New Zealand on a Very Tight Budget Day 19

We’ve had a very Tolkienesque day! We spent our last morning in Wellington at the Weta Studio Workshop having first driven round the very beautiful Miramar peninsular. The workshops are situated in a surprisingly suburban setting with nothing much but a couple of giant Trolls outside to announce their presence among the neat weather-boarded houses.
Weta have produced props and prosthetics for some of the great Hollywood blockbusters most notably including the Lord of the Rings/ Hobbit series, Narnia, Avatar, King Kong etc and many television series including Hartmann children favourites Hercules and Xena Warrior Princess! Our tour guide was a working artist at the workshop specialising in hair and wigs and she was very entertaining, enthusiastic and enlightening. It is no wonder these productions run into many millions of £/$ to make. The level of work, skill, detail and sheer time that goes into every scene is mind-blowing. I will make a point of sitting through all those credits at the end of a film now just to pay my respects to these unsung heroes. Weta employs the only living master swordsmith to have his work included in the Queen’s Armoury collection and despite all the advances in technology like CNC cutters and 3D printers much of the work is still done by hand. No photos allowed in the workshop, only outside and in the shop. Sorry!
From there we retraced our steps through the city and out north passed many Lord of the Rings (LOT) locations along the beautiful Hutt River including Helms Deep, River Anduin, the Rohan River and finally a lunch stop at beautiful Rivendell. There is a beautiful 1 hour walk through the forest finishing up at the location and I was surprised at how much was actually constructed there for the filming. An arch has been constructed as the gateway to Rivendell and while we were watching the 5ft long eels in the river a tour group came along some in costume!
From there we crossed over the Rimutaka Pass where 35,000 troops had walked from their training camp to embark for Europe in World War I, some finding their way to Brocton Camp on Cannock Chase and most never to return.
New Zealand carries the weight of it’s terrible losses in World War I very heavily. Even now the only queue at the Te Papa museum was for Sir Peter Jackson’s Gallipoli Exhibit and everywhere there are memorials to the fallen.
We then drove south down the side of Lake Wairapapa through very flat countryside between two hill ranges to Palliser Bay and are parked up at the Putangrua Pinnacles DOC site reading for walk tomorrow (LOR Dimholt Road). On the beach we found the coast was rapidly eroding leaving one building hanging. Well Lester did say earlier that the flat farm land reminded him of Norfolk! We know we are in for some wet weather this week so trying to arrange our itinerary accordingly.
This marks the most southerly point of our trip and the half way mark of our visit.