The Pou-de-Ciel is quite common up north (UK)...

That's still up north in relation to NZ...

The Flying Flea was an aeronautical craze of the mid-1930s. It was designed by a French engineer, Henri Mignet (1894-1965), who brought it to Brighton and Shoreham to demonstrate it in 1935. It had two wings - a front wing (18ft span) which could pivot for ascending and descending, and a rear wing (13ft span) which was fixed. It had low-power engines and could be built at home, from instructions in a published book, for less than £100. It was first shown to the public at Paris in 1935. It was meant to be a fun plane - small, and a forerunner of the current ultra-light aircraft. The whole idea was that it was easy to build and simple to fly, having no rudder pedals and just a simple control stick. However, it was involved in a number of fatal crashes and it was banned in both France and England. In the early model there was a flaw (not helped by the translation of the building instructions into English) which caused it to go into a steep and uncontrollable dive.

A Flying Flea that still exists today was taken to pieces following the ban and stored in a garage, to be taken out and rebuilt years later. After the early days the problem was corrected and later versions have been flown by enthusiasts all round the world. The first licenced British Flying Flea even flew across the Channel in 1935. It became a craze and Sir Alan Cobham had one in his air circus. It was in this period that the listener saw one in Brighton. Mignet kept making them but the ban ended the craze for them in Britain.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/beyond/factsheets/makhist/makhist9_prog10a.shtml