What a Job Posting That Went Viral Says About New Zealand

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by emailThis week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter with the Australia bureau.

The “advertisement for a dream job in a land far, far away” is a distinctive subgenre of viral news stories. Maybe you would like to relocate to Saalfelden, Austria, and become a professional cave hermit. Or you might envision yourself quitting your desk job to become Japan’s first full-time foreign ninja.

If either of these sound like the sort of escapism you crave, you might have been one of the 1,383 people from 24 countries who have applied to be a “biodiversity supervisor” for the Department of Conservation on New Zealand’s remote West Coast. Applications closed on Tuesday.

The job will be based in the township of Haast, which has a population of about 85 people, and involves working with endangered New Zealand wildlife, like a rare sub-breed of the southern brown kiwi; monitoring fur seal populations; and working on the country’s innovative and extensive predator control measures.

“Haast is an extremely special place to live, surrounded by mountains and ocean, with endless activities for an outdoor enthusiast,” the advertisement reads.

Even by the standards of New Zealand, which in the 1990s marketed itself as at “the edge of the world,” Haast is remote. The local school has just eight students. The nearest airport is a three-hour drive away, the nearest hospital four. The town rates a 1 out of 9 — the lowest possible score — on the Bortle light pollution scale, putting it on a par with the most uninhabited areas of Alaska, Utah and Wyoming.

Although New Zealand is usually thought of as very rural, that is not the situation for most of its residents. More than 85 percent of people live in cities and towns, with about a third of the population in Auckland, the largest city.