
From Taotaoroa Road in the Maungakawa Hills looking north west towards the Hobbiton Movie Set some 7km distant.
From Taotaoroa Road in the Maungakawa Hills looking north west towards the Hobbiton Movie Set some 7km distant.
Hobbiton, the film/movie set, is at the very edge of the Cambridge economic and social catchment. Tucked into rolling farmland between Cambridge and Matamata on the Buckland Road – to the east of here – it is now a significant tourist attraction. Hobbiton’s presence has added value to the local economy – which is great. That the fictional Shire is located among those hills in which I grew up has always seemed entirely appropriate to me. This is, of course, sentimental nonsense but does reflect some of the magic I felt about my surroundings when growing up, and still do. I have yet to grasp what is actually happening in the stoush currently surrounding The Hobbit – but here’s hoping this special place does not lose it’s place both in the imagination and the real world.
Overnight (20/10/2010) Twitter chatter for Wellington, New Zealand via Russell Brown.
Russell et el; Hard News: Anatomy of a Shambles