This morning a couple of us decided to sleep in a bit while the rest of the group went into town for breakfast and coffee. I had a good sleep in to around 10AM-ish and ended up going through some photos and writing some blogs until around midday when we met up with the group at Devil Burger for lunch.
Devil Burger was pretty good but some of those burgers were really massive! I got a pretty simple chicken burger but Rob ended up getting a burger called “The Man Killer” and it was about the size of his head with double beef patties and a portobello mushroom.
After a huge lunch we went back to the hotel and waited about 10 minutes for our tour guide to arrive. Before long a big 4x4 arrived and Paul, our driver introduced himself and we jumped in the car and headed out. Paul was originally from Sydney and moved here a while ago.
Out first stop was a lookout point over Queenstown where Paul explained the lay of the land and pointed out the major landmarks and what all the mountains were called. He also covered some of the history and which parts we used in Lord Of The Rings. He also explained that The Remarkables mountain ranges were formed from a glacier and runs directly north and south along the land. It was also used extensively for Lord Of The Rings and a number of other movies too. It was used so much that in one shot it was even used as the foreground and the background superimposed over the top of itself!
Paul knew a lot about Lord Of The Rings! He explained how Peter Jackson tried to avoid computer graphics as much as possible and always tried to opt for miniature models and other camera tricks where ever possible. One of the tricks he used was called “forced perspective” where people like Gandalf would be really close to the camera to make him look really big and the hobbits would actually be much further away from the camera to make them look smaller.
From here we drove out to the bungee bridge we visited earlier, but this time we went up a nearby mountain that gave a pretty cool view of the place! It was here that Paul explained that Peter Jackson also tried to be as authentic as possible to the original text and had all the props created with a serious amount of detail. Even the boats were created by hand to match the original text although while they were accurate to the story they were not very good boats and made it very hard to actually use on the water. Even though the boats would basically start spinning whenever they were on the water, the team persisted but had to keep the shots pretty short to make it work.
Next stop was a little gold mining town called Arrowtown. A long time ago there was a gold rush around here and people came from everywhere to get gold from the nearby rivers. The township was preserved as close to original as possible so the buildings looked like they would have back then apart from the sealed road which would have been dirt! There were even places to tie horses.
We stopped here for a toilet break and then headed to a nearby river. There were a few scenes from the movies shot around here and Paul explained the history of it all. There were also blackberries growing on the side so we had a little snack on these. They were really nice!
After our snack and history lesson Paul took the 4x4 into the river and we ended up tackling some hills. Along the way we saw some people panning for gold and even a couple getting some wedding photography along the river. The ride was pretty fun and it certainly shook us around a bit!
We stopped at a breakout area along the river and Paul prepared some tea, coffee, hot chocolate, cake and biscuits for us while we had a look around. Then he showed us how to pan for gold and gave us some time to try it out. This was pretty similar to Sovereign Hill back home so I ended up walking down the river taking photos instead, but Amy found some gold specs!
After this we ended up driving to another lookout point up a mountain that had a view of the entire Wakatipu Basin which was the huge area where Queenstown was built. Apparently once upon a time it was all under water but as earthquakes shaped the land a lot the water drained out and formed the land mass that allowed civilisation to flourish and Queenstown to exist!
We took a drive around the mountain trails and Paul showed us some more landmarks. Along the mountains the landscape is dotted with green pine trees. It turns out that these trees are not native to New Zealand and were introduced during the gold rush era. With so many people coming to that area in search of gold, they needed trees for the wood to build the township, tools, etc. and so pine plantations were established. Once the gold rush had ended the pine trees were no longer needed, but by this stage they had spread all across the mountains.
This doesn’t sound like a bad thing to have more trees, especially with all the deforestation problems around the world but it has been classed as a national disaster by scientists because the pine trees make the land more acidic that usual and kill off the native vegetation. With the pine trees spreading everywhere and killing the native plants, the native wildlife have been dying off too.
That was basically the end of the tour and so we headed home. Paul was a great tour guide, we were all speaking about movies and games on the way back and we learned a lot - so much that I barely touched the surface in this post!
When we arrived back at our hotel we unpacked and relaxed for a little before going out for dinner. Another highly rated place in Queenstown was Pedro’s House Of Lamb where there is only one thing on the menu: A double serve of Lamb with Potatoes for $45. We ended up buying three of these for our group to share. We also stopped by the grocery store to pick up some snacks and a HDMI cable so we could have a movie night! After learning so much about Lord Of The Rings, we thought it would be good to watch it again and see how much we recognise.
We ate our dinner and all ended up in Anthony and Amy’s room to watch Lord Of The Rings on their TV from Amy’s laptop with popcorn and ice cream. It was a nice way to finish off our last day in Queenstown. After the movie we packed up most of our stuff so we could leave by 9AM.
