This smile-making sight greets you as you land in Wellington – a massive Gollum suspended from the ceiling, a reminder that Lord of the Rings is a major big deal here. Millions of tourists have visited New Zealand to see for themselves the breathtaking locations where these movies were filmed. Even before you reach the country, you are treated to the Air New Zealand pre-takeoff safety video where the flight crew are dressed up as Tolkien characters. Seriously. You can visit some of the movie sets, including Hobbiton, view costumes from the movie in the museums, take guided tours around New Zealand visiting the locations used (great scenery), visit the jeweler in Nelson who cast The Ring. I did none of this – my only memory of the Lord of the Ring movies I saw was their never ending length. The story is told of an eighteen year old Peter Jackson first reading Tolkien on a train traveling through North Island and imagining the landscape as that of Middle Earth; 20 years later he chose his native New Zealand as the backdrop to his series of movies.
If you don’t care to go on a tour of the movies’ location, there’s a great armchair article just out in Earth magazine, The Geology of Middle Earth, talking about how the team went about scouting, identifying and selecting locations, the logistics of filming in 100 locations across both islands and some of the challenges they faced. A lot of pictures link the stories to the locales. Also appealing to this late-blooming geography geek, are descriptions of the natural history of the place, how the landscape was formed from the earth’s upheavals concentrated in these lands. The article almost makes me want to go back and watch the movies again. Almost.
It seems that in these later years of my life I tend to be living or hanging out right on ground zero of the Ring of Fire. Philippines, Vancouver Island, and now New Zealand.
It’s hard to get away from the realization that New Zealand is a very dynamic place, a real hot spot on a planet trying to shake us loose. The cover article in the New Zealand Geographic I picked up at the airport states dramatically that the Auckland Volcanic Field has erupted 53 times. The islands sit precariously between 2 colliding tectonic plates. In Wellington, visiting the hilltop Botanical Garden oasis in the middle of the city, I read in the info center that the side of the hill I’m staring at, is actually the region’s most active geological fault line that runs right through the city. This Wellington Fault, is where the Pacific and Australian Plates meet, their collision causing the Pacific plate to subduct below the other. If this isn’t bad enough, this is only one of several lurking active faults around the city.
In the Te Papa National Museum (which is a don’t miss, must see) wonderful multi-media displays tell the fascinating geological story of New Zealand and includes a replica of an ordinary living room where you can stand inside and feel and hear what a 6.8 earthquake feels like. There are cautionary signs by the ramp into this display, warning people who survived the 2010-2011 Christchurch and Canterbury earthquakes that this exhibit might cause distress.
So there we are in Wellington. Feeling lucky? For 2 days we walked around, checking things out, lunching at the harbour, dinner somewhere on Cuba Street. Nice city. Fantastic museum, great bookstore, downtown galleries, cable car up to parkland. We were staying in a loft apartment in a converted building, very central, very urban, walkable to most things. Then we noticed The Sign.
On a noticeboard above the building mailboxes off the front lobby, was an official looking notice dated 2010. It advised all and sundry that this 65 year-old building had been inspected and was NOT up to current earthquake safety standards. As a result the owners had until 2020 to either bring the building up to code or demolish it. It would appear that we were living in a condemned building. That was it for a further good night’s sleep.
The failed earthquake inspection happened the year of the first Christchurch earthquake, September 2010. Six months later, the whole downtown and suburban areas of Christchurch (and other towns in the region) were destroyed or badly damaged when a second quake hit, collapsing many buildings that may have been already weakened from the first one. Lots of people died. From my perch on the 4th floor of this downtown building that day in Wellington, I looked at many other rooftops of buildings of similar vintage and wondered. We all walk precariously on this earth one way or another.
The owner of the condo lives elsewhere and appears to be making a bit of a living on this place through AirBnB which I guess is as good as he’s going to get. You can’t sell the place, after all, although it was with great amusement that just before leaving as I was reading the comments in the Visitor Book, I came upon a line that said “Let me know if you’re thinking again of selling” (one born every minute). Several pages later someone wrote “On our last night we felt the earthquake…”.
I was happy enough to pack up for our next and last stop, heading for the 3-hour ferry to South Island. The Wellington ferry terminal happens to be located at a central transportation hub. Here is where the raised main highway on concrete pillars crosses the railroad terminus, which is beside the ferry terminal. Genius. It’s all absolutely directly above the Wellington fault line where even as we speak the plates are grinding together as one slips below the other, pushing it upwards. We walked on board, settled into seats by the windows, in the forward cafe, Eventually the ferry pulled away and we headed out of the harbour to make our way over to the South Island. Escaped with our lives.