Daily Archives: 01/12/2024

Australia New Zealand, Travel

Hobbiton.. in the rain

Leave a comment

Day 20 Fri. 15th Nov 2024

Yesterday we pretended to be Maori for the evening. Today we became hobbits.

Near the town of Matamata, previously best known for breeding Melbourne Cup winning racehorses, lives a colony of Hobbits. Or, to be more precise, the set that was built for the filming of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit has been preserved as a tourist attraction. Both Diane and I are fans of both the films and the books, so we had to go.

It is a shortish drive from Rotorua to Hobbiton, during which it rained all the way. This was not promising for an open air attraction. We arrived with some of time to kill before our tour was due to start, so we had lunch. It was pretty decent. The price was not too extravagant, considering we were at a tourist attraction in the middle of nowhere.

The rain did not stop in time for our tour, but our guide assured us that they had plenty umbrellas. So off we set to be hobbits for the afternoon.

A Hobbit
Bag End

During our tour, we learned about the techniques Peter Jackson used to make the Hobbits look small compared to Gandalf and other larger beings. First of all, all the actors who played Hobbits were smaller than 1.67m, and Ian McKellen is 1.90m or more. Other tricks were to make some Hobbit holes smaller and to film Gandalf in front of them. There were lots of tricks, playing with perspective, to achieve the desired result.

Probably the highlight of the tour was the Hobbit hole that has been fully fitted out. (It might also have had something to do with the fact that we were out of the rain for quarter of an hour).  The hole is fully equipped with everything a hobbit could possibly need. In fact, a couple of kids on the tour decided that they would like to live there.

We finished off with a beer in The Green Dragon

Damp inside and out

We really enjoyed our trip to Hobbiton, even though we got soaked. I should mention that if you want to visit it is advisable to book in advance.

Our B&B for the night Villa Walton won prizes for being the prettiest place we had stayed so far, it also won the prize for prettiest breakfast.

This post concludes our adventures in the North Island. After we left Matamata, we drove back up to Auckland airport to drop the car off and catch our flight to Christchurch

Australia New Zealand, Travel

How not to do a Haka

Leave a comment

Day 19 – Thu 14th Nov

This evening we went along to a Maori village just outside Rotorua. Te Pā Tū is a celebration of Maori culture presented in a way that Pakeha can relate to.

As we arrived at the village, we were met by a challenge from the warriors of the village.

The chief watches on

Having offered our representative a peace token and our “chief” having accepted it, we were welcomed into the village.

Unfortunately, because of the weather, the cultural show had to be moved inside to the meeting house. Normally, most of the show is outside. As well as demonstrating various dances, they taught us how to do some.

How not to do the Haka.

After the cultural show, we had a “traditional” Maori meal. We were shown the traditional ways of cooking food, kai, in Maori. I may be misjudging. Still, I suspect that most of what we ate was cooked in a combi oven rather than a hangi. The food was OK but the food wasn’t the point of the evening as far as I was concerned. I enjoyed learning more about Maori culture. This on a day when a march to protest a proposal to weaken the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi (Aotearoa/New Zealand’s founding document reached Rotorua.

We got caught up in the demonstration on the way back from the Buried Village.

I have more videos that I would have liked to add, but I couldn’t get them to upload. I’ll have another look when I get home and have my desktop computer rather than my tablet