Wild Welly

I was down by the entrance to the Homer Tunnel leading to Milford Sound with my friend Dorotheé a few months ago, trying to thumb down a ride back to Te Anau as the sun got dangerously low, when she asked me if I'd seen a kea since I'd been here. Had I known to what extent it would become my cross to bear, I think I would have gone back to that moment and lied.

As it was, I hadn't, but I decided I wanted to. We reckoned we heard a few squawking in the trees above us, but never laid eyes on the green alpine parrot endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. The kea is a funny creature, routinely described as cheeky, intelligent, jokers, and a nuisance. Do not feed the kea, the signs say – you won't be able to get rid of them. And be careful where you park your car, when you get up towards Milford Sound or Arthur's Pass – they'll peck at the rubber around your tires, and if you leave the door to the outhouse open, someone else is liable to come around before too long and find toilet paper flung every which way, worse than a crappy principal's house on Halloween.

Or Christmas, if you're this dude.

We went to Milford Sound again the next day. No kea. I went through Arthur's Pass – three times, camping one night handy to the village of the same name, some 700 m in elevation. No kea. I visited Mt. Cook Village and went along a walkway called Kea Point. No kea. I left the South Island as a chump, eluded by Squawks the Parrot from Donkey Kong.

Except that Saturday was a fine day in Wellington, and I went to the Wellington Zoo, a forerunner in carbon reduction and the so-called best little zoo in the world, its collection including an African savanna, a couple of islands that act as havens for monkeys, and two kea. We finally met eye-to-eye, and I was able to move on as a slightly better person.

I'm pretty sure I've been to a zoo before, but I'm at a loss to say where it was or what I saw there. So this might as well have been my first time seeing the big cats and the other hairy weirdos roaming the green fields just outside of the city core. The good thing about Wellington Zoo, like Zealandia, is that the animal handlers and feeders have spread out interpretation talks throughout the day, so that you don't just go in, do a circuit, take a few pictures, and go home.

So, after the kea, I went to the large area they've set off for a community of chimpanzees. From the wriggly squirrel monkeys to these much bigger apes, there's something really cool about seeing a creature that's so close to a human. The way they interact with each other, prodding and grooming, the way they move their bodies (especially their hands), the way they look at you when you look at them – it's a bit uncanny, but it's also really engaging.

The chimpanzees came right over to the little stream that separates their area from the raised fence, holding their hands out to catch apples that got flung at them. They're a decent catch, too – I guess because if they fumble, some other monkey is liable to rush over and take the food. One chimp dropped his apple in the water, and as it slowly floated away he leaned over, reached in with a dainty hand, and shook it off before bringing it to his mouth – no lumbering in the water for him.

I've been rolling my eyes at the fiasco Justin Bieber's been going through, losing his pet monkey – but I feel for him now. I want a monkey. Any kind will do.

Up through the savanna and replica African village, there were ostrich, wild dogs, nyala, meerkats, and two hefty giraffes looking over the whole thing. In order to get up close to them, you had to go up onto a raised platform, getting about level with their head. Hold out a tree leaf given to you by a volunteer, and you'll get a sloppy tongue shoot out and make short work of it – if you get a chance to feed a giraffe, make sure you take it.

The lions and tigers were less menacing than they could be if a few gazelle were involved, basking in the sunlight. These oversized felines spend a lot of time sleeping – all the more to build up their energy to tear the hell out of the freshest meat on the menu.

Speaking of fresh meat, there are plenty of these friendly little reminders plastered around the display areas:

And die. That's the final panel they're implying, kids.

An amphitheatre in the middle of the zoo, the Wild Theatre, hosts a little performance a few times a day. Two zoo keepers brought out an Australian cockatiel (well, actually the audience did – it flew out and did a swoop over our heads by a round of applause) and got it whizzing around on command, giving it some exercise and developing motor skills by getting it to play fetch with some plastic blocks.

Seeing a kea was on my personal New Zealand bucket list – seeing a kiwi is on the universal New Zealand bucket list. Had to do it – the flightless, furry, nocturnal bird with the long nose for scrounging for food (apparently, the beak size is a measure of the distance between tip and nostrils – because the kiwi has nostrils right next to the tip, they've got a very long beak to look at, but a tiny beak on paper) is the New Zealand icon, an endangered little creature that's part of the national consciousness. And most kiwis (the people) actually haven't seen a kiwi (the bird) in the wild, not only because their numbers are so small, but also due to their late night, elusive nature.

