Month: January 2026

Thursday we said goodbye to Wellington and headed north. We did see the overhead wires for an electric train. However from my reading, there isn’t great train service in New Zealand except to the main towns. Even then, much of the travel is by air between the major centres, except for the ferry which crosses from North to South Island at Wellington.

It rained much of the day so pictures were more challenging. Paul remarked we drove through areas that reminded him of Southern Ontario, Northern Ontario and then an area that was drier and more like Arizona.

We arrived at our motel for the night with some time left to catch up on blogging and reading newspapers from home on line.

Tomorrow we travel the rest of the way to Auckland.

Our drive down to Queenstown was uneventful. Much of the same landscape we’ve been seeing – lots of hills, sheep and cattle. I had been checking availability for a tour I had read about that would supplement what we had seen at Hobbiton.

As we got closer to Queenstown, I made a booking for us at the Wētā Workshop. Founded in 1987, it is an award winning creative services company, taking on projects of all sizes. This 58,000 square foot building makes physical effects. These include things like costumes, weapons, armour, vehicles, models and miniatures, special makeup effects and much more. 

They are known for contributing props, weapons, costumes, vehicles, armour, miniatures and much more to a variety of wonderful projects including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, Avatar, Alien: Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Blade Runner 2049, 

Much of the tour we could not take pictures. We learned how they took moulds of faces in order to make special effects. We saw props that were used in films. We saw hobbit hands and feet.

We learned how they used plastics, foil and other materials in making props. We even had a chance to try making something using aluminum foil.

And then it was photo time….complete with props!

And then the tour was done and we said goodbye to another troll outside the cave.