New Zealand; Day 11

Today was Lord of the Rings Day. We had a quick browse around down town Rotorua before heading off to the Alexander family's farm near MataMata. It was the site chosen by Peter Jackson to build the set for Hobbiton for the movies, and once there you can understand why; it can't be seen from the road, and from the site you can't see power lines, buildings or any other trace of western civilisation.

Our expectation was that all the movie set stuff was removed at the end of filming, and so the tour is simply an expensive way to see some holes dug into the side of hills. However, when we got there we were informed that the site is presently under the control of the movie production company and we had to sign confidentiality waivers. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to disclose the existence of the waiver itself, but basically if I discuss any of what we saw, or publish any of the photos we were allowed to take for private use only, Peter Jackson will personally set on me not just his lawyers but possibly a few Nazgûl, and frankly I'm not sure which would be scarier. Therefore let me just say that it's public knowledge that pre-production work has commenced on The Hobbit, that we didn't see just holes in the ground like we expected, and OMG OMG OMG OMG did we time our visit right because they're probably not going to be able to run those tours for much longer before they have to stop for a few months.

The farm is still a working sheep property, and so at the end of the tour we got to see a sheep shearing demonstration and to feed two really young lambs, who understand the game by now and came tearing out of their pen towards us all looking for who had the bottles of milk. Everyone else on the tour could see the superb photo opportunity of letting Eleanor do some feeding, but we did share the bottles around, too. She just loved it.

After a second breakfast at the cafe / gift shop it was on the road again.  I've been having a recurring dream about the Crowded House lyrics to Mean To Me, particularly the line about how "the sound of Te Awamutu had a truly sacred ring".  I put it down to all the exposure to Maori place names, but had no idea of Te Awamutu is a real place or not, and if yes, where.  So imagine my delight when we drove through it!


From there it was off to Waitomo and some Hobbit holes that I can show you photos of. Woodlyn Park is a slightly wacky motel with a train carriage, and plane and a boat converted to accommodation. They've also built two Hobbit holes into the side of the hill, and we'd managed to book one of them, which capped off our day perfectly. I'm guessing they're popular, because it looks like a couple more will be built next door to ours. Ooops, am I allowed to say that?