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.

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

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