I find day-to-day people are very friendly and chatty here. I think in a lot of cases people in shops etc have the time to talk to people because there are simply not the number of people around compared to the UK, so they don't have the stress of keeping on top of everything. Kiwi's are also pretty patient and much more polite when waiting their turn in a queue.
There are a few social norms I've had to learn though.....especially involving school-mum type conversations. Pretty much everyone says "Hi, how are you?" and if you say anything other than "Good thanks" as a reponse, you risk the other person unable to respond to the conversation cues that we commonly used in UK. I'm sure I've posted this before but when my daughter first started school I once repsonded to another Kiwi mother that "I'm having one of those mornings", to which the woman responded with a very puzzled look and a quick exit. Luckily the South African teacher explained to me that she'd done the same thing herself a few times when she first emmigrated and that Kiwi's (on the whole) don't tend to have a good old rant and moan when having a bad day or sympathise with each other in quite the same way that Brit's and South Africans tend to.
It seems *generally* the small talk tends to be all very light and positive (can't think of a better way to describe it), and it is often not so acceptable to discuss the weather or (unless you know someone well) have a moan when your child throws their breakfast all over themselves when you are already running late...unless of course you want to be branded a Moaning Pom
I also asked my OH about ettiquette from a blokes point of view. He says the vast majority of men's small talk outside of work revolves around sport and the latest sports match of one kind or another, and if not sport then fishing or boats (in Auckland). Now my OH really has no interest in sports apart from something he actually does himself such as martial arts of golf, and doesn't follow any sort of sports or teams. He disagrees with fishing (we're veggie) and we don't own a boat. He finds that unless he can very quickly find something else to talk about, conversations end pretty quickly. He says this isn't an issue at work because in an IT environment there is always something geeky/nerdy or some cool technology or gaget to talk about