South Island Day 9 - Rohan!

On our last day in the South Island, we drove from Dunedin back to Queenstown to fly home.  It was a long drive, but very pretty.  There was some odd cloud formations over the Central Otago plains, so we took some photos:

This one is especially crazy:

Okay, from here this post gets very LOTR-centric.  We would have just driven straight to Queenstown, except that we were passing very close to a filming location and I really wanted to stop and see it.  The family indulged me.

If you aren't a big Lord of the Rings fan, you might just skip the rest of this post.  For everyone else, meet me about ten carriage returns down the page.










Alright, now that it's just us, let's first ask ourselves, what's wrong with those other people?  Have they not read Lord of the Rings?  Why not?  What have they been doing?  Have they not seen the movies?  Have they not been moved by Frodo's soulful blue eyes?  Do they not value the virtues of loyalty and determination and friendship exemplified by the bond between Frodo and Sam?  What in them failed to be touched by Gandalf's selflessness in the Mines of Moria, or thrilled by his return?  The nobility of the people of Rohan, the fierce resolve of the people of Gondor, the otherworldly wisdom of the elves - how can they remain unaffected by these things?  The deep humanity in Gandalf's gentle reproach to Frodo when Frodo expresses his contempt of Gollum, the spiritual communion with nature in the songs of Tom Bombadil, the symbolic refutation of nihilism inherent in the act of destroying the ring, the reminder that humans are always susceptible to the seductive draw of power and that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance - are they deaf to Tolkien's central message of hope and his enduring faith in humanity?  Let's hope they come to their senses soon and pick up a copy of the trilogy.

You'll understand why I had a hard time passing up the opportunity to drive through Otago and stop at Poolburn Reservoir.  Not only is it a crazy weird and beautiful place, but it was used in several important scenes that took place in Rohan, including the burning of the Westfold.  Remember the village that was burned by the hill people at the urging of Saruman?  That village was constructed (and burned) for the film on the shores of the Poolburn Reservoir.  We had to drive down a fairly long dirt road and then out into fenced-in areas that might or might not have been private land, but we finally came to the lake.  Here is a photo:

Here is Evelyn standing among the amazingly weird rock formations that dot the landscape, poking up out of the tall brown grasses.

Note to self - add this one to the Project_Corolla_Glamour_Shot folder.  This photo might have violated my rental agreement, as I seem to remember signing something about no off-roading.  Oops.

Some rocks are just made for climbing.  This photo might have violated my rental agreement on the children.  I swear it wasn't as dangerous as it looks here, or as it looks in subsequent photos.

Here is a shot back over the lake.  At this point, my camera ran out of batteries.  Thank goodness we had the iPad with us, though the quality of these shots isn't as good as the others.  If you watch the scene "The Burning of the Westfold," this will look familiar.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8oVkQzmu70 - watch from 2:48.)

Here is the dam.  Pretty old and pretty cool in its own way, though it was not in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Here is the family, looking for more dangerous rocks to climb.

Found one!  We called this Monkey Rock.

Here we are at the top!  Not dangerous.

Jasper is totally not holding on for dear life.

See how calm Aidan looks?

Another reservoir shot - I was trying to find the exact bank where the film was shot, but I don't think I got a photo of it.

One more car shot.

I asked Evelyn to take this one from our window on the way out.  I thought that rock was a cool one and the sight of the mountains in the background and the clouds above was just an amazing contrast.  Of course, as is typical, there is this amazing place in New Zealand, it is kind of hard to find and get to, and there is almost no one else there.  There aren't any signs on the highway that say, "Turn Here for Amazing Rock Place" or anything.  The amount of time I had to spend on sites with names like movie-set-locations.net to even find out this place exists was a lot.  Not that I minded.

I'll finish this post with the most ridiculous thing we passed on our way back to Queenstown - the Cromwell Gigantic Fruit Sculpture.