A special Twilight House, Te Ao Mahina, is your best bet of seeing a kiwi in Wellington. In you go, to a narrow pathway in a darkened room, lit only by red lights (the bird can't see the colour red, so it looks like midnight to them). It takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust, and as tree shapes slowly emerge, you can hear a busy rustling in the bushes. Kiwi, where are you?

Right there in the corner, minding its own business. Bigger than I thought when I first came Down Under – about the size of a rooster but, with that curved schnoz, in a league entirely of its own. In an adjacent room, another talk was underway, first bringing out a tuatara – another endemic creature, but this one an ancient reptile that fits in your hand and can trace its lineage back some 200 million years. So pretty much a dinosaur – I saw one behind a glass wall in Invercargill, but this time I got to rub my finger down its oddly fleshy back.

Then, out came Tahi, a one-legged kiwi that a farmer near Auckland accidentally caught in a trap and brought in to the Nest, the on-site veterinary clinic. The little guy came out for a feed, but didn't bother to stick around much longer. You'd almost call it a flyby . . . minus the flying part, of course.

Next up for feeding was the sun bear, a medium-sized honey bear from Southeast Asia with a patch of yellow beneath his furry black chin. This guy would be dwarfed by some of his grizzly peers, but you still wouldn't want to get between it and its dinner.

The Wellington Zoo never intended to house blue penguins, a tiny little thing that's actually the smallest of the penguins (Fairy Penguins are what they're called in Australia). These dudes call the coastline along Wellington their home, and these three in particular ended up here after coming to the vet and being unable to be released back into the wild (missing wings, missing eyes, and a slight case of thinking it's a person) – so, the otter enclosure got divided in half, and now the blue penguins have a place to play.

An expansion of their home is just one of the things that Wellington Zoo is working towards, with a much greater area for native creatures allotted for the near future. Conservation is a major priority for the zoo, encouraging people to cut back on their personal waste and buy eco-friendly products, recycling rain water in the washrooms, and telling everyone to keep their cats in the house at night and their dogs on leashes. It's a great privilege to see all these happy, healthy creatures together in one place, but it would be an even bigger one to know that they're safe in the wild. Even my buddy the kea, which used to number in the hundreds of thousands, has a current population between one and five thousand, and this is in New Zealand, where the natural environment and native species are sacrosanct.

Wilderness of the bush one day, concrete wilderness the next. Today was another gloriously sunny, warm day – right time of the year, wrong hemisphere. It's supposed to be winter down here, but it still felt mild at 14 degrees, and as I walked along the crowded waterfront to mill about with the locals, I didn't need my jacket anymore. It was the right kind of day though, as if the city was saying, “Nice seeing you mate, hope to see you again.”

For, just like that, the Wellington Saga is over. Nights on Cuba Street, wandering through Courtney Place (a conglomerate of flashing lights, cheap foreign takeaway places, and strip joints), tracing along the gentle waterfront, and taking in the small town-meets-city environment – it too has been a privilege. But with the morning comes a northbound journey, hitchhiking my way to Hawke's Bay on the East Coast, and the Art Deco city of Napier. Because at midnight tonight, it'll be the first of July – and suddenly, it's not true that I'll be home in Newfoundland in a few months.

It's more like weeks. Away we go, off on another lunatic adventure.

Cheers,

rb

What Came in Dreams

There's a good reason the theatre is one of our oldest institutions. A group of people in a darkened space, collectively taking part in suspended disbelief – taking part in something that's like life, but that is enhanced and contorted for the sake of spectacle. Diction is refined and poignant, movements calculated, relationships more dramatic and passionate than you seemed to remember, and the whole look has a polished sheen. And I'm not just describing a multimillion dollar blockbuster on the Imax screen – it could be a one-man show, so long as there's that undefinable characteristic that has been simplified and reduced to “theatrical.”

Escapism is the most lucrative business on the planet, hands down. There are plenty of people who scoff at spectacle, but their criticisms are usually a double-edged sword – Michael Bay won't stand the test of time in the same way as Orson Wells, but the former didn't make Transformers and wind up as a jobless hobo, either. Sometimes, people just want something over the top. Something loud, something flashy, something that's been somehow elevated beyond the ordinary. That, to me, is a crucial part of the stage theatre experience – people dress up, drink wine in the foyer, buy glossy programs, and sit in carpeted balconies overlooking gilded ornamentation. What happens on stage is, of course, the raison d'etre, but the tantalizing tease beforehand can't be overlooked.

