The day I become a Hobbit

The Shire where JRR Tolkien's Hobbits live has now moved from fiction to a farm in New Zealand. It left Latha Srinivasan in a daze with its Hobbit holes, Green Dragon Inn and specially brewed ales

I arrived in Auckland on a cold summer’s day and was whisked away in a chauffeur-driven car to The Shire, a two-hour drive out of the city. This was a place that actually really didn’t exist but it did — all because of Sir Peter Jackson and his movies based on JRR Tolkien’s books. Hobbiton! There I said it. When Graeme the driver picked me up, the first question he asked me was why I wanted to visit Hobbiton. “I am a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films,” I said. “I want to experience a slice of film-making history and be a part of it. And I want to be a Hobbit for just a few minutes.” He gently nodded and as we drove to Matamata, spoke to me of how much Sir Peter had done for tourism in New Zealand as a result of his films. He created the 12-acre Hobbiton on the 1,250-acre Alexander farm in Matamata. A knock on the Alexanders’ door in September 1998 by Sir Peter’s location scouting team changed their lives forever, and more than two million people have visited this place since.

The drive to Matamata was beautiful, with lush green hills and meadows on either side, inundated with sheep and beef farms. It was a delight to see these free-range sheep and cattle that are the pride of every Kiwi here. On arrival at The Shires Rest (office and souvenir shop), I was greeted by Shane, my tour guide for the next two hours, and off we went to see the homes of Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamjee. In order to create the perfect Shire of Middle Earth, Sir Peter had made extensive changes over nine months to this farm, creating the Hobbit holes, the Green Dragon Inn, the Mill, the double-arched bridge and other structures and gardens that form the milieu of his films. In fact, the New Zealand Army was brought in to make Hobbiton’s roads on the farm. We arrived at the edge of the village and Shane asked me, “As soon as you step over that threshold, magic will take over. Are you ready for the magic?” I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and took my first step into Hobbiton.

  “The director was looking for a specific location that had no power lines, just rolling hills on one side and mountains on the other, with a small lake and a large pine tree (the Party Tree) on its banks. And he found it here,” explained Shane as we walked. “When he shot the LOTR trilogy, the set was not built with permanent material, but of plywood and Styrofoam and was later dismantled. When it was rebuilt with permanent materials in 2011 for The Hobbit trilogy, the Alexanders requested New Line Cinema if they could keep the set.” Sir Peter and the Alexanders partnered in bringing Hobbiton to life.

As you tread the path that Gandalf used to make his entry into Hobbiton, you realise how precise Sir Peter has been to Tolkien’s book — from the size of the pathways to the 44 different Hobbit holes, the gardens, the tools found in front of each home related to the Hobbit’s trade, the plants, trees and barberry hedges. For instance, to form the foot trails on the grassy Shire, he hired people to walk up and down the path to tamp it down. The bricks used to create the Hobbit holes were made on the site, and since Tolkien spoke about a plum tree that was not available in New Zealand (the country has a ban on the import of any plant), Jackson took a miniature apple tree and wired fake plums on it. Even faux lichen was created to give a weathered look to the fences.

Hobbits share a love for things that grow, and gardening and food (six meals a day) are the passions of these little fellas. Rows of apple and cherry trees, along with a beautiful garden patch of fresh purple cabbage, carrots, peas, lettuce, pumpkins, herbs, strawberries and cherries, can be found here. In fact, Maya, another tour official, plucked a few fresh juicy strawberries for us to nibble on as we walked around.

When we got to Bilbo’s green door and the towering oak tree, Shane asked me if I noticed anything different. This oak tree was man-made! The 26-tonne oak tree was taken from another farm and rebuilt piece-by-piece on its spot at Hobbiton, and carefully fixed with 300,000 artificial leaves imported from Taiwan. “Because it’s extremely windy, we have to replace the leaves as they fall,” said Shane, explaining that the tree was held up by an iron structure. I was eager to go into Bilbo’s house but was disappointed to learn that the interiors for all the Hobbit Holes were created in the studio — only the facade and exteriors existed here. We then moved on to the Party Tree area tracing Bilbo’s dash to the fence where he jumped over, screaming, “I’m going on an adventure!” Standing at the fence, I could actually picture him running to catch up with Gandalf and the Dwarves.

The Green Dragon Inn is the hangout for Hobbiton residents, and this was where we decided to have lunch (as do all visitors to the Shire). The interiors of the inn have been recreated exactly as in the film and you half expect to see Frodo and his friends Sam, Pippin and Merry sitting at a table glugging away. “The menu here has Hobbit fare,” explained Shane as we crossed the bridge from Bag End to the inn. As we settled in, Shane told me that the Girdley Fine Grain, Oatbarton Brew, Frogmorton Ginger Beer and Sackville Cider by Southfarthing were specially brewed for the Green Dragon Inn and were found nowhere else in the world. He recommended the Sackville Cider, which is refreshing because the fruit flavour simply bursts in your mouth. It was perfect with the ham and cheese mousetrap and fresh fruit tart.

As my journey at Hobbiton came to an end, I felt a little like Bilbo having travelled nearly 9,000 km to be part of his adventure. And like Gandalf tells Bilbo, “You’ll have a tale or two to tell of your own when you come back”, the visit to Hobbiton is a tale worth retelling!