A touristy day

 One theme for this trip has certainly been weather. Our flight from Hobart to Melbourne (a 75 minute flight) was delayed by 6.5 hours largely due to fog at Melbourne. Skipping the details of a long day, we arrived on Auckland about 1 am this morning. Our flight to NY does not depart till 7:45 pm… so we decided to be touristy today and go to the Hobbiton Movie Set. 

Hobbit on is near the town of Matamata, on a 1250 acre sheep farm. Peter Jackson saw the farm from a helicopter as he was scouting for locations and loved the rolling hills and giant specimen trees near a large pond. So he landed the helicopter, went and had some beers and watched rugby with the farmer, and a deal was struck to use some of  the land for the Hobbiton set. The original Lord of the Rings set was built in a temporary manner and was completely dismantled when filming was done. When the set was rebuilt for the Hobbit movies, however, it had become clear that there was demand for a visit-able set, so a business partnership was struck with the family and the new set was built with more durable materials and methods, to last 50 years.

It is a VERY popular destination, about a two-hour drive from Auckland. Tour groups of about 20 people depart every 10 minutes for an hour-long guided walking tour of the village, ending at the Green Dragon for a complimentary ale, stout or cider. We had some trepidation about the experience, but it was both lovely and interesting. 

The buildings and gardens are beautiful, and the tour guides have many interesting stories about the making of the movies. For example, different of the hobbit houses have different size doors (60%, 90%, 100% of average man size) to allow the doors to look small if Gandalf is standing by one, but “normal” if a hobbit actor is standing by one. The differently sized houses are never on camera at the same time or the illusion would be lost. Other props come in different sizes for the same reason. There was a stunt double for Frodo who was genuinely 4 feet tall, and one for Gandalf who was 7’ 1”, so that images filmed from behind could cover up that the main actors are about the same height. 

The details of filming were fascinating and funny. One problem was that the smaller pond attracted amorous and noisy frogs that disrupted filming. After trying to catch and deport the frogs, the solution was for an actor to sit by the pond as a fisher-hobbit. He had a bag of pebbles, and if a frog started singing he’d throw a pebble into the pond to restore silence for filming. 

Pictured: Bag End, the frog pond