Hobbiton Movie Set
37.8723° S, 175.6834° E

Today we went to visit Hobbiton, the movie set for the Hobbit village called The Shire in the Lord of the Rings & Hobbit movies series.

The movie set is in the middle of active farmland but cannot be seen from any roads as it is located in a couple of small, deep valleys.

This seclusion was the main reason the area was selected for the movie set.

The whole operation is very well designed to handle thousands of tourists each day. Car & tour bus parking is in a separate area & you must take a special bus to get to the actual movie set. An on site bus loaded with 30 people departs every 15 minutes & each bus has a guide who leads your group on a tour of Hobbiton.

At first we wondered why we needed a guide but it quickly became obvious that the entire site & set would be in total chaos if people were allowed to simply wander around on their own.

Our tour guide was a young woman named Jordan & she was excellent! She explained all of the history of the movie set & gave us an explanation about each of the Hobbit homes on the site.

She also had lots of interesting trivia about the set & the actors. At one point during the movie filming there were more than 400 people on the site – actors, film crew, props and maintenance people!

The picture below is Bag End, home of Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins.

The first time the Shire was created, it was never intended to last much more than the three months of filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The entire set was dismantled, only leaving a few stone steps & the site returned to be used as sheep grazing land.

When Peter Jackson wanted to film the Hobbit trilogy in the same location, the land owner & the movie company partners decided to build a more permanent set that would be left behind as a tourist attraction. It took two years to re-create the set that was used for only 12 days of filming! Below is the home of Samwise Gamgee, featured in the last scene of The Return of the King.

The entire set was quite charming with beautiful gardens outside each Hobbit house. But all the Hobbit Houses are in fact, facades, with the doors opening only to reveal to a retaining wall behind. It gave us a glimpse into the magic of film making.

The tour concluded at the Green Dragon Inn shown above where everyone was treated to a mug of beer or cider.

Wally’s buying!

Step up to the bar!

It was a great morning & we had lots of fun.

After the tour we were back on the road again, this time headed to Auckland for an overnight stay at a hotel near the airport.

Tomorrow we fly “back” to Sydney.

Cheers!