Tuesday 30th January – Doing the tourist thing in Wellington

The alarm went off at 8am and my head still hurt, more drugs required!

Gollum from Lord of the Rings

We got dressed and drove straight to Miramar, a section of the city home to the biggest film industry outside Hollywood.  Weta Studios is responsible for 30 years of film history – the couple who started the business have gone from working on puppets in their house, to later being involved in all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Hobbit movies, as well as Avatar, Ghost In A Shell and most recently Blade Runner 2049 amongst many others!! They have recently recreated the Thunderbirds franchise, retaining the charm by using hand-made models for all backgrounds whilst the Tracy’s themselves and the Spaceships are created by CGI and layered on top of the filmed models.  It seems to be doing well globally, they are currently filming season three.  We were booked on two tours.  The first one covered various creations they have done for massive blockbuster films.  There were no cameras allowed in, as the majority of props still belong to the big movie companies, but we were allowed to take a few pics and here are some from the gift shop. 

We got to meet one of the artists, here creating futuristic buildings out of flotsam and jetsam..... ah, that's where all the left over Lego goes...

Them's hobbitses feet...

Scary Auk

There were many examples of masks and helmets and lots of information, mostly about the LOTR films and involvement by some famous actors.

We had a brief break between the two tours which gave us time for more coffee and to play around outside with the trolls (left).  Then we were transferred by bus to the Thunderbirds studio where we got to see the working sets including Tracy island with the not-so-technical mechanism to expose the runway… But the detail was amazing.  They’ve even continued a gag from the original series of hiding as many lemon squeezers into the scenery as they can get away with! These artists have got one of those jobs I bet they can’t believe. Playing with models and special effects every day of their lives.

The tours finished at 1130am.  I still felt rough.  Simon drove us to what we thought looked like the southernmost point on the island.  Was that the South Island we could vaguely make out through the cloud?! Not sure...

On to our view point for this city, the Mount Victoria look-out for panoramic views of Wellington and the harbour.

The Byrd Memorial

At the same time we discovered the Byrd memorial (right).  If you travelled in a straight along its axis the next place you would reach would be Antarctica. The memorial commemorates two of America’s great Antarctic explorers – Admiral Richard Byrd and Paul Siple. Byrd introduced aircraft to Antarctica and piloted the first flight across the south pole. He then changed his focus from heroic exploits to scientific research. Siple introduced the concept of wind chill to the world and its effects on the human body. Their work largely laid the foundations for the Antarctic treaty of 1959 which declared the area south of 60° south as a region devoted to peace and science with no territories or borders.

We headed back to our car park from last night. We still had some time on our ticket and I still needed something greasy to eat to sort me out, so we created bacon sandwiches from the back of the van on the tarmac! 

We then went to the ‘Te Papa’ museum right next to the car park.  This is a National NZ museum containing many different halls and themes but we had been especially recommended to see the 'Gallipoli; The Scale of our War' exhibition by our guide at Weta Studios, as they had worked on the project.  We had told ourselves that we could only really afford to spend an hour in the museum before we should hit the road but how were we to do that when the exhibition was so incredible and impactive?  

One off the Weta sculptures (with random punter in the background for scale)

The huge replicas that Weta had created were painstakingly made by hand, for example we’d learned earlier that the facial hairs were placed one at a time into the silicon skin.  The models were displayed in individual rooms making them very imposing and each one was a recreation of a real New Zealander telling the story of their involvement and, more often than not, death in World War I.  It was very moving. Almost 3000 ANZACS were killed at Gallipoli, but over 4 times more than that died on the western front.

What an epic journey to join a War - we have been lucky enough to visit Wellington, Hobart and Albany and see the memorials to those brave soldiers

This doctor, Percival Fenwick, survived Gallipoli but was sent home suffering from PTSD after the horror he had experienced

The machine gunners trio

Mega-giant squid in the museum

After we tore ourselves away from the Gallipoli exhibit, we moved to the Earthquake simulator and some wildlife exhibits before we really had to go.  We had made full use of our 24 hours parking, leaving Wellington about 3pm.

West coast's black but very soft and fine sand

We drove north for about four hours to reach Patea, on the west coast. We found another cheap campground and I went for an evening walk along the river and onto the beach.  Here on the west coast, the sand is black!

Patea beach