The Travelling McFrothys: Weta Cave and Wanganui

Weta Cave

New Zealand is well known as the location where the Lord Of The Rings (LotR) movies were shot. And they play it up a bit - who wouldn't? You can take tours to LotR locations nearly everywhere in the country - since nearly the whole country ended up in the movies, it appears. Even New Zealand's big airline, Air New Zealand, calls itself "The Airline Of Middle Earth". (Middle Earth is the fictional world where LotR is set.)

As it turns out, Wellington - being near the geographic center of New Zealand - has started calling itself "The Middle Of Middle Earth." When you arrive in Wellington's airport terminal, this is the first thing you see:

Gollum! Peter Jackson lives in/near Wellington, so I imagine this helps to Middle-Earth-ify things.

Oh my, now I don't know about that. Somebody is using the Middle-Earth name as an opportunistic trademark for wine. Pass.

The three dullard trolls from The Hobbit (also filmed by Peter Jackson in New Zealand) greet you at the entrance to the Te Papa national museum.

There's even a stamp featuring young Bilbo Baggins.

Given the prominence of the LotR and Hobbit movies here, we felt a trip to the Weta Cave was necessary. A weta is a large native (harmless) New Zealand beetle, but Weta is the costume, creature and prop design and fabrication studio owned by Peter Jackson, which is responsible for the look and feel of movies like LotR, District 9, etc. (Weta Digital is the separate visual effects branch.) The Weta Cave is a public part of the studio where you can take a tour with an actual Weta designer, see a bunch of famous Weta work, and view a couple of designers working on projects.

They don't allow photos in the studio itself, so there's not much to show on the blog. But there was a large collection of recognizable costume, weapon and armour pieces from various films, which was incredible. And you could watch their CNC manufacturing room. There was even a sculptor making a life-sized sculpture of Neptune and mermaids and turtles - not for any movie, just because he wanted to. They employ very talented people, and because they work so hard and are so passionate about their art, they are allowed pursue non-project work from time to time.

In the gift shop, you can purchase authentic Weta items.

For example, if you have a LOT of money, you can become the dark lord Sauron for Halloween. Wow.

Or maybe you lawyers would be interested in Bilbo Baggins' contract with the dwarves?

And of course you can't avoid Gollum, but he's not for sale.

We did see one thing that blew me away, and will definitely make Halo-playing Ryan H jealous if he reads this. Halo is a famous space-war video game made by Microsoft. One of the vehicles you get to drive in the game is a kind of futuristic HUM-V, called the Warthog. Microsoft commissioned some short films based on the Halo game. These films needed a Warthog. And Weta has a vehicle department.

So in the Weta Cave, you get to see a custom-made, perfectly accurate, life-sized, working Warthog. It is stunning - just like the game, with a big (Nissan) engine mounted in the rear, four wheel steering and four wheel drive, and a (non-lethal) machine gun mounted on the back.

Stock photo of the "real" Warthog

Not only that, but it has an inspection/license sticker on the window - meaning it's road-legal in New Zealand; frisky Weta employees could theoretically drive it to the coffee shop in town. Our tour guide claimed (tongue in cheek) he got much faster service when manning the machine gun at the drive-through.

To Wanganui!

The Weta Cave is just SE of Wellington, near the end of the peninsula. We drove around the outside of the peninsula before heading north.

Downtown Wellington in the back right

Entrance to Wellington bay/harbour

The road north was, well, a bit boring - a first for us in NZ. But we did stop in the little town of Bulls to have a look at their signs.

Trash Can

Cafe

Bathroom

Fire Station

Police Station

There wasn't much of interest until we got to Wanganui, and the mouth of the longest navigable river in New Zealand. It's not a huge town, but saw a lot of money from river traffic in previous times, as was obvious from some of the buildings.

Movie theatre

Coffee shop

Roundabout

First opera house with electric light in the southern hemisphere

The Wanganui River

We took a walk along the river after dinner, which was very lovely. The long waterfront park land has amazing public facilities: fountain parks, playgrounds, mini golf, bumper boats...

...and a skate park where local kids on razors jumped over girls.

Sweet looking go-cart track, but it wasn't open.

When the sun began setting we headed over to...

...the Ward Observatory! In the middle of downtown Wanganui.

This historic telescope was built in England in the 1850s, and still is the largest pure-refractor telescope in the southern hemisphere. It was purchased from a bankrupt British lord around 1902 and shipped to Wanganui, where this dome was built for it. Years ago it was donated to the local Astronomy club, and they hold public viewing sessions every second Friday (the day we were there), along with the club members' own modern telescopes that they set up outside the dome.

This is the first steel mount of this design ever built (previously it would have been wood). The left end of the mounting column points down at the north celestial pole, and the right end points up at the south celestial pole.

Sarah has a look at Jupiter in the early evening - you could see the planet plus about 5 of its moons. Through lenses that are over 150 years old!

Cozy meeting room is attached to the dome

This was a great evening - despite all the light pollution from the town, we saw many cool features of the southern sky (which is much more interesting and loaded with sights than the northern sky), like the "jewel box"cluster, the Orion Nebula, Alpha Centauri, etc. Truthfully, the modern telescopes brought by the club members seemed to produce better images than the big old telescope in the dome. The club members were really keen and helpful, and we had a great time viewing and learning. We spent a good two hours looking at the heavens, and the club members showed no sign of going home when we left.

This completely vindicated our decision not to go star-watching in Lake Tekapo - the one-hour viewing that costs $125 per person for one hour looking through telescopes largely of the same power as the ones in Wanganui. Yes, Tekapo is at high altitude, and the air is dry, and there is little light pollution. But you have to take a 30 minute private bus ride up and down the mountain there. In Wanganui, the observatory was only a 3 minute drive from our hostel, and you could hang out for as long as you wanted for only $2 each. I can't believe this isn't mentioned in our guide books. Well done, Wanganui astronomy club!

The observatory is cleverly located across the street from a pub, in case the astronomers get thirsty.

The next morning was a sizeable market Saturday along the riverfront! Wanganui just kept getting better. The tramway museum was open next to the market.

And if we had been possessed of more time, we could have taken a cruise on New Zealand's only fully functional paddlewheel steamship, which had several departures that day from the market.

Instead, we took a quick trip up the town's elevator, dating to 1916. Anticipating more people moving to the upper part of town, they built a 200+ metre tunnel to an elevator that lifts people to the top of the hill beside the river.