Hobbits lived here in NZ

The lush dairy and sheep farming landscape around the Waikato region near Matamata, on the North Island, was used to portray the peaceful Shire of the fictional Middleearth, the setting for the Lord of the Rings series.

It was here, on a working farm owned by the Alexander family, that the village of Hobbiton was created for the first three instalments and rebuilt for The Hobbit trilogy that followed it.

Today, the property remains as a permanent tourist attraction and the only remaining set of the 158 Kiwi locations used in the two series.

About one in three visitors to NZ about 400,000 a year to go Hobbiton, 177km south of Auckland. It is very much the spiritual heart of both the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series.

The Lord of the Rings story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, which was set 60 years earlier but developed into a much larger work.

Kiwi producer/director Peter Jackson turned it into a series comprising three high-fantasy adventure films: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003).

One of the biggest and most ambitious film projects ever undertaken, with an overall budget of more than $US281 million, the entire project took eight years from script development, with the filming for all three films done simultaneously and entirely in New Zealand.

Jackson received a knighthood.

Before becoming Hobbiton, the property was a workaday 500-hectare farm owned by the Alexander family father Ian and brothers Craig and Russell. (It remains a farm, running 13,000 sheep and 300 cattle.)

Hidden from the trappings of the 21st century houses, roads, electricity poles fame came to it after a months-long search of New Zealand by a location scout.

One day in the late 1990s the brothers spotted him looking over their property with a pair of binoculars. A plane was subsequently hired to fly over the property.

A few Saturdays later, Ian was at home watching rugby on TV when there was a knock on the door. The scout asked him if he could look around the farm. Yeah, go to it, as long as you shut the gates so the sheep dont get mixed up. Ian went back to watching the rugby.

Things got serious when Jackson returned with an art director and artists and representatives from Hollywood. Six months later, the Alexanders and Jackson signed a contract.

The next day the NZ army arrived in a convoy of vehicles including trucks, bulldozers, graders and rollers to begin preparing the set. It took nine months to build. After the wrap it was partly demolished.

A decade later, Jackson returned to film The Hobbit trilogy, bringing with him builders, artisans and gardeners to faithfully restore the set. It was also decided to make Hobbiton a permanent Lord of the Rings experience. Today, five full-time gardeners maintain the set to its original appearance.

Every day, groups of visitors, five minutes apart, are escorted on a tour through the Hobbiton movie set to get acquainted with the hobbits, their hobbit holes, the Mill and the Green Dragon Inn, where visitors sample the hobbits Southfarthing beer.

When you walk through the set you get the same otherworldly feeling as when reading the novels.

On tour, the hobbits love of beautiful gardens is seen from every corner. Each hobbit hole has flowers, herbs and vegetables. Extra-colourful potted flowers were added to the set each morning. Roses ramble around the frames of some, nasturtium grows from cracks in the stones.

At the end of the two-hour guided tour visitors walk along narrow wooded lanes framed by transplanted honeysuckle hedgerows and cross the graceful double-arched stone bridge for a beer in the Green Dragon, where hobbits once gathered to drink, gossip and discuss their day.

Although the vegetation looks centuries old, two years before the film crew started, the area was a sheep paddock.

- Lots of plants were cultivated in advance and then planted and grown onto buildings, fences and posts. Extra-colourful potted flowers were added to the set each morning.

- Each hobbit hole was dug and strong retaining walls and a wooden-framed roof erected. Turf was laid over the roofs. To make the hobbit hole look 500 years old, multiple layers of paint were applied. Vinegar was used to make timber look aged.

- Bricks were baked in a resident kiln and made to fit around a wooden frame to give the impression of a brick hole. The glass in some windows was cooked until it slumped and buckled to make it look older. Small windows were added to give the impression the hobbit hole stretched back into the hill.

- To create lichen, the art department mixed paint and glue for the moss and added yoghurt to encourage the growth of real moss. Stone paths were created.

- Some hobbit-scale holes were made larger so that when normal-sized actors stood in front of them they looked hobbit size. At one point the hobbit Frodo hugs the wizard Gandalf.

To create a height difference, a child double was used for Frodo. Fences were made on two scales to create differences in sizes of characters. All the props used were also made at different scales to emphasise difference in size..

- While the hobbits in the book sat under plum trees, it is mainly apple and pear trees on the property. But the plums were the wrong scale. So the original leaves and fruit were stripped and replaced with artificial plums and leaves.

- The natural pond on the site had many noisy frogs. The film crew had to catch them all so that their noise wouldnt interfere with the filming.

- Similarly, the huge tree above Bag End is artificial. It is made of steel and silicone and had 200,000 artificial leaves wired into it. Ten days before filming The Hobbit it was decided the colour of the leaves wasnt right. So crew were lowered in cranes to spray all the leaves the right colour.

THE Lord of the Rings is an epic, high-fantasy novel written between 1937 and 1949 by English author and scholar JRR Tolkien. With more than 150 million copies sold, it is said to be the worlds most-read book after the Bible.

The films were among the highest-grossing of all time and won 17 Academy Awards. The final film in the series, The Return of the King, won all 11 of its Oscar nominations, including best picture. The series was notable, too, for its innovative special and visual effects.

The first film in The Hobbit series, An Unexpected Journey, premiered in 2012, the second, The Desolation of Smaug, in 2013, and the third and final film, The Battle of the Five Armies, in 2014. They outgrossed The Lord of the Rings trilogy but did not win as many awards.

The films follow loosely the hobbit Frodo Baggins as he and the fellowship embark on a quest with the wizard Gandalf to destroy the One Ring and thus ensure the destruction of its maker, the Dark Lord Sauron. Ultimately they rally the Free Peoples of Middle-earth in the War of the Ring.

Tolkien himself described the hobbits as merry folk. Standing between less than a metre and a metre and a half tall, they dressed in bright colours, seldom wore shoes and had thick, curly brown hair.

Their faces were good natured, broad, bright-eyed and red cheeked. Their mouths were apt to laughing and to eating and drinking.

www.hobbitontours.com. Tours are often booked out so it is essential to book ahead. Entry is NZ$84 adult, NZ$42 (children aged 9-16). Children under 9, free. (Note: The set is not wheelchair friendly.) To book, email: office@hobbitontours.com