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A lovely cake tin made from Number 8 Wire
Number 8 Wire is, literally, a gauge of steel wire, popularly used in rural fencing. That’s fences around paddocks, not two gay farmers fighting each other with floppy swords.
But in New Zealand, the phrase, like other local oddities (women’s rubgy, Invercargill, our tender, ‘hands on’ approach to animal husbandry), has a deeper, more spiritual connection with the land.
Allow me to explain.
Apart from a few notable exceptions, historically, New Zealand has always been last in the queue when it comes to importing vital industrial materials, tools and technology (also fashion and attractive immigrants). Lack of proper equipment in the early days fostered in Kiwi blokes a knack for ‘getting shit done’ using whatever basic materials were readily and easily available to them at the time. In a country with 60 million sheep to fence in (and 10,000 natives to fence out) the most abundant of these materials was Number 8 Wire.
Out of this history grew the myth of the Number 8 Wire mentality (aka Kiwi ingenuity): that New Zealanders, particularly the men, are practical, lateral-thinking, problem-solving types, capable of inventing, or fixing, anything1 with whatever junk they have lying around in the garden shed.
It is no surprise that this concept first became popular during the late 1980s, coinciding with season one of the hit US television show, MacGyver.
And while most talk up Number 8 Wire mentality as a positive aspect of Kiwi culture, others argue that it is merely putting a brave face and positive spin on our cultural and industrial isolation – that New Zealand would be economically much better off if we had just imported, and learned how to use, the proper equipment in the first place. Like some fuck-off big Seimens heavy machinery. Or a few Japanese robots.
Because while it may get you from A to B, the rest of the world has shown an annoying, but not all together surprising, lack of desire to drive a car, fly a plane, or use a computer made out of thin loops of steel fencing.
1. Note this does not include emotional problems
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“An lovely cake..” that Bad England!
And that doesn’t even look like a coil of number 8 wire, it looks more like stuff you get from the $2 shop. Get a better photo of ‘real’ #8!
Grant.
Don’t you guys have gaffa tape out there?
Yes, but we only use that for it’s intended purpose: armed robberies.
Gaffer Tape: Used for turning ‘no no no’ into ‘mmmffg mmmfggg ggguhuh’
Yeah, try gagging hostages with Number 8 wire, that’s not pretty or clever.