Bay Harbour: April 26, 2017

Wednesday April 26 2017
Latest Christchurch news at www.
.kiwi
BAY HARBOUR
PAGE 13
Travel
Visiting the mystical city of Edoras
• By Mike Yardley
IT’S THE type of scenery that
screensavers are made for – Mt
Sunday, deep in the heart of the
Canterbury high country.
I always find it fascinating to
experience your own turf through
the lens of a tourist, gleaning fresh
perspectives from the outside
world on the place you call home.
Better known to movie-fans
as the mystical city of Edoras, I
recently joined a guided journey
to this spectacular cinematic location
with Hassle-free Tours.
Heading south of Christchurch,
in a comfortable six-wheel Toyota
Land Cruiser, with elevated seating
and panoramic windows, our
driver-guide, Hammond, set sail
on his illuminating, chatty commentary
on the two-hour drive.
We entered the Hakatere
Conservation Park, flanked by
the alpine lakes of Camp and
Clearwater and their tight cluster
of rustic batches. A quick photostop
to soak up the expansive
high country vistas served merely
as an appetiser for the majesty
that lay ahead.
On a heavily rutted gravel
Hakatere-Potts Rd, bracketed
in golden hills of snow tussock,
matagouri and toetoe, the most
celestial viewpoint appeared at
the Mt Potts Cutting, stretching
across the broad basin of the
Rangitata Valley, buttressed by
heroically high mountains and
sheer cliffs.
Welcome to the Kingdom of
Rohan. Much of the land belongs
to Mt Potts Station, however, in
SPECTACLE: Mt Sunday-Edoras.
the wake of the Lord of the Ringsinspired
popularity, DOC created
an easement to Mt Sunday aka
Edoras.
From the public car park, it’s a
15min walk up the southern spur
of Mt Sunday. However, one of
the many advantages of taking
the journey with Hassle-free
Tours is that it is the only operator
with a concession to drive past
the car park, fording the gin-clear
streams and up part of the mountain,
using the rutted track on the
northern spur, which the land
cruiser made light work of.
From there, it’s a rather effortless
stroll to the summit. Sixhundred
metres above sea level,
this rocky, protruding jewel in the
middle of this insanely photogenic
valley beckoned us like a
beacon. After we’d mounted the
summit, the 360deg alpine panorama
is so enthrallingly kaleidoscopic,
so jaw-droppingly epic,
not even a month of Sundays
basking in this perspective would
become boring.
There’s Erewhon Station of
Clydesdales-fame, the serpentine
braids of the Rangitata River, the
Southern Alps, the expansive valley
plain and the silvery, slinking
trail of Potts River. The air was
so crisp and clear, the mountains
seemed magnified with sharp
edges and spectacular shingle fans.
Only the sound of happilyclicking
shutters, competed
against the strengthening howls
of the wind. The wind-speed
reached 72km/h as we took in the
summit spectacle and endured an
involuntary facial exfoliation.
Notorious for wind gusts, Hammond
remarked that at the time
of shooting, the Rings crew were
buffeted by wind gusts as high as
180km/h. The real beauty of the
Hassle-free tour is all the insightful
behind-the-scenes nuggets.
On one particularly windy day,
Sir Peter Jackson’s glasses flew off
his face, over the cliff, never to be
seen again. There’s a movie relic
to hunt for.
Sir Peter stumbled upon this
cinematic location by sheer accident.
His location scouts were
choppering down to the West
MAJESTIC: Rutted gravel
roads are no problem to the
Hassle-free Land Cruiser.
(Below) – Mt Sunday and the
Rohan sword.
Coast, but were forced to fly east
due to bad weather, chancing
upon Mt Sunday by a stroke of
sheer luck. Many of the riders of
Rohan were actually women from
pony clubs in mid-Canterbury.
Hammond also explained
how the construction of the city
of Edoras took nine months,
showing us photos of the elaborate
sets, including Golden Hall,
which graced this rocky outcrop.
The cast and crew only spent 11
days actually shooting on sight.
In spite of the alpine location,
miraculously, they didn’t see one
drop of rain. Hammond also was
equipped with an arsenal of replica
weaponry and flags from the
movie, which we had great fun
posing with for obligatory photos.
A variety of movie featurettes
were played to our group, including
some cracking bloopers.
What really shone through was
how much the cast genuinely fell
in love with Mt Sunday. Driving
back to Christchurch, Hammond
finally revealed that he was Hammond
Peek, the double Oscarwinner,
who sound engineered
the Rings trilogy.
After 36 years in film and
television, since 2006, Hammond
has been a driver-guide for
Hassle-free Tours. He only works
a couple of days a week, so you
may want to request a date when
he’s behind the wheel.
Location is the pixie dust of
movie dreams and Mt Sunday
is a star specimen in our own
backyard.
FAST FACTS
•For over a decade,
the award-winning
Christchurch-based tour
company has been setjetting
enthusiasts to
their cinematic dreams,
bringing to life one of
the most wondrous film
locations in the Rings trilogy,
deep in the Rangitata
Valley. Explore the region
with the incomparable
experience that Hassle-
Free Tours provides. www.
hasslefreetours.co.nz
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anytime, anywhere!
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