The Wonder Country: Making New Zealand Tourism

Abstract

The Wonder Country: Making New Zealand Tourism, by Margaret McClure (Auckland: Auckland U.P., 2004; pp. 318. $NZ 44.99). The Department of Tourist and Health Resorts was founded by the New Zealand Government in 1901 and with various rationalisations and organisational forms, central government promotion of tourism has persisted for over a century. Margaret McClure provides a sound and interesting account as part of the Ministry of Culture's sponsorship of ‘public history’, history of public institutions written with their support but by independent scholars observing professional standards of detachment. The Wonder Country traces the story of the Ministry of Tourism and its predecessors, with a focus on their participation in exploitation of the thermal wonderland of Rotorua and the alpine playground of Mt Cook. While set in wider contexts, it is not a history of tourism in New Zealand because it treats such issues as the sources of tourists only as...