Is The Wizard still in business? When I was in Christchurch he was a local personality. He would get up on a soapbox, literally, in the town square and rant about this, that, and the other. The day I heard him he was going on about Margaret Thatcher's sex life, as he imagined it. I was told that every time there was a census he would row out into international waters so he couldn't be counted. Probably apocryphal but I'd like to think it was true.


>I visited Christ Church several yrs ago. Someone was showing me the hillside homes outside the city that would sell here for a couple million, that were selling for maybe $175,000 NZ dollars.
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>As a matter of fact, I had a hard time getting a hotel room that week because there was a big tourist industry convention in Christ Church that week. They were trying to drum up more vacation dollars in NZ.
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>>Mike,
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>> don't have to tell you why everything that isn't produced natively is expensive in NZ -- shipping costs. When I was there the advertised prices for new cars knocked me on my a**.
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>>Yes- the huge disparity is reduced, but new cars are still relatively expensive. That's true of all small markets, I guess- there are fewer than 4 million people in NZ.
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>>Other stuff is a bargain, though. If you sell your house in any sizeable city in the US, you could come here and purchase a mansion anywhere except Auckland.