New Zealand Geography Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which inland region has New Zealand's most continental climate, with the country's hottest summer days, coldest winter nights and lowest rainfall, and grows Pinot Noir and stone fruit?

Question 2

Which mountain chain, known in Maori as Ka Tiritiri o te Moana, runs almost the entire length of the western South Island and holds all of New Zealand's highest peaks?

Question 3

Which sea, around 1,500 to 2,000 kilometres wide, lies between New Zealand and its nearest large neighbour, Australia?

Question 4

Apart from marine mammals such as seals, which are the only land mammals native to New Zealand, having reached it under their own power before humans arrived?

Question 5

What does the International Dark Sky Reserve declared over the Aoraki Mackenzie area around Lake Tekapo chiefly exist to protect?

Question 6

Which is New Zealand's newest national park, established in 2002 and covering about 85 per cent of an island reached by ferry or small plane from Bluff?

Question 7

From the eastern edge of which ancient southern supercontinent did the landmass that became New Zealand break away, beginning around 85 million years ago?

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About New Zealand Geography

How well do you know the geography of New Zealand -- the two main islands and the outliers, the Southern Alps and the volcanoes, the rivers and lakes and fiords, the climate, the wildlife and the way the land is used? This quiz has ninety questions in four packs, written the way people search: which island is bigger, what is the highest mountain, why are the Mackenzie lakes so blue, which river became a legal person, how many sheep are there.

The answer is always one of four choices of the same kind, and the question never gives it away. A short note after each answer adds the figures, the location and the background.

The first pack covers the layout of the country: the North and South Islands, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and the other cities, Cook Strait, the sixteen regions, the Chatham and subantarctic islands, Cape Reinga and Bluff, and the submerged continent of Zealandia. The second pack is landforms: the Southern Alps and Aoraki / Mount Cook, the Alpine Fault, the Taupo Volcanic Zone, Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe, Taranaki and White Island, the glaciers, Fiordland, the Canterbury Plains and its braided rivers, and features from the Moeraki Boulders to the Waitomo Caves. The third pack is water: the Waikato and the Clutha, the Whanganui River's legal personhood, the deepest and largest lakes, the colour of the Mackenzie lakes, the Manapouri power scheme, Ninety Mile Beach, the Bay of Islands, Farewell Spit and the Marlborough Sounds. The fourth pack covers climate, life and land use: New Zealand's split from Gondwana, its lack of native land mammals, the tuatara and the kauri, the possum and Predator Free 2050, the shift from sheep to dairy, kiwifruit and wine, the conservation estate and the national parks, the wettest and driest places, the dark skies of the Mackenzie, and the country's biggest earthquakes.

About a fifth of the questions carry a photograph of a place or feature tied to the question, chosen so it does not give the answer away. Every fact has been checked.