How Many Sheep Does it Take to Raise a Kiwi?

Would Carrie Underwood sing that you live in, "a single stoplight town," or can you get "anything you want here except a WalMart store"?

New Zealand is 268,021 square kilometres or
103,483 square miles and has a approximate
population of 4.6 million people*.

In Kentucky in 2015, 4.4 million people were residents. South Carolina had almost 4.9 million*.

In 2015, the population of New Zealand was almost 4.6 million. To put this into perspective, the population of New York City that same year was roughly 8.5 million*.

I really want to explain this because New Zealand is a country and in terms of land size it's only 2.5 times the size of Kentucky and a little over 3 times the size of South Carolina.

It's crazy to think that Kentucky and South Carolina squeeze so many people in so little an area. But then I think about the landscape here and how beautiful and spread out it is and it makes more sense.

When I told people I was moving here, the "fun fact" most of them knew was that there are more sheep than people. That's still true. And driving through the country, it's obvious.




4 out of 5 sheep posing for me is not baaaa'd at all.
(The one on the far left wasn't quite looking right at me.)
Photo by Erin Grigson

But I doubt that most of those people knew the actual number of sheep there are: in 2015, there were more than 29 million sheep in New Zealand. That's a little more than 6 sheep per person. Even more surprising is the historical high. In 1982, there were 70 million sheep or 22 per person that year.

Now back to the people.

The most populated cities in New Zealand are Auckland, Wellington (the capital), and Christchurch.

Let's talk about city size based on population. Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand with a population of 1.57 million*. That's more than a quarter of the nation's people in one city. That's also where Josh's brother and his family live. Christchurch, the closest big city to where I live, is the third largest city in the nation with a population of 367,800*. Savannah, Georgia had less than half that with 146,091*, but Lexington, Kentucky was much closer to CHC with 314,767 people*.

It's kindof funny to think that after Christchurch, most people wouldn't describe urban areas as big cities. They might call them towns, villages, or boroughs.

Cities refer to main urban areas with a population of 30,000 or more. Christchurch obviously falls into this category.

After that, there are "secondary urban areas" which are described as places with 10,000 to 29,999 people. Rolleston is our closest "secondary urban area," with roughly 14,000* people. Josh's sister lives there.

"Minor urban areas" are towns with 1,000 to 9,999 people and there about 100 of those according to Statistics New Zealand. Darfield, where Josh and I live, is one of them. With a population of approximately 3,000* people, Darfield is small, but not tiny. Leeston, where Josh's parents live, is similar, with a population of about 1,850*.

Kentucky is 104,659 square kilometres or
40,409 square miles and has an approximate
population of 4.4 million people*.

After "minor urban areas," there are rural centres or rural settlements that others might call villages. Kirwee, which is just up the road, is definitely a village. It's one of those places that, if you blink, you'll miss it.

I've never thought about the population when thinking about if a city is a big city or a town.

I've always thought about it by what you go there for.

Here are a couple examples.

In Kentucky: Paris used to be smaller, before it got a WalMart Supercenter. Because of that, we used to have to go to Lexington or, on occasion, Georgetown, to get many things. However, once we got the big WalMart, we didn't have to go as far and other stores came, too. But more specifically, people from other places started coming to Paris to get things. In this example, Lexington was obviously the big city, Paris was a town that became a small city and then Millersburg would be a small town.

South Carolina is 82,931 square kilometres or
32,020 square miles and an approximate
population of 4.9 million people*.

In South Carolina: I'd definitely consider Beaufort a small city because you can definitely buy lots there. Savannah would be the closest big city even though Bluffton and Hilton Head are bigger than Beaufort. However, I think everyone will agree that St. Helena would be a town and then Fripp Island would be like a village.

But some people may describe these places, not by population, but by the number of stoplights there are.

If that's the case, it's more of a question of "Are there any stoplights?" here.

Christchurch and Rolleston both have stoplights, obviously, because they are fairly busy and metropolitan areas. But Darfield doesn't have any stoplights.

Paris, with a population of around 10,000* people, has at least 20 stoplights (counting up by memory). To compare it to Darfield, which based on Statistics New Zealand, would fall into the same category as a "minor urban area," is intriguing. But it also speaks to the very different infrastructures in America and New Zealand.

There've been lots of numbers in this post and it might have been boring to some. But when I talk about where I live, I want people to understand what I mean and the numbers put it into perspective.

How would you describe where you live? Is it more Paris, France or Paris, Kentucky? Let me know!

*All information is based off of numbers from 2015. I wanted it to be consistent and that year, there was information for all cities and countries involved.*