent, resulted in a unique environment. Among its special features was the evolution of a number of flightless and ground-dwelling bird species that adapted themselves to ecological niches that would elsewhere on Earth have been filled by mammals.

Best known of the ground-dwelling avifauna are the kiwis, survivors of an offshoot of an evolutionary line that included the now extinct moa. Flightless for thousands of years, the kiwi has only remnant wings hidden under a shaggy, hair-like plumage. Other unusual characteristics include a long bill that has the nostrils at the tip rather than at the base, as in the case of all other birds. In short, then, a unique animal.

http://www.kiwiphile.org/sep2000.html