Discover New Zealand, Home of Middle Earth
Tuesday, Day 2, and we are up at 5:30 in the morning in our Kiwi Camp, our biorhythms under the impression that it's almost lunch time. We decided to hit the road and take the excellent NH 1 motorway (which Stefanie promptly dubbed "Interstate 1") south to Pokene, where we turned west to try to find Port Waikato and the location of Weathertop, where the hobbits were attacked by Black Riders and Frodo was stabbed by one of them with a Morgul blade. After driving around for a while, we figured we had probably seen it a couple of times without, of course, the sets or camp fire.
The roads there wind around the mountains and go from sealed (paved) to gravel to dirt to sheep trails and eventually take you back to where you started. We got lost several times.  Stefanie just about had a heart attack sitting in the left side with trees and things whipping by and nothing to push on or steer with.

In spite of the fact that there are sheep on the road, the speed limit in the entire area is 100 kph (60 mph), so if you have the nerve to do it, it's legal. I didn't!
Our next stop was Matamata and the Hobbiton tour. I had talked to Sue Whiting at the information center before the tours began, so I was interested to see what they had accomplished at the information site. We arrived there just after the noon tour left, so we had time for lunch before taking the 3:00 tour of the site of "The Hill" where Bilbo, Frodo and Sam lived. For some reason, I had expected a thatched roof. I'm almost sure I saw one on the Internet site, but I can't find it now.
Frodo and Bilbo lived in "smials," modern versions of the holes ancestral hobbits lived in.  The sets at Hobbiton were almost completely dismantled before the family that owns the land decided to make money by allowing people to visit there. We were told that the original contract was to completely restore the land. I would have insisted that New Line Cinema make all the sets complete with authentic little hobbit-sized apartments so people could actually visit Bilbo's home.
The party tree is one of the things you first notice (besides the sheep, of course) when you reach the farm, and the tour has posted photos all around the site, showing what it looked like during filming. The tour guides do a very good job of describing the site and all that went into making the film. A "must get" photo is the party tree looking out "Bilbo's door." Stefanie's photo of it turned out much better than mine.
I got my chance to have my picture taken next to the actual party tree. In the book it was cut down by Sharkey's men. Sam replaced it with a Mallorn from a seed that Galadriel had given him along with a box of dirt for his "bit of garden."

The set builders built the set and then waited a year for everything to "grow in," so it would look like a real place, and not like a movie set.  It must have been the most wonderful place on earth!  It really is too bad they didn't just leave it as it was.  Frodo must have felt much as we did when he saw what Sharkey's men had done to his beloved Shire. 
The Hobbiton tour was very well done, and we were glad we had made it. Over 5000 people had been there before us.  Nevertheless, we left for Taupo with a bit of nostalgia, remembering Hobbiton as it once was. Maybe some millionaire will buy the farm and restore it. They told Walt Disney he was crazy to build Disneyland, and look what happened!
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