The St. James Theatre in downtown Wellington opened its doors over a century ago, fell into a decline that nearly saw it demolished over the past twenty years. However, the Historic Places Trust intervened, commandeering a refurbishing project that ended with a beautiful theatre that has all the pomp of the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. It feels like a special place, even with a bare stage before the curtain comes up.

Oh, and it's reputably built on top of an old cemetery and haunted. Some kind of amazing luck kept that tidbit from me until after I'd been to a sold-out performance of The Phantom of the Opera during its New Zealand debut by Wellington Musical Theatre.

You know Phantom, whether you know it or not. Andrew Lloyd Webber's deliciously Gothic romance of what lurks beneath the Paris Opera House really is the go-to musical – 130 million people have been in the audience to listen to the music of the night, and the production has grossed $5.6 billion since it premiered at Her Majesty's on the West End in 1986. That chunk of change is more than any other film or stage production in history, which ought to tell you something. That clash of the organ pipes as the eponymous spectre appears on stage is as recognizable as “The Imperial March,” and carries something of the same significance.

Gaston Leroux's 1911 novel, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, wasn't a bestseller – if anything, it was an obscure relic before it turned into the musical. The stage show opens in the same year that the novel first appeared, unceremoniously at an auction of used theatre props. The atmosphere is tense – you're waiting for something, you're just not sure what. A few set pieces are sold, and then Lot 666 is up for auction: the chandelier that played a part in the disaster, decades earlier, involving the Phantom of the Opera. The auctioneer's voice raises as he explains how the broken chandelier has been restored and fitted with electric lights, so that we can all appreciate how it might have looked. In a blinding flash, it's hoisted from the edge of the stage to its perch, and the booming overture blasts from the orchestra pit, reverberating through the theatre.

I knew a couple of the more well-known songs from Phantom – the titular track and “Music of the Night” – but even my rough idea of the plot wasn't much. Odd that, in this era of instant spoilers everywhere, I could go this long without knowing what happens in the most popular piece of storytelling entertainment out there. I decided, though, that blessed with this naivety, I didn't want to know too much before going. Everything, from the score to the finale, was going to be seen (and heard) with reasonably fresh eyes from Row G in the stalls.

It's 1881, and rehearsals at the Opera House are interrupted as a backdrop dangerously falls amongst the cast. Monsieur Firmin and Monsieur André, two bourgeois caricatures who just bought the Opera House, get their first introduction to the strange goings-on linked to the Phantom, at the same time as their prima donna, Carlotta, gets fed up with the hauntings and huffs off. It's just the setup for meek chorus girl Christine Daaé to take over – turns out she can handle the role, having received tutelage from an ethereal source she doesn't understand. She attributes it to her Angel of Music that her deceased father sent her from Heaven, but in her dressing room, a masked tuxedo figure materializes in her mirror. If you haven't linked the strands, your P.O. Box address is literally “Beneath a Rock.”

There's good and bad to a non-professional group doing a big production of something so recognizable. You're almost guaranteed to sell well, because people know it. But, because people know it, there are expectations – and this isn't like the permanent, big budget stages of the West End or Broadway. I think the ladies next to me were a bit disappointed that the chandelier didn't actually crash to the ground at the end of the first act (it was a big bang and flash), and of course the sets weren't as complicated and full on as in the more famous manifestations. However, when the mirror opens up and Christine follows the Phantom down to the underground lair, it's exactly what you'd expect: the fog, the music, the boat, the devilish organ. And Chris Crowe and Barbara Graham, in the lead roles, know how to sing these parts.

The comedic shenanigans above ground aren't the important parts, and they're rightfully overshadowed by the fierce love triangle that emerges between the Phantom, Christine, and the new patron Raoul. Just before the first act finishes, Christine and Raoul escape to the starlit roof of the Opera House and declare their love – and when the Phantom emerges from behind the stone pillars, you get something of the loneliness and emotional anguish that this show is about, the truth that lurks beneath the darkness. Whether you believe the antihero protagonist is a true phantom or not, the anger and betrayal in that moment is undeniably human.

