When we planned this trip around the world, we had hoped to be able to make the complete journey without flying, but unfortunately we couldn’t find a reasonable way to get from Australia to New Zealand by sea. There are cruises that do go between the two, but there was no way to make a simple point-to-point voyage. Australia and New Zealand are a lot farther apart than most North Americans seem to think – almost 2300 kilometres from Brisbane to Auckland, which is over three hours by jet or three days on a ship.
We will still, in a narrow technical sense, have gone around the world without flying this year: our two flights are back and forth from Brisbane, so New Zealand is a side quest that’s not actually on the main widdershins route. Or at least, that’s what we’re telling ourselves.
In any case, Valentine’s Day found us (romantically) enduring the standard indignities and discomforts that come with air travel. Fortunately the flight was uneventful and on time; could have been much worse. Thanks to Margaret for driving us to the Brisbane airport.
On arrival in Auckland we hopped a bus to the nearest train station, then a train to the city centre. Our AirBnB host offered to pick us up at a station part-way there, which was very kind of him and saved us a twenty-minute walk.
Once we’d settled in, it was time to reward ourselves with a meal and a nice beer, which we found quite handily at Vulture’s Lane.
Our apartment was near the Sky Tower, which was lit up at night in constantly-changing colours.
The apartment was just off Aotea Square, which is fronted by the Waharoa gate. The apartment building, which is at the left of this photo, is a former city government office tower converted to condos.
The next morning, Greg went out for a run. After weeks of hot and humid weather in Australia, especially Brisbane, the relatively cool air of Auckland was quite a relief. This is Auckland Harbour viewed from Tamaki drive, a photo Greg took on his run.
While Greg was running, Karen grabbed some groceries. Here’s another new-to-us chip flavour, which was quite good.
After a late breakfast, we walked through the city centre to the Auckland Domain, which is a large public park on the hill left by the extinct Pukekawa volcano. Our destination was the Auckland Museum.
At the museum we attended a Māori cultural presentation. This was a great way to learn about the history and traditions of Aotearoa’s first settlers. Aotearoa means “land of the long white cloud” in te reo Māori (the Māori language), and is the accepted Māori name for New Zealand. The Māori are believed to have arrived on the islands around 1250 CE, making Aotearoa one of the most recently settled places on earth. The first European settlement of the islands was in the early 1800s.
The presentation included stories, songs, history, and dance, with a focus on post-colonial reclamation of Māori culture. At one point audience members were invited to join the dance, and of course Karen was the first to go up. The two lead presenters were a husband and wife team: the woman at the front and the man just behind her.
The Museum includes a large display of Māori artifacts in the Te Marae Ātea Māori Court, as well as artifacts from many of the Pacific islands whose culture is related to the Māori. These are Māori poi, the progenitors of the modern poi used in the juggling and flow communities.
The large canoe, or waka, is Te Toki ā Tāpiri, the last great war canoe that was used in battle. It was carved around 1836 from a single tōtara log, is 25 metres long, and could seat over one hundred warriors.
This is Te Rā, woven from harakeke (also known as flax, but unrelated to the European plant of the same name) sometime between 1770 and 1800. It is the last surviving example of the traditional Māori sail, as the Māori adopted European sail patterns shortly after contact.
This is a highly-decorated wharenui, or meeting house. It is one of several Māori buildings in the museum.
By the time we’d properly visited the main floor, the museum was closing for the day. There were a lot of other galleries we simply didn’t have time to see – if we ever make it back to Auckland we will definitely pay it another visit! This is the view of Auckland Harbour from the museum steps.
On our way back to the apartment we stopped at the Napoli Contemporanea pizza bar for dinner and Aperol spritzes, all of which was excellent. The purple dough was the restaurant’s nod to Valentine’s day.
This is Gateway, by Chris Booth, a sculpture we passed on our way back.
Much of the land around Auckland Harbour was reclaimed from the sea. The city has created a shoreline heritage walk that follows the original shoreline and includes pictures from before and during the reclamation. We’d stumbled on a corner of the walk on our way back from the museum and decided to walk a part of it the next afternoon. While it was a fun and interesting experience, most of the stops weren’t particularly photogenic – it’s the plaques showing what the place used to look like that make it cool, so it’s something best seen in person. However, here are a couple of interesting photos we took.
This building is now the Victoria Park Market, and is well inland. However, as you might guess from the enormous chimney, it once housed the City Destructor (awesome name!), a waste disposal incinerator and sometime electrical generating plant, in use from 1905 through 1972. It was originally right against the shoreline.
And this, of course, is what an Auckland local would call a petrol station. But it’s not the petrol station that’s interesting, it’s the wall behind it, which is a remnant of the original Auckland seawall. The location is now over one hundred metres from the nearest water, and five hundred metres from the open harbour.
