There and Back Again - A Hobbit Lovers Tale, Part 3

I am learning that one of the best things about this adventure is our access to places we might never have known about. Trollshaw Forrest is just such a place. As we continued our travels south on the NZ north island, Julie filled us in on Hairy Feet in Waitomo, in the town of Piopio. Piopio is pronounced the way you would fire your laser gun in Star Wars. Hairy Feet is a sheep and cattle farm started in 1941 by the Denize family. Warwick and Suzie currently run the farm and the Hobbit movie site tours. Julie reached out to them, and made friends, and now this is a big part of the Red Carpet Tours.

Suzie tells the story that in 2010, they were visited by one of the location scouts for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The farm was selected because of the dramatic limestone cliffs, paddock and woodlands. And Warwick and Suzie were very hands-on, cleaning up over 30 acres of their land to make a good impression on the film crew to insure their selection. Once the decision makers arrived, they were heard to remark, ‘it looks like a movie set already!’ The farm has the second most screen time of any location, except Hobbiton in the Hobbit films, and has also been used for the Rings of Power.

The farm is truly amazing scenery. The limestone cliffs rise menacingly above the property, leaving a fabulous backdrop for attacks of orcs and wargs. Suzie takes you to numerous places throughout the site, showing pictures from the films to help orient you to the scenes shot there. They had 8 months of planning, 500 people moving into the small town of Piopio for the shooting, and a week of location filming for 6 minutes and 30 seconds of actual footage! This was the place where Bilbo and the Dwarves met the three trolls who tried to cook and eat them. And when you have something as big as a Peter Jackson film in a small town, you are sworn (contractually) to secrecy. Suzie’s father-in-law, an elderly man who could probably run circles around any of us, likes to tell the story about how the children had to pretend nothing was going on as they went to school every day. In fact, the youngest child, who was 5 at the time, did let slip that ‘Michael Jackson was coming to our house!’

It was quite an adventure for the Denize family. Local contractors had to build roads and other infrastructure to get all their equipment up the mountain side. Over 500 people had to be housed and fed each day. The Denize kids got to wash up and help serve food in the massive tents brought to the property. And the stars of the movie hung out on the farm and got to know the whole family.

We learned that even the horses had to be in costume, as they weren’t hairy enough to suit the vision. Sets were built, torn down, moved and rebuilt. The farm had little connection to the rest of the world, so the film crew placed aerials and generators on the cliffs to allow good cell service. The family was invited to the gourmet meals that were served daily to the actors and crew.

Suzie and Warrick take great pride in maintaining the farm and the paths to allow tour groups to see all the areas where filming occurred. Suzie carries photos of the scenes, so that as you trek through the woods, you can easily recognize every tree, bush and field from the actual movie. She really brings the whole experience to life, and we felt very lucky to be able to spend the better part of the day here. We picnicked in the yard, were able to take pictures and do remakes with all sorts of film replicas, met some cute sheep and a sweet family dog who was grateful for everyone’s attention. And it was remarkable that, separate from all the movie stuff, this is still an active farm with over 2,000 sheep!

We left reluctantly, as the Denize family really made us feel welcomed and appreciated. The next few hours were spent on the coach as we headed to Taupo and the Huka Falls. The Waikato River, NZ’s longest river, enters a shallow ravine of hard volcanic rock in Taupo. The effect is nature’s way of feeding water through a fine-nozzles fire hose. This is natural hydro power at its finest, with more than 220,000 liters of water per second rushing over an 11 meter waterfall. It really is spectacular.

That evening, we checked into our hotel and crashed. So far, this tour is everything we could have wanted and mor