EARLIER this month, when Australian television hosts offered Pineapple Lumps to a visiting British boy band, describing them as “an Aussie delicacy”, New Zealanders were outraged.

Pineapple Lumps are a chocolate-covered confectionery with a soft, pineapple-flavoured centre.

“I don’t see how they can claim that they’re theirs,” New Zealand’s Rainbow Confectionery general manager Ray White told the media. He was right, of course. Although popular in Australia, the sweet was created by New Zealand confectionery factory worker Charles Diver in the early 1950s. Rainbow Confectionery exports the product to Australia.

As an Australian, however, I like to think that the confusion was understandable. Like Malaysia and Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand have such a close historical and cultural affinity that it is sometimes hard to know where something originates.

Advertisers are happy to add to the confusion. In the 1990s, for example, Antipodean breakfast cereal manufacturer Sanitarium ran a television advertising campaign claiming that “Kiwi kids are Weet-Bix kids”. The advertisement was a dubbed version of an Australian advertisement that claimed that “Aussie kids are Weet-bix kids”. Weet-bix is a high-fibre breakfast biscuit regarded in both countries as an iconic national food.

Pineapple Lumps are often regarded as part of Kiwiana – items forming part of New Zealand’s distinct cultural heritage. Others include the kiwi fruit, Jandals (a type of beach footwear), hangi (a cooking method involving heated rocks), the All Blacks (a rugby team) and the strangely named Afghan Biscuit (cornflakes with a soft biscuit base).

Australia, or course, has its own unofficial list, which borrows heavily from aboriginal culture as well as what is widely regarded as stereotypically Australian. It includes kangaroos, boomerangs, digeridoos, swagmen and drovers as well as brands such as Arnott’s biscuits and Minties.

Sometimes, of course, the two countries agree to share. The bravery of the soldiers who fought on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) in 1915, for example, is a source of national pride in both countries.

More often, however, they just squabble. April 5 this year marked the 80th anniversary of the death of Phar Lap, the mighty Antipodean racehorse that died in the United States in 1932 after winning the richest race in North America.

While the cause of its death remains a mystery – many believe the great horse was poisoned by American gangsters – the debate in the Antipodes has focused on a completely different issue.

Was Phar Lap an Australian or a New Zealand animal? The controversy has raged ever since. Born in Timaru, New Zealand, it was trained in Australia, eventually winning the 1930 Melbourne Cup. In death, it was divided up King Solomon style among the various claimants.

Its skeleton now stands proudly in the Te Papa National Museum in Wellington, while its massive 6.2kg heart is housed in the Australian National Museum in Canberra. Its hide, meanwhile, sits on a model of its body at the Victoria Museum, Melbourne. The rest of Phar Lap is buried where it died – in California.

Film star Russell Crowe may wish to declare his allegiance now before it is too late. Like Phar Lap, this New Zealand- born Australian actor has achieved lasting fame in the US. He is also lauded as a national icon in both Australia and New Zealand.

Then there is the passionate debate about the origins of the Pavlova. Pavlova is meringue-based dessert topped with whipped cream and fresh fruits such as kiwi fruit, strawberries and grapes. Both countries claim to have invented it, and both recognise it as their national dish.

Its origins are obscure, but both the name and the recipe first began appearing soon after the Russian ballerina Anna Matveyevna Pavlova toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926, and Australia again in 1929.

New Zealand’s claim rests largely on a cookbook published in 1929 which contains a recipe for “meringue with fruit filling”. Although the name Pavlova was not used, the recipe is similar. Based on this, New Zealanders say that the Australians copied the recipe and called it Pavlova.

Australians trace the origins of the dessert to the Hotel Esplanade in Perth, Western Australia, where the dish first got its name in 1935, and say that New Zealand’s claims are sour grapes.

Either way, it is ironic that two of the most important icons dividing nationalists in both countries have names that are completely alien. Phar Lap is Sinhalese for lightning bolt.

Munching on my Vegemite toast each morning, I am just grateful New Zealanders do not lay claim to that as well. They have Marmite, a somewhat similar yeast extract spread with a slightly sweeter flavour.
As for the rest, perhaps it is just better to agree to disagree.

(C) Singapore Press Holdings Limited