On Thursday 19 April 2012, New Zealand was completely surrounded by a very large High (or anticyclone). The air pressure at sea level was above 1030 hPa everywhere over New Zealand at midday on that day. Highest pressures were over inland Otago and Canterbury, peaking at 1039 hPa. Christchurch Airport was reporting 1038.2 hPa ... that's very high indeed.

In my blog post about winds aloft there is a loop of satellite images for a week in winter 2008.  It shows that the big cloud features in the mid-latitudes typically travel from west to east. In other words, the features you see on weather maps affecting New Zealand have usually started out roughly in the area of southern Australia.