I miss it.

"It is impossible in a paragraph to communicate to the stranger the appearance of the country. It cannot be done by analogy. The New Zealand traveler is often reminded of his country. A gully in California, carpeted with scrub…a glimpse of the sea over a ridge crested with pines in Provence…the view across an English moor…But in its general aspect it is unique. Within a small area there is a remarkable variety of scenery: mountains to challenge the Swiss; ‘sounds’ to rival the Norwegian fiords; plains so large that, crossing them, a man feels himself in the centre of a continent; beaches to compare with the Australia; beech forest and dense rain forest; a thermal region and glow-worm caves of unworldly beauty. As it was fifty years ago, so it is today, rough, untamed. The farms look newly occupied. The towns, mostly wooden bungalows, each with its either-or quarter-acre ‘section’, appear unfinished, temporary. Man has not been here long, and there is little of his handiwork to admire. What is beautiful belongs to nature—nature which men have despoiled and burned. Only in a few localities is there landscape which resembles the polished, man-made beauty of the English countryside. The light, too, is not veiled as in England; it stares with a Mediterranean boldness. But the historian must surrender the task of description or comparison to a poet or painter. If, in this passage, the American or British reader finds nothing to call up in his mind an image of these islands, he may, at least, imagine readily the feelings of the New Zealanders for their home."

--Keith Sinclair, A History of New Zealand