It is Friday the Thirteenth of March that sees us in the heavily populated, capital city of a foreign country where they drive on the left side on crowded city streets! They also build their houses and some of their roads on the faces of impossibly steep hills! Fortunately, we have arranged to spend the entire day on the Flat Earth Tour of the hobbit-related sites of Wellington and leave the driving to somebody else, our tour guide shown here with me. He is Jack Machiela, who knows everything anybody can think of, and then some, about hobbits, JRR Tolkien, and Walt Disney. Jack his been doing these LOTR tours longer than anyone else in the country and greatly energizes our tour group with his enthusiasm.
Our first stop of the morning is at one of the many locations on the Hutt River used as a set for the Anduin River in LOTR. This particular one is the location of the dream sequence in The Two Towers where the body of Boromir is pushed out into the Anduin in his funeral boat. Jack has brought along an iPad with the film sequence to compare with what we are seeing on site. He also found some blackberry bushes and invited us to try some. This drew protests from two German girls in our party who were convinced that eating anything picked wild will result in certain infestation of worms! Our next stop is Kaitoke Regional Park where Pegah got to borrow an elf cloak for a visit to the set of Rivendell.
Kaitoke Regional Park is adjacent to the Hutt water collection area and comprises mostly native species of trees and bush. Like most, if not all, parks in New Zealand, this one contains tracks for wilderness hiking. The most popular loop walk in the park, opened in 1983, leads through the valley of the Upper Hutt River. In accordance with New Zealand regulations, the Rivendell set has been completely removed and the land returned to its previous natural state, but fans have erected this memorial archway to commemorate the site, and there are reportedly plans to add more artifacts as circumstances, and government approval, permit. Here Pegah is playing elf in this lush natural setting.
There is a map of the Rivendell site that I assume shows the layout of the set used for the scenes in The Fellowship of the Ring. Like many of the other set locations, I was unable to correlate it with my recollection of the film. I didn't recognize the camera views shown on the map or the Fords of Isen location shown on the map as "Here flows the Pakuratahi River." The Pakuratahi flows from the Rimutaka Range east of Lower Hutt before turning southeast to reach the northwestern shore of Lake Wairarapa, but I don't remember seeing it at all. The layout of the set bears only a passing resemblance to the view of Rivendell shown in the billboard advertisement for The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey.
Fernside Gardens, about 40 miles east of Wellington, was used as the location for the woods of Lothlorien. Dominating the gardens is Fernside Lodge, once purchased as a residence for America's official representative to New Zealand. The gardens were established around 1870, and were maintained until after the American occupation. After that time, they were neglected, and many plants and trees chose their own locations, This has resulted in a blend of English style manicured hedges and walkways with the more natural environment of New Zealand trees and flowers. These provide a very relaxing landscape and a riot of color. It is easy to see why this area was chosen as "the center of elvendom in Middle Earth."
One of the features of our tour was advertised as "an al fresco lunch at one of the region's leading restaurants." This turned out to be a picnic lunch in the Fernside Gardens catered by our tour guide, Jack. This posed a problem, as whoever selected the menu had failed to consider that some of us (me) would not be eating meat on Friday during lent and the allergy of one of the German girls to nuts. Here she is standing well away from Jack slicing some nutbread. I finally ate the nutbread and she selected the nut free meat sandwich. Later on we visited the set of the fishing scene in the introduction to The Return of the King, where Deagol found the One Ring and Smeagol/Gollum killed him for it.
Peter Jackson and his crew stayed at Fernside and filmed several significant scenes for The Lord Of The Rings in addition to the classic scene in which Smeagol fought Deagol beside the Gladden fields. Fernside's white bridge received a major makeover and a large artificial tree trunk was built on the side of the lake. Here Pegah imitates Galadriel bidding farewell to the members of the Fellowship of the Ring as they leave the city of the elves. Our next stop was at Harcourt Park, used as the gardens of Insengard, including the cutting of the trees and the path beside the bridge where Gandalf rode to visit Saruman. Nothing remains of the set except a slight discoloration of the grass where the path was.
Perhaps the highlight of our tour was a visit to Weta Workshop and Weta Cave in downtown Wellington. Here Pegah shows off her entry pass, oblivious to William the Troll reaching out to her from behind. Later she appears to bait the three trolls, knowing full well, of course, that they have all turned to stone in the sunlight! We saw some of the more interesting achievements of Weta Workshop in the workshop tour and prop development demonstration, conducted next door. We were strictly prohibited from taking any pictures inside because of the possibility of inadvertent release of trade secrets or projects in work. I really wanted to have my picture taken with Neytiri from Avatar. She's a big girl!
Associated with the Weta Workshop is the Weta Cave souvenir store. Here one can select from a huge range of merchandise, such as collectible sculpture by Weta artists, prop replicas from their many movies, jewelry and clothing, books and DVDs, art prints and posters, and keepsakes and souvenirs of all kinds. At the time we were there, they were still concentrating on memorabilia from the Tolkien films, but their inventory includes items from twenty additional ones. Collectibles are exquisitely crafted and finely detailed, and range from tiny busts to full-sized replicas, priced accordingly. Their products can be purchased at the Cave or on line from all over the world.
Here are a couple of examples of Weta Workshop art. The Rivendell replica is here priced at $NZ 579.00 and from their website for $US 399.00, making it about nine percent less expensive to order online. The replica as seen from the left closely matches the billboard poster above. On the right. Pegah is being scrutinized suspiciously by a full-sized replica of Gollum, priced online at $2,999.00. This is a larger version of the statue popularly available in the United States as an accessory to the extended verion of The Two Towers DVD and made in China. With a credit card, one can spend truly astronomical sums of money in the Weta Cave. I decided to wait until I returned home to shop online.
Our final stop on the Flat Earth Tour was Mount Victoria, the site where Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin found the mushrooms and encountered the Black Rider. This area is also the location for part of the chase of the four hobbits to the Bucklebury Ferry landing. Pegah and I are standing in just about the exact spot where Frodo had his premonition of approaching evil and warned the other hobbits to "Get off the road!" The tree roots beneath which the hobbits hid as the Rider was sniffing about were an artificial prop, since removed. Here the area seems fairly empty, but we were assured that during filming, the production crewmembers had a difficult time staying out of each other's way.
Before we left, our tour guide Jack introduced us to a (thankfully dead) real weta, the common Maori name for members of about 70 flightless nocturnal insect species endemic to New Zealand. Some of these are among the largest and heaviest of their respective families in the world. They have different diets and have evolved in geographically isolated New Zealand to favor different environments and habitats.

After our long, informative and intertaining tour, we were happy to get back to our Capital Gateway Holiday Park to enjoy a delicious dinner in their exceptionally well-appointed restaurant.

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