The second act was about the final push to capture the Phantom and end his grip over the Opera House. I don't need to go into the details of the climax in the underground chambers, as Raoul, Christine, and the Phantom pair off while a furious mob chases the deformed maestro with the intent to kill – it's worth seeing though, whichever side of the tragic romance you happen to align with. When it ended (all too soon, I figured), the melodic themes that ran through the whole show were bouncing around in my head, and the final, half-triumphant and half-heartbreaking lyrics, “It's over now, the music of the night,” gave me the kind of chills that last long enough so that you can eventually blame the crisp Wellington evening air. That's theatrical.

From the class of the St. James Theatre, I put on dirty work clothes and gumboots today, heading a few hours north of the capital city, over the green, winding Rimutaka Ranges and along the flat countryside of the Wairarapa as far as the nearly nonexistent town of Alfredton. That's where we've been replanting native New Zealand trees in what once was a sheep paddock, taking a quad bike up a slick, muddy trail.

There are plenty of mountains in the North Island too, but whereas the South Island is a wild, untamed country, the rolling green hills in this area are much more pastoral. Wherever the pinpoint on the map, this is a special place, adrift in the South Pacific.

The rain that had been belting down on Wellington all day held off as we planted about 50 trees along the hillside, munching muffins and fruit amongst the sheep, who were contently grazing and only stopping to look at us every so often. Just another Kiwi slice I've been lucky enough to sample – and that final curtain call is still more than a month away.

Cheers,
rb

Last Look for the Rings

That's it b'ys, I'm done. Matamata, Ngauruhoe, Te Anau, Queenstown, Glenorchy, Arrowtown, the Southern Alps, and now the Weta Cave and Wellington . . . it may not be the end of all things, but my side adventure to find as much of Middle-earth in New Zealand as I could is officially finished. After a rainy day that took me through the gardens of Harcourt Park where two wizards once had a chat, and the forest that once had a small Elvish city built around it, I'd need a personal helicopter to find any more of these pristine filming locations.

The thing about these last few stops is that you need to have a decent sense of imagination. As in, when you see Gandalf and Sauruman out having a stroll before their geriatric duel (come on Gandalf, Christopher Lee is playing this guy, you should have guessed that's he's super-evil), you have to be able to mentally subtract the digitally rendered mountains and the side of the tower in order to link the shot to Harcourt Park, just outside of Wellington.

While we're at it, imagine that this . . .

. . . is this. I guess.

The moral of the story is that you have to take my word for it that the public green space in Upper Hutt had anything to do with The Lord of the Rings. On a rainy Saturday afternoon, in the middle of a Hutt Valley Harriers club run, it kind of felt a whole lot more like a regular park.

Kaitoke Regional Park, about 45 minutes north of the city, is sprawled around the Hutt River and at the doorstep of the Tararua Ranges. There's a great picnic area and little tramps through the leafy bush – and the site of Rivendell. Signs direct you, beyond any doubt, to the shady glen where Imladris once sat – this is the most comprehensive, flashy labelled site (aside from the tourist attraction of Hobbiton), which is a bit bizarre, considering how much you have to tilt your head and squint your eyes to imagine the scenes in the movie.

Carved Sindarin signposts, and irrefutable evidence that I

may not be as tall as a man, but I am taller than a hobbit

Even I was a bit confused, driving up the winding gravel road along the river – what the frig happened in Rivendell? Wasn't it all inside these nice stone buildings? It turns out that there was a whole exterior village built here, so that when Frodo goes out and gawks around the balcony, he's actually in this forest, even if the mountains and waterfalls came from Fiordland a few hundred clicks to the south. Actually, there are quite a few little glimpses of fancy buildings, bridges, and balconies, and they were all crammed into this space (crammed is the right word, too – movie magic made the scale look much larger than it actually is). One thing that definitely did happen in Kaitoke is the scene when the Fellowship are preparing to leave on their adventure. We get this shot:

And I swear to you that the camera was just to the right of me (and a bit higher) when I took this one. Amazing how, when you tear down the walls and let the forest grow for 14 years, it looks almost unrecognizable:

And with that, my tour of Middle-earth is over. And not a moment too soon, either – I was soaked, and the rain showed no sign of letting up that day.

After drying off and getting some dinner back in Wellington, I decided that the weather was just a minor detail – it was still Saturday night in the city, and there's no way I could go home with a clear conscience without going out and hearing some live Kiwi music. Back home, I try to listen to a decent chunk of music, and have something articulate to say about it. That articulation is open to debate, but the fact remains that, just like Lord of the Rings sites, it's easy to get jaded. The flip side of that is, when something jumps out as being particularly awesome, you notice it and appreciate it that much more.

