35 | The Hobbit

The primary reason for visiting the North Island was to visit Matamata and the set of the Hobbit. I was gladly not left disappointed. Another long intercity bus journey of 4 hours guided me to the set before 3 hours on location and another arduous journey back. It can often be quite lonely on these kind of day trips when you only have a short period of time to get to know people before you disperse again. This time however I made an Algerian friend for the day who of course had football in common to talk about as we made chat about Madjid Bougherra and his time at the mighty Sheffield Wednesday and his tenure now with the Algerian national team.

The engine strained on the bus as we climbed the rolling hills to get to the farm sat in the bottom of the valley where the hidden set was formed. The set has around 3000 visitors a day in the summer months so as you can imagine, we did not have the place to ourselves. Our enthusiastic guide showed us to the entrance way to the village where you can see Gandalf ride a cart in on the film. We were told they used a lot of scaling scenes in the film where they would have an 8ft guy and a child sat in the back as a Hobbit on a cart to really emphasize how small the dwellings were.

The original set was torn down after production however when they realized they could generate a good revenue from the films it took them 3 years to rebuild it to the original specifications. They took 17 ‘chosen ones’ from the local town (Matamata) to play various roles as hobbits with the description of having to be around 5’5ft and have a round belly at the local college castings. The New Zealand army was given the role of helping transform the landscape and provide laboring support. They were also cast as Orks for the film in which they were asked by Peter Jackson to tone down their fighting in action scenes as they were too violent.

We made our way through the pumpkin patch and up the hill eventually to where the main Hobbit house is sat right at the top where Bilbo Baggins lives. The famous sign “No admittance unless on party business’ hangs on the gate outside the rolling green home. The tree at the top was scouted by Jackson’s team to find the perfect Oak tree in which they cut it into pieces then glued in back together on set giving it fake leaves. When you walk around the set you get a really deep appreciation for how long it took them to put it together and the detail they put into it for what maybe a 2 second scene. The mountain scenes were shot in various places across the North and South island in places such as Wanaka in the Southern Alps. Most of the studio production was done in Wellington.

After walking back down the cobbled path and through clouds of butterfly’s we reached the foot of the hill where an old mill is still operational and at the other side of the stone bridge is the Green Dragon pub which is in a number of scenes at the start of the film. You get a free drink on the tour which is a bonus so I went for a dark ale which tasted pretty nice whilst sat in front of the famous log fire from the movies. If you are a fan of the films it is definitely value for money costing me $155 for a 11 hour day well spent looking around the set and looking out at the beautiful scenery of the north island.

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