Adore the obscure.

I found myself dancing the Time Warp next to a statue of Riff Raff, a character from Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Picture Show, in a sleepy Kiwi town on as we made our way through the country. The dance moves are emblazoned in a mural on the wall Riff Raff is facing: “It’s just a jump to the left!”

Looking at the surroundings of this homage to O’Brien, it’s not easy to work out why exactly it’s there, and as I spent more time in Aotearoa (the Māori name for the country) it became clear that the love for eccentric attractions was endless.

It turns out that Richard O’Brien had a connection with Hamilton. It’s where he’d spent time cutting hair and daydreaming, and the spot chosen was where the Embassy Theatre once stood. The plaque read: “Where we stand is the birthplace of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Each small town we passed through seemed to have a claim to fame, and each marked it with a statue testament to it! It felt somewhat American, to have an attraction simply for the sake of tourism and building up hearsay about a town, and a concept slightly alien to me, a Brit. Our towns, villages and cities have all been too well established I guess, seeped in a history and tradition that is unshakeable.

But this isn’t a criticism. I adore the obscure and revel in the weird, and New Zealand certainly delivers on that. My guides, Vicky and her boyfriend Jesse, crisscrossed with me the North Island, Te Ika-a-Māui, to see as many of these curiosities as possible.

So along with Hamilton’s homage to the greatest cult film in recent history, we made our way to Tirau to see a visitor’s centre in the triage of a giant corrugated dog, sheep and ram, flanked by a corrugated Jesus. We visited Taihape, where travellers are greeted by an oversized ‘Gum Boot’ (or Wellingtons to Brits) made out of, you guessed it, corrugated.

Then there was the town of Bulls which, along with endless bad puns for each shop (i.e. the medical centre being called ‘cure-a-bull’), features proudly an oversized – you guessed it – bull. And after developing a taste for the country’s national drink, we took a pilgrimage to the home of L&P in Paeroa, of course with a shrine to this heritage in the form of an oversized replica bottle.

As we travelled throughout the North Island, I kept asking whether some eccentric project could be built in the UK. Imagine the horror if I were to build a huge can of cider in a Somerset village, or an oversized Melton Mowbray pork pie in Leicestershire?

That’s probably the best thing about Kiwi’s, their ability to not take life to seriously, as they wear jandles to the beach and get sand everywhere, and invite the world to throw gum boots across a field next to the railway, drinking a soft drink known only within New Zealand.

It’s a different pace of life, and one that I could get used to.