Enter Wellington homegrown boy Miles Calder and his band, the Rumours. Alt-country is one of my favourite hyphenated words – no, it wasn't the stuff of epiphanies, but it was a free show with a dude on standup bass, a guy on electric guitar, and a blonde girl with a tambourine. Add beer and you get many wonderful things under the roof of the Southern Cross Golden Bar, the kind of Saturday night I'd have if I lived in this place. Deadly.

Today, after what seems like ages, the sky was clear and the sun was shining. Zealandia is a fragment of a continent that used to be joined up to Australia, India, South America, Africa, and Antarctica to make up a place called Gondwana. I said that the forest of Rivendell grew up considerably in 14 years – well, Gondwana existed around the same time as Pangaea, so a couple hundred million years happened in the meantime, during which Zealandia broke away and most of it (93%) ended up beneath the ocean. The part that still sticks up over the water is known as New Zealand nowadays. Zealandia also happens to be a huge natural reserve on the outskirts of Wellington, so named because it is a major attempt to recreate the natural environment of this place, before predators trampled all over the natural environment.

New Zealand, moreso than any other place I've visited, has a major priority to preserve the natural flora and fauna – some 30% of the countryside is protected, and the Department of Conservation does a lot more than regulate huts on Great Walks. Their commitment makes sense – it really is a unique island habitat down here, and a staggering 80% of the native plants exist only in New Zealand. Zealandia, an interpretation centre and the massive 224 ha Karori Sanctuary, is a major, ongoing eco-restoration project in a wooded valley. Walls that took 3 years to design run around the perimeter, to keep cats, stoats, rabbits, and other pests out – a network of trails make sure that when pests of the two-legged variety do get in, they don't muck anything up.

All told, it really is a sanctuary, a natural paradise that you can take in from a vantage point on top of a dam and feel how removed you are from 21st century New Zealand. Wellington sits just over the ridge, but if you close your eyes, all you can hear is a symphony of bird sounds (including the tui, which uses two voice boxes at once to make a recognizable but difficult to replicate song).

I actually really liked my afternoon in Zealandia. And, get this, I even learned some stuff (I know, I thought I knew everything, too). Like how the colourful, flightless takahe was thought to be extinct, until a few were found in the mountains near Te Anau in 1948, having fled from predators to higher altitudes. The two in Zealandia were brought up here a few years ago, after DOC ensured that the habitat was suitable – they're very territorial, so that's all the park is going to get of the 250 (ish) population that exists.

I watched a kaka, a jungle parrot, eat with his feet, while tui and other small birds crowded around the ground, to try to scoop up the crumbs. Kaka are one of three types of parrots endemic to New Zealand – the others are the kakapo, a flightless yellow mongrel, and the cheeky kea, that silly little bird that I went out of my way (several times) down south to try to find and turned up empty handed.

If the short-finned eel looked a bit cuter, their story could make a great Disney movie. Right when they're at the end of their life (so around 30 years), they swim out to the Pacific Ocean, to Tonga (way up by Fiji), lay a million eggs or so, and then die. Their transparent youngsters hatch, float back to New Zealand on ocean currents, and set up camp here, where after 30 years or so they take the same route their parents took to get back up to the Pacific Islands. To me, that's pretty groovy.

The walk through the woods branched off in a bunch of different directions, and after a couple hours I'd barely skimmed the surface. Lots more chances to explore – not for me, not this time at least, but if you do end up with a sunny day in Wellington (or a nice night, to see if you can lay your eyes on a little spotted kiwi) there are worse spots you could end up. There are plenty of weird and wonderful things to see out roaming about – even the rare sighting of a member of the family luckius bastardius.

It's a clear night now, with a brilliant full moon (must be the supermoon they're talking about) and a frosty chill to the winter air. Perfect finish to an afternoon of walking through the bush and my very own, homemade savoury chicken pies – watch out Canada, you're not going to know what hit you when you come to my house for supper. The fine weather ought to hold tomorrow, for an early rise to go plant trees up the Wairarapa – native New Zealand trees, obviously. It might take hundreds of years for a reserved sanctuary like Zealandia to reclaim its former grandeur, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth doing my part with a shovel and some saplings while I've got a chance.

Cheers,

rb

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