NZ town of Bluff to change sign after tourist points out errors

THIS sign has stood proud and tall in the New Zealand town of Bluff, until a tourist pointed out some pretty major flaws with it.

A TOWN in New Zealand has been left red-faced after a tourist called out some glaring errors with its famous signpost.

The bright yellow sign in Bluff, a town on the southern coast of the South Island, displays the directions and distance to famous locations including Sydney, Tokyo, New York, Wellington and the South Pole.

But a tourist from Scotland noticed a few problems with the popular tourist attraction — namely, the signs for Wellington and Cape Reinga were pointing the wrong way. He flagged it with Invercargill City Council.

“I’ve had a few comments from tourists who’ve worked it out and I’ve passed their comments on to the relevant authorities, but nothing seems to get done,” the tourist told Newstalk ZB radio.

The council has since called in an expert, who confirmed that not only were some of the signs pointing in the wrong direction but some of the distances marked were incorrect.

Not that lots of people using this exact sign to navigate their way from New Zealand to Japan, but still. Picture: CK Hartman

Work is now underway to fix the sign, which local mayor Tim Shadbolt said was the town’s biggest tourist attraction.

“Well it’ll be the ministry of signposts I suppose, I don’t know, we’ll have to go through the correct authorities,” he said, when asked who would be charged with correcting the mistakes.

“I think it’s something like 87,000 people go to that signpost every year.”

It’s not the first time this year a tourist has challenged a New Zealand tourist destination.

In April, a Brisbane man visiting the seaside town of Picton made a formal complaint to the New Zealand’s Advertising Standards Authority about a tourist guide he claimed left him and his friends “blatantly misled” about the town.

Peter Chapman took aim at statements in the tourist guide made about Picton’s weather, water quality, tourist attractions and its popularity among New Zealanders.

Mr Chapman was most perturbed about the guide’s claims the popular Edwin Fox was “the world’s oldest merchant ship”, which he said was “blatantly untrue” because it was not a ship.

The Advertising Standards Authority did not agree and the complaint was not upheld.