God's Own Country

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God’s Own Country, often abbreviated to Godzone, is a phrase that has been used for more than 120 years by New Zealanders to describe their homeland. It has subsequently been adopted by some other countries, notably Australia, but this has declined as the phrase has become increasingly associated with New Zealand. For some years now Kerala state government in India, has been using this phrase to promote its tourism industry [1].

The earliest recorded use of the phrase was as the title of a poem about New Zealand written by Thomas Bracken sometime in the 1880s. It was published in a book of his poems in 1890, and then again in 1893 in a book containing a selection of his works, entitled Lays and Lyrics: God’s Own Country and Other Poems.

God’s Own Country as a phrase was often used and popularised by New Zealand’s longest serving prime minister, Richard John Seddon. He last quoted it on June 10, 1906 when he sent a telegram to the Victorian premier, Thomas Bent, the day before leaving Sydney to return home to New Zealand. "Just leaving for God's own country," he wrote. He never made it, dying the next day on the ship Oswestry Grange.

Bracken’s God’s Own Country is less well known internationally than God Defend New Zealand which he published in 1876. It was declared the country's national hymn in 1940, and made the second national anthem of New Zealand along with God Save The Queen in 1977.

In the United Kingdom the phrase is used by people from Yorkshire to describe that county, sometimes substituting the word county for country. The phrase is also occasionally used to describe the United States of America, often sarcastically.