An international intelligence group is meeting in Queenstown, and it appears that an American Air Force plane hopped over to Dunedin for Monday night last week. Why would American spies take a break from their busy schedule to visit Dirty Duds? We can only speculate.
The Five Eyes are an international group of intelligence agencies that New Zealand is somehow a part of, alongside the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia. Apparently they’re meeting outside of Queenstown at the moment, which would explain a why the US Air Force is in the area. There’s plenty to unpack there, but first we need to address the fact that for some reason, Five Eyes neglected to abbreviate themselves to the convenient “5I’s” and instead opted for the awful choice of “FVEY”, which just sucks. However, the sub-group names are far, far more entertaining. The USA/NZ/Aus group has the charming name of “ANZUS” (anus, haha) the Canada/NZ/UK group somehow managed to land the name “CANZUK” (can suck, haha), and the worst of them all is some sort of commanding body involved with the 5I’s with the absolutely monstrous title of “AUSCANNZUKUS”. That’s a fucking crime, if you ask me.
Anyway, after photos of the American plane were posted to the Dunedin News Facebook group, commenters took to speculation with comments like “Spy lessons 101: Try to not get spotted entering a town for a spy convention”, “so that’s where the cocaine is coming from”, and “*googles five eyes*”. We were curious, too, so we went to check on the Dunedin airport register, only to find that there was no USAF plane listed for that day. Weird. We checked a 24-hour flight radar, and again, no listing. Very strange. So we emailed the airport, and were told (very politely) that “We don’t have any information that would help in answering your questions on this one sorry… Apologies we aren't able to help on this one.” Apology accepted.
This left us only one option: calling the FBI to enquire about what’s going on in Dunedin. Unfortunately, international calls are incredibly expensive, and the FBI has a longer wait time than Studylink, so we gave up on that. Wild speculation was the only way to go forward. Perhaps this Monday night excursion was to visit Dunedin’s gig scene. More likely, though, it was a cheeky trip to the cas. Perhaps, as one commenter suggested, they just wanted to get a “DUD” listed on their register. Most likely of all, though, is that it was a mistake. The spies rocked up to Dunedin, saw that they’d landed in a cow paddock, interviewed some sows and said “this has got to be a prank, nobody actually lives here”, and promptly turned around for Queenstown. Fair enough.