He Taonga No Te Whenua, Me Hoki Ano Ki Te Whenua (Or, Back to the Earth)

On April 10, 1968, the Wahine, on an inter-island route from Lyttelton on the Banks Peninsula to Wellington, got caught up in a savage storm near the capital city and sank. Fifty-three people on board were killed in what was likely New Zealand's most infamous maritime disaster – I bring it up not because of any significant anniversary, but because the howling winds and sideways rain that pulverized Wellington last night were, by some accounts, the worst since that storm. By other accounts, it was actually worse.

Even today, some 15,000 people in the city were without power. Roads and rail lines have been damaged, flights and ferries are at a standstill, trees and powerlines blown over, and the clean-up is likely to take a few weeks – even so, it's not as fierce as on the South Island, where snowstorms are the worst that they've seen in decades. Snowmen standing sentinel all across Canterbury tonight, the longest night of the year in the Southern Hemisphere.

For my part, I'm safely tucked away between hills in Wellington. My new WWOOFing locale has been, in a lot of ways, a chance to get back to basics. We're on a mini-lifestyle block etched into the steep banks of Wilton, and that space has been utilized with a veggie garden, a chicken run, greenhouses full of cacti, and clusters of native New Zealand trees. Work has been simple and relaxed – potting tree saplings to replant them, sifting compost, chopping wood.

Oh, and baking. Lots of time spent in the kitchen, making apple pies, a crumble with fresh cape gooseberries (ever had one? It's got a sharp, tarty taste that's like something I've had before, but I can't place it), and a carrot cake whose icing has a hint of lemon zest.

It's probably the most counter-intuitive thing I've experience this year, that this trip has made me appreciate good food. Backpacking on a budget, you're supposed to get used to really cheap, crappy, instant food – and I've had more than a few bowls of noodles, but a huge chunk of my time has been spent staying with other people who, in general, like to cook good meals. And I've been paying attention – I wouldn't be able to whip up a perfect pumpkin curry or laksa right from memory, but I at least know that I want to learn and experiment, once I get back to my own kitchen space. I want to make my own bread. I want to grind up nutmeg and use it in something. I'm only half-joking when I tell people how someday I'll open up my own meat pie shop in Canada.

The rest of the time has been spent exploring, from the Parliament buildings downtown to the fern canopies around the block. Wellington has a pretty extensive town belt of greenery, and nearby to the house is Otari-Wilton's Bush, a network of trails through native bush that's part of that arc. Linda took me for a stroll through there the other day, the drizzly calm before the real storm. After five months, I finally learned, to some extent, what the hell I'm looking at when I go through the New Zealand forest. Up to this point, all I've known is that any forest walk is likely to turn up more shades of green than you could have imagined to exist – now, at least I know what rimu and totara trees are.

Another part of that town belt, on the other side of the city, is Mt.Victoria. On October 11, 1999, both “Genie in a Bottle” and “Mambo No. 5” were in the Billboard Top 10, and the first take for The Lord of Rings was shot here, in the core of Wellington. Merry and Pippin woke up that morning, planning to steal a few carrots from a farm and probably smoke a lot of pipeweed, and instead got caught up in this ridiculous journey – anyway, that's the scene that was shot here, from when they tumble down the bank and find mushrooms to when Frodo tells them to get off the road and they hide in a little dell from the Black Rider.

We went looking for it, just past a little quarry at the end of Ellice Street, finding a woods path aptly named “Hobbit's Hideaway.” The patch where they look up the road and sense that something sinister is approaching is pretty easy to find – but that tree root hiding place is a different story.

It's only a tiny path between two larger routes, so I thought it would be easy. We crisscrossed over a couple different paths and ended up wandering through the woods, but were still no closer – until a Wellington Movie Tours group came along, and we decided to come right out and ask where it was. “You're standing on it,” she said.

Remember how that little patch of forest where the kids put a pig's head is totally a metaphor for Simon's loss of innocence in Lord of the Flies? Same thing with this tree for me. There's no tree. It was never real, just a studio trick. All that's there is the little indentation in the path, where weirdos have been flocking for the last decade to get a picture and pretend they're doing something more significant than just sitting in the dirt.

Other than Hobbiton and maybe the hillside of Edoras, you can't really find many exact Lord of Rings locations. New Zealand looks like Middle-earth, but if you want to go out and find the rocks where the Fellowship has their breakfast interrupted by some evil crows, you need a helicopter and some farmer's permission. Same can be said for a lot of other shots – and those that you can get to have a lot of digital altercation, or else sets built that have long since disappeared. That's not a disclaimer warning you not to waste your time – just be aware of what you're getting yourself into.

I've also decided that no one is going to be able to watch those movies with me when I get back home. There's no way I'll be able to sit through it without pointing out how you can see the rooftops of Wellington from where the hobbits hide, or that that short scene at the Ford of Bruinen is spread out over two locations a couple hours apart. Plus I'll tell you exactly which locations I went to and where they are, effectively making me more annoying than that guy who keeps sending you Slotomania requests on Facebook. 

The storm winds were just starting to gain momentum when we finished dinner and headed to Te Papa last night, for a special concert by seven Maori performers in celebration of Matariki. That's the name of a cluster of stars whose appearance in the sky signals the start of the Maori New Year, and the Seven Brothers, from different parts of the country and different iwi, represented a cross-section of performers and styles coming together in celebration of the event. And I mean that when I say that – I think I was expecting something a lot more traditional, with drumming and chanting, but maybe that's a Western predisposition. All the acts were introduced in Te Reo, the native Maori language, and many of the acts dealt with indigenous issues and language, but also utilized contemporary tricks of the trade: hip-hop, funk, singer-songwriter, blues.

TK Webster opened things with a guitar and a piano, beneath the beautifully lavish contemporary marae, a spot of spiritual significance for the native population. Edward Waaka had the soft-spoken guitar songs that you'd play for a girl – and he brought one along to play violin. Riqi Harawira brought a loop machine along and carried himself like a rockstar – the power went out midway through his set, but he kept going (it helped that he was midway through a song with a sing-along chorus). Seth Haapu called his siblings together to interweave harmonies to his love songs. Tipene06 got the crowd waving their arms in sync to his club beats and made me feel conspicuously white. David Grace has been at this for 30 years, and brought a salty voice to his acoustic rock. Israel Starr closed off the nearly three hours of music with reggae vibes, backed by his own DJ.

Just as we went back into the wild Wellington night, the whole group came back on stage for “Rua Kenana,” a  Maori song written by Grace and featured prominently in the intense, bleak, and disturbing (but powerful, well-made, and worth watching) film Once Were Warriors, which came on TV last night. Most people in the audience recognized the song, dedicated to Maori leader and activist Tame Iti, whose protests have constantly drawn attention to the the tense relationship that still exists between the natives and Pakeha. 

It made for a fitting conclusion to a pretty great night in Wellington – and a good reminder of how much there is to learn and appreciate about the people that we're sharing this planet with, the good and the bad and everything in between. That's true no matter where you are, be it at a Matariki celebration in New Zealand or reflecting on National Aboriginal Day today in Canada, and as soon as you forget that, things must get pretty boring – even if you're caught in gale force winds or running from undead bad guys in black cloaks.

Cheers,

rb