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Published: October 15th 2006
SUNDAY - Afternoon, after internet of the last blog...
After a gruelling 3 hours of internet writing it was back to the van for lunch and then wanted to get educated with the cultural knowledge of New Zealand, so a free activity was presented to us on our arrival to the city; The Te Papa Museum of New Zealand.
As with all big cities/capital cities there is a museum presenting the history of it's country, wildlife, culture and employment etc. It was a very good museum one of the best I've been to I'd say covering everything I'd want to know about New Zealand. The highlight for me was a cinema room which played 6 short solo (doc's about one person) documentaries about a handful of interesting and intruiging people who live in NZ; one woman who did experimental dance in the bush, one woman who photographed the changing of face cliff completly alone, a guy that was a beat-boxer, a base jumper who went and jumped off a cliff drop, an old man who lived in full belief of spritual healing and a chinese man who had become a true Maori and was fuly excepted by the Maori people
WETA workshop
No photo's allowed..didn't stop sneaky Chriso getting this one!as one of the best. For me, as a media student looking to get into doing these exact things, it reminded me of my passion to become a video editor and also reminded me of what lies ahead when I get home to the frightening 'real-world'. Since watching the doc's my filming has improved and we are filming SO much of our New Zealand trip - it's now onto tape number 41 = 41hours of tape... anyone want to pop around to watch my holiday video, haha, god knows how I'm going to edit it all into a nice watchable length?!
The Te Papa was as I say very good and was also a recommendation from our old travel buddy Colin, cheers mate!
We parked the van at the top of one of the hills in Wellington not far from Victoria lookout in a residential area. On one of the signs for the park above us an arrow pointed towards 'Lord of the Rings filming location' which I wanted to get to but the sun was setting and tea and bed called my name.
MONDAY - Hobbitts hiding place, electric VANity and where the magic happened (WETA)
A good place for Hobbits to hide
A scene from Lord of the Rings, 'The Fellowship of the Ring' was shot here when Frodo and Sam hide from the Nazgul. I am usually the first out of bed being the holder of the alarm and this morning was no exception on a wet and drizzly day in Wellington. After a spot of breakfast, - mmm yummy, BASICS wheat biscuits, again - I popped off to the bathroom i.e. a hedge, and then felt the urge, even in the wet and muddy conditions to see what the film location was, so carried on my walk up a slightly slippy, mud path towards the location spot. I had to ask a woman where it was as I felt I'd been walking a little bit too far for the time of morning having not let the boys know I was going, to which she answered "5 minutes, that way" and "not a very nice day for it"
I got there eventually after some slipping and sliding to find a muddy, clay embankment surrounded by a load of trees... needless to say it ment nothing to me and could have been anywhere else on the path. It wasn't until later that night when I was watching the extras on the DVD when I saw that exact scene by pure chance that shot was
in the trailer, awesome!
Our van was under more strain as the towel rail had fallen off the wall bracket, the electricity wasn't working on the internal lights and the therefore leading to the fridge not working, great! So we went to the nearest electrical workshop suggested by EZY (boy are we going to have words when we drop the van off in Auckland!) and they said to pop back later as they might have time to fit us in.
In the meantime Matt and I knew that in Wellington there was a place called the WETA workshop where everything was made, edited and produced for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. After doing part of my dissertation on the Two Towers film I knew a lot about the film and watched/listened/read about it all happening within the WETA workshop.
So our mission; to find the WETA workshop hidden somewhere in Wellington... a needle in a hay stack! But after asking at the Information desk in the main square we were told it was somewhere in an area called Miramar. Once we got there we drove around for a while, until we thought it best to ask someone,
who was comingout of building which had a huge blue screen in a car park? She gave us the directions and as she walked away Matt noticed that on the back of her jacket there was a small King Kong logo (WETA were also responsible for the work on that film) did she work on the film... we'll never know!
We drove around the street she had told us and the was a place called 'Camperdown studios' which from the car appeared to have a huge Orc model in the window of their reception. As we had no clue where we were going we hopped out of the van to go in and ask. As we were about to go up the stairs to the reception there was a sign at the bottom; WETA Workshop, we'd found it, so Chris quickly took a picture just before woman entered the car park and tol dus we weren;t allowed to take photo's.
"I'm just here doing some research for my dissertation" I say, so she shows us upstairs to the receptionist. Inside there was a life size costume of one of the main Orcs in the film and lots of little models
everywhere on the desk.
"I'm from Lincoln University, I'm just in New Zealdn travelling around all the loactions of Lord of the Rings and whilst in the area I thought this would be the best place to try and get some information?" ...remembering I handed my dissertation in over a year ago and have now graduated!
The receptionist popped into the back for a whileto see what she could find, giving us a chance to have a really good nosey at the conference room next door which housed a whole host of Oscar's and models, only forher to come back and tell us there wasn't anything she could really offer us. Ah well, it didn't really matter, we had still got inside the WETA workshop, something I never thought we'd get to do, only expecting big gates and a security guard. It was awesome inside, computers everywhere and people, probably people that have been involved with Lord of the Rings, Narnia, King Kong, just walking around having coffee. There were also so many little ornate models everywhere, even a rather large gold head of Gollum. It would have been pretty funny if we'd just seen Peter Jackson walking around. I'm
just glad the receptionist didn't come back to us with a CGI dude who was willing to do an interview, because I would have had no idea what to ask him!
Back the electrical shop to try and get VANity fixed. All was sorted within 2 hours and she fit as a fiddle!
We then took the opportunity to walk around the city of Wellington as see what kind of shops etc. the place had to offer. We found that Wellington was a very cool place with nice shops, cafes and bars, thumbs up Wellington.
As per usual, it was back to the van for what I'm sure was a scruptious and fullfilling meal, a brew and bed.
TUESDAY - hail the lighthouse on the hill?!
We departed Wellington in the morning to travel east towards Castlepoint, a place with lovely scenary apartently. The weather was lovely until we parked on a beach looking out towards the lighthouse for lunch (beans on bread.. that's right, no toaster = bread dipped in beans, we really do treat ourselves sometimes) when the weather deteriated into a hail storm just as we were going to take some photos. It was a serious hail storm too, not just a little one as we drove back across the country towards the west coast.
We camped in a little carpark in the field of a historic bunkhouse for the night.
WEDNESDAY - Bad weather leads to a want to surf but can't scenario...
After a wee drive we got to a little place called Oakura a very small surf town with a nice black sand beach and some messy waves. It was time to charge the cameras so we sat in a nice little coffee shop owned, surprisingly by an american couple and had coffee and muffin for $5, leaving our things with them whilst we walked around. Once again the heavens opened to put a dampener on the day. We splashed on some fish and chips and then as usual, a brew, the Office and bed.
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