New Zealander Isaac Cotter could never have predicted, when he hopped on a plane for a three-week holiday to visit his brother in Australia, that he would still be here 37 years later.
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Mr Cotter, 55, said his Australian story began with an opportunity to earn some "pocket money" working on Googong Dam. An opportunity to earn more in a week than a month's salary in his native Rotorua. To the then 16-year-old, it seemed like a small fortune.
"Australia has been a great place - I've made a lot of friends here, I played rugby here, I met my wife Patricia, who is also from Rotorua, here and our children were born here," the Queanbeyan local said.
"There's plenty to love about Australia - I've spent most of my life here although I do have a spiritual connection to New Zealand.
"I'm lucky enough to say I have two homes. If somebody had told me in 1976 that [I was] going to come over here and still be here in 2014, I would never have believed them."
Official figures indicate New Zealand citizens make up about 1.2 per cent of the ACT population - less than the national average of 2.4 per cent. At the last census there were 4389 New Zealand-born residents in the ACT.
The number of New Zealanders in Australia is rising steadily, according to the latest quarterly report for temporary entrants and New Zealand citizens in Australia. The figures show there were 625,370 New Zealanders here in December - a rise of 1.1 per cent compared with December 2012, but a 3.5 per cent drop since September.
The number of temporary entrants from New Zealand has increased by 20.5 per cent since December 2008.
The State/Territory Migration Summary report, released last month, revealed New Zealand-born people accounted for 5.7 per cent of settler arrivals in the ACT in the six months to last December 31.
The modest increase comes after figures showing a 13.7 per cent decline in the number of New Zealand citizens who came to Australia as permanent and long-term arrivals from 2011-12 to 2012-13.
Those figures indicated permanent arrivals were down 6.9 per cent on the previous year's figure, compared with a 32.6 per cent drop for long-term arrivals.
New Zealand high commissioner Chris Seed said it appeared arrival figures had declined in recent years, but he noted there was still a large New Zealand population in Australia.
"Because of the booming economy at home and a range of challenges here, there's actually been relatively fewer people coming.''
Many New Zealanders moved to Australia during the mining boom and after the Christchurch earthquake, although numbers have dropped recently as the New Zealand economy performs well and the Christchurch rebuild gets under way.
Mr Seed said the ACT had a smaller New Zealand population than elsewhere in Australia. "One of the reasons for that is because it's not as easy for New Zealanders to get employment in the Australian public service, because you have to be a citizen," he said.
In an interview before Anzac Day, Mr Seed said the close ties between Australia and New Zealand were unique.
"Julia Gillard once said that Australia has many good and special relationships, but New Zealand alone is family," he said.
"We're similar but not the same. There's the Anzac tradition. We're both export-focused economies, we share a lot of common institutions of parliament and sport, and a very practical view about how to make your way in the world."
Mr Cotter agreed there was something special about the Aussie-Kiwi dynamic.
"When Kiwis and Aussies come together, there's a mateship.
''We have similarities, we're neighbours, we have that fierce rivalry but we stand up for each other as well," he said.
