New Zealand, Matamata: Two Hobbits from London Dancing in The Shire

Matamata was situated on New Zealand's North Island, and was our first brush with something "Lord of the Rings" in the country. For those of you who don't know - probably most of you reading this - a farm just outside Matamata was used as the setting for Hobbiton and The Shire. For those of you who don't know about Hobbiton or The Shire because you haven't seen any of the "Lord of the Rings" films, then you may want to pop over to your local video store to rent them after reading this journal entry. What better way would there be to see actual actors, instead of cheesy tourist stand-ins like ourselves, dancing on the Party Field or trying to appear as little as hobbits?

We had arrived in Matamata the night before the "Lord of the Rings" tour, and had parked our campervan, aka Bessie, in the car park of a small motel called Tower Lodge. For the previous three nights, we had stayed in a holiday park in Auckland and we wanted to save money by sleeping at the side of the road or in a picnic area when we arrived in Matamata. As we drove through the small town centre, we didn't see any convenient place to park the large vehicle, so we pulled over at Tower Lodge Motel, one of the only lodging places at the edge of town. When we asked the motel manager for a spot where we could park Bessie overnight, he suggested that we stay in his car park, thus prohibiting us to block any of the town's busy streets.

The manager at Tower Lodge Motel was not the friendliest character, but we did appreciate his gesture of goodwill. To prove our appreciation, we offered to pay for the parking spot, but he declined our money. That evening, we didn't want to cause any commotion and we cooked dinner as quietly as possible before eating and then spending time reading our books. Bedtime came early that night and we were both happy to get some rest after a full day of driving from Auckland to Coromandel Peninsula, and then on to Matamata, complete with some hiking and several stops at overlooks and viewpoints along the way.

In the morning, we skipped taking showers for two reasons. (1) The weather had not been hot the day before and we hadn't really worked up any kind of sweat to cause enough stink to warrant a shower (or so we thought). (2) It was our first night staying in the campervan outside of a holiday park and we weren't sure if there would be enough water for two showers, or whether the hot water heater would work without being hooked into a power site. Later, we learned that the shower would indeed work just fine when we weren't staying at a holiday park, but we still skipped showers on many occasions in New Zealand, wearing the same clothes day after day. At one point, we had both gone three days without one! Yes, we felt like true backpackers... or at least could compare ourselves with some of the smelly travellers we have come across over the past ten months.

Since we had gotten to bed at a decent time, we were able to make an early start in the morning. We had some cereal for breakfast and then headed a couple of blocks over to Matamata's I-Site (information centre) to find out about the "Lord of the Rings" tours on offer. It wasn't clear where we could park our campervan so Kyle pulled it into the I-Site car park upon Dan's suggestion. The parking spaces were set up for standard size vehicles, but we just parked sideways and took up a few spots since our intention was only to go quickly inside and find out information about the tours before returning to our vehicle.

Inside, we had to wait a few minutes for the woman working at the information centre to finish explaining the tours on offer to a couple of Swedes. The Swedes didn't know what they wanted to do and they said they would return after breakfast to book something. We had already eaten breakfast and knew by that point that we wanted to join their Hobbiton movie set tour, so we booked ourselves onto it straight away. We declined the woman's offer of adding a sheep experience to our tour because we had planned to get closer to sheep at our next destination, Rotorua. We saw the Swedes again when our tour finished, as their tour was just beginning. The sunny weather we had in the morning left at the end of our tour and they viewed Hobbiton and The Shire under the clouds - pity for them!

The tour we booked ourselves on cost $50 NZD each (around £19, or $38 USD) and was the first one planned for that day, but we had half an hour or so to wait before it departed. To kill time, we moved our campervan to the rail station car park located behind the I-Site car park, a much better place to leave our large vehicle without getting ticketed or towed. Coffees were next on the agenda and we each ordered one from a nice cafe across the street from the I-Site. We also took advantage of the cafe's clean toilets as we were told there were no loo (that's the same as a bathroom for the Americans reading this) stops during the tour unless we wanted to perform our duties, like sheep do their doodies, au naturel.

J.R. was our tour guide for the morning and the minivan he picked us up in was named Frodo. There were eight other people - all from Europe - on the tour with us, a nice small group with which to explore the Hobbiton film location. The drive from Matamata to the Alexander farm took about 15 minutes, and J.R. entertained us along the way by providing a lot of interesting facts about the film and how Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema discovered the farm's beautiful countryside during an aerial search by helicopter before securing its use (in secret) for the duration of the trilogy's filming.

The Alexander farm was run, not surprisingly, by a family of sheep farmers named Alexander. The 1250 acre farm had many steep and rolling hills and was a perfect setting that closely resembled that of Middle-earth as described by J.R.R. Tolkien in the trilogy's books. The most important factors that sold Peter Jackson on the location were the privacy of the farm and the fact that it was virtually untouched by 20th century clutter such as roads, buildings or power lines. Of course, Jackson first had to find an area of rolling green pastures with a large round tree sitting along the bank of a small lake to serve as the hobbits' Party Tree. You'll see in the photo album for this journal entry that the farm had a perfect tree and lake for the film.

During our tour around the area of the farm that was used for filming, J.R. pointed out where different scenes were shot. He was a whiz with a camera, too, and took photos of all of us in various hilarious poses, whether we were trying to appear as tiny hobbits, dancing on the Party Field, hugging the Party Tree, or chilling out in Bilbo Baggins home. Of course, all of these should be reason enough for you to check out our photo album, if you haven't already done so when we asked you to in the previous paragraph. Bear in mind that the facades used in the film had been taken down because they were made of cheap, disposable materials and it was part of the contract with New Line Cinema, since they wanted to maintain secrecy and keep their possessions.

Site construction on the farm began in March 1999 and took nine months, with the enlisted help of the New Zealand Army; filming commenced in December 1999 and continued for three months. At its peak, there were 400 people "on site" including Jackson and several of the main actors in the films. The farm was still an active sheep farm during filming, and stray sheep occasionally blundered onto set. There were people whose prime responsibility was to corral sheep away from the film locations, and Sean Astin (who played Samwise) sometimes got involved in that activity. When we visited the farm and film locations, we saw many sheep around, our first up-close experience with the cute creatures.

The tour lasted around 2-1/2 hours and we felt that we really got our money's worth for the morning. J.R. was such a great guide that it made the tour very memorable; he had us laughing at his silly jokes and enthusiasm, and we left the farm with a great feel for what went on when the film trilogy Hobbiton scenes were captured on camera thanks to his useful snippets of information. As a result, we'd highly recommend the tour to anyone visiting New Zealand. When the tour was over, we were driven back to the Matamata I-Site, and then we walked back to the rail station car park to board Bessie and head to Rotorua, our next Kiwi destination. The drive to Rotorua didn't take very long and there was nothing too interesting to note along the way, as we just saw more rolling hills covered with green grass, and cows or sheep.