As some of you know, Karen is a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth tales. She’s also an enormous fan of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of Lord of the Rings, and to a lesser extent, The Hobbit. (If you share her feelings that The Hobbit movies are unnecessarily bloated and not true to the source material, you might want to look here and here.) Greg is also a fan – not quite to the same extent as Karen, but still a fan.
Anyway, given all that, there was really no question whether we’d be visiting the number one shrine to Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies in all the world: the Hobbiton Movie Set. This is located near the town of Matamata, about 170 kilometres south of Auckland, so it was onto an early morning bus and off to the Shire for a visit and lunch at the Green Dragon.
The movie set is located on a large sheep farm, still owned and operated by the Alexander family. Tour groups arrive at The Shire’s Rest, just across from the hill you see here, and are bused to the set itself at ten-minute intervals.
This was our guide, One (oh-neh), a young Norwegian woman in New Zealand on a work visa. She was a wonderful story teller, had a terrific sense of humour, and was a master at managing our group. She asked how many people had seen the films or read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion. Amazingly, there were people on the tour who hadn’t seen or read any of them – and Karen was the only one to have read The Silmarillion.
And here we are, delighted to be in the Shire. Bilbo’s home is just visible – the green door under the tree at the top left of the picture.
Most of the hobbit holes are just fronts, with a shallow opening behind them, some of which are used to store gardening tools (out of sight of the visitors, of course). All the interior scenes in the movies were filmed on sound stages elsewhere, mostly London; this set was just for exterior shots. This is the official “get your picture taken in a doorway” hobbit hole. Thanks to One for the picture.
And here’s Karen, in front of Bilbo’s door. It’s a good thing she was there on Official Party Business.
Here’s another view of Bilbo’s hill. The tree at the top is completely artificial, and has about a quarter-million painted metal leaves on it. It’s actually the second tree used in that spot. For the Lord of the Rings films they dismantled an oak tree from another location, reassembled it on the hilltop, and gave it fake silk leaves – all of which faded by the time shooting was ready to start, and had to be individually repainted. The Hobbit takes place sixty years earlier, so Peter Jackson decided a younger-looking tree was required and had this one designed and constructed. All the other trees on-site are real and alive.
There were wonderful details in the front yards and behind the windows of all the hobbit holes.
When the set first opened as a tourist attraction it was just the exteriors, more or less as they’d been left after filming The Hobbit movies. But of course everyone wants to go inside a hobbit hole! Recently they’ve completed first one interior, and now two, completely furnished and lovingly detailed for the tours to visit.
Apparently hobbits played a Middle Earth version of Scrabble. Who knew? The hobbit hole interiors were completely designed and fabricated by the Weta Workshop in Wellington – the same company that did all the props for the movies.
The holes are built at 85% human scale, as you can see here. Interior sets for the films were built at 100%, 85% and 65% scales, depending on whether they needed the actors to appear larger or smaller.
Of course the interior holes include the most important room in any hobbit home: the pantry. Everything you see here is a beautifully-detailed fake, and permanently fastened down, for obvious reasons.
Karen particularly loved this detail: the hobbit children’s heights, recorded on one of the posts in the kitchen. Spoiler: they didn’t come up very high.
From the back door of the hobbit hole we had a lovely view across the lake to the Green Dragon pub, our destination for the end of the tour.
Our walk around the lake took us beside the old mill. Excuse the modern scaffolding poking out at right; they were in the process of re-thatching the roof.
As some of you may know, Karen’s nickname in high school was Rosie, from her last name, Swensson-Rosenquist. And Rosie is also the nickname of the hobbit Rose Cotton, the Green Dragon barmaid that Samwise Gamgee ultimately marries. So, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get a good shot of our Rosie enjoying a half-pint by the bar. This Green Dragon has its own range of signature beer, with a non-alcoholic ginger beer for those who don’t imbibe. Greg had the amber and Karen had the stout, both of which were excellent.
And here’s Rosie again, chatting with the servers at the snack bar. We didn’t buy anything there, as our tour included a full (excellent) buffet lunch in a well-appointed marquee tent just behind the pub itself.
And then it was back on the bus, and back to Auckland.
Our verdict: yes, it’s a manufactured tourist attraction, but it’s also a lovingly-constructed homage for true fans of the books and the films. The whole experience was beautifully-presented and we found ourselves quite touched. If you’re a fan at all, and find yourself on New Zealand’s North Island, we’d definitely recommend the trip.
The next day was our last in Auckland, and after our adventure the day before we mainly kept things quiet. However, there was a Latin festival happening in Aotea Square, which we visited for a bit. While we ate our dinner there was a rather unorthodox game of chess being played behind us.
We also stopped and listened to one of the bands for a bit. This group was Brazilian, which isn’t exactly Latin, but they were good and the crowd was having a fine time.
The next morning it was on a bus bound for Hamilton, Waitomo, Raglan, and other adventures.
