Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) New Zealand.

1912		N.Z. Truth 12 Oct. 12/6: It is doubtful whether Campbell ever saw the Shaky Isles.
1924		N.Z. Truth 29 Nov. 10/6: Albert Lloyd, the heavyweight [...] is making tracks back to the Shaky Isles.
1929		N.Z. Railways Mag. n.p.: New Zealand need not worry about the untruthful nickname ‘Shaky Isles,’ which appears occasionally in Australian papers.
1938		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Aug. 20/2: The widespread notion that they’re peculiar to the Shaky Isles.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 25: New Zealand is variously the Quaky or the Shaky Islands, or Maoriland.
1963		N.Z. Law Journal 326/1: The [...] team of 19 lawyers who have done us the great honour of coming over, at great personal risk, to our shaky isles.
1970		N. Beagley Up and Down Under 111: A yarn and a kind word from one of the ‘Shaky Isles,’ as New Zealand is called by the Aussies.
1988		Readers Digest Guide to N.Z. 14: Earthquakes are commonplace in New Zealand, though to call these ‘the Shaky Isles’ is scarcely fair.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 75: maoriland, the land of the long white cloud or the shaky isles, otherwise known as New Zealand.
2006		M. McKernan Strength of a Nation 31: It was to the ‘Shaky Isles’ that Bob Menzies turned his attention. He cabled New Zealand Prime Minister Michael Savage.
2015		Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI) 8 May D2/1: Which country is nicknamed the ‘Shaky Isles’ because of earthquakes?