travel

A new, hidden continent has been discovered. And it's good news for New Zealanders.

New Zealanders are rightly fed up with Australia.

We’ve deported their citizens, co-opted countless of their superstars and straight up refuse to acknowledge them as inventors of pavlova, not to mention Weetbix.

Some say it’s because we’re bigger than they are. That calling ourselves a continent means we think we can bully the little guy next door.

Well, not anymore!

Turns out New Zealand isn’t part of ‘Australasia’, it’s sitting on a GIGANTIC land mass all its own, which scientists have newly named ‘Zealandia’.

The magical wonderland, most likely once inhabited by kiwi-riding hobbits, is now 94 per cent submerged in the ocean and has been for tens of millions of years, according to a publication released by The Geological Society of America.

The term ‘Zealandia’ has been around since 1995, but research over the past decade has just included that the area was not just a group of continental islands and fragments as first thought, rather a giant continental crust about 2.9 million square kilometres in size.

It also includes New Caledonia, along with several other territories and island groups.

Take that, Australia.