CLICK to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox

New Zealand is one of the last frontiers of Paradise. Beautiful, varied, offering climates ranging from sub-tropical to sub-Antarctic these larger than life islands are clean, fresh and unpolluted. With mountains to rival the Highlands of Scotland and the three million year old gravel Canterbury Plains with their windbreak hedges at times dwarfing even the Great Wall itself, New Zealand can truly claim scenery and sights to stir the heart.

Climate is important in a world becoming prone to violent extremes of weather. Even at the top of North Island and the bottom of South Island the climate is temperate permitting sunbathing at noon and cosy fires in the evening for much of the year. The environment is significantly undamaged because there is not great commercial prospect from hurting it and not enough people to support to make doing so essential.

With a population of under 4.5 million there is plenty of space in a country whose land mass is bigger than the UK which houses 65 million people. It’s an outdoor place with skiing, white-water rafting, rugby, cricket, wonderful horses and great equestrian events of all sorts.

Getting from one place to another is easy even when the drive is long because there are virtually no traffic jams and the roads, though seldom dual-carriageway, are well maintained – no mean feat in a country where rockfalls are common and many roads explore passes chiseled out of energetic terrain.

Altogether a place for the young – and yet the young are leaving for Australia and for the world’s cities. New Zealand has a net outflow of people. Some come, mostly to retire and find breathing space, air and pristine water. More leave to find jobs, the attractions of urban living and those material advantages which only large populations can provide.

Multiple choice means multiple people.

The attractions of being well away from the action, of potential self-sufficiency, of trees so deep-rooted they can grow to Amazonian heights, of grapevines glistening in the damp sunshine, of a pace of life to restore the soul and permit time to wonder at the glories of the world – all these seem overwhelmed by the need to congregate in bigger masses, to seek the glitzy world of high tech and celeb and the material standards that go with them.

Why is it that the grass of paradise always seems greener on the other side of the fence?

New Zealand’s paradise was partly fashioned by earthquake and there are still many of them to remind the inhabitant that the country lies on a major fault. Mercifully, most of them are confined to limited areas and do little damage. It seems that whenever there is potential paradise on this earth there is some compensating distress to counteract it.

Perhaps that is true of all paradise?

The first time I landed in New Zealand over thirty years ago the pilot announced over the aircraft loudspeaker “Welcome to Auckland, ladies and gentlemen, please out your watches back twenty-five years”. The jibe would never be permitted today. For all that it is unfair in many respects it still has a comforting ring of permanence and stability about it that few other places can boast. Whether to live there is one question; there is no option that it is a paradise that must be visited.

We don’t have too many of them left on the planet.