Auckland: it's a city, Jim...

New Zealand has a population of some 4.5 million, just over 1 million living on the South Island, the rest on the ( physically much smaller) North. Of these, 1.37 million live in Auckland, making it the biggest city on either island with a population bigger than the whole of the South Island combined.

With its harbour bridge, waterfront aspect and bustling cruise ship trade, Auckland feels like it's pretending to be Sydney but, frankly, no ones going to be fooled. Auckland may have the trappings of many a large city - traffic, busy shopping precincts, streets of tall office blocks - but someone seems to have forgotten to add the stardust - the excitement, character or charm that turns any city stay into a memorable experience. Everything looks modern in a rather drab, grey way. Maybe we're being unfair - only here a few days, can't see it all etc etc, but on the basis of what we have seen, ie the central downtown district, this isn't going to be looming large on either of our bucket lists. But listen, Auckland, maybe it's us, not you. We've now reached that point where we are going to be hard to please - or at least, energise. After two months on then road travel fatigue has well and truly set in, and, to be honest, all we really want to do now is go home.

But not first without a visit to Hobbiton, home of the Hobbits, those loveable, furry-footed creatures conjured forth by J R R Tolkein and brought to popular imagination by Sir Peter Jackson, who, on the back of his success with LOTR worked some dark alchemy to turn one pretty short book (The Hobbit) into three tooth-grindingly long films. Getting to Hobbiton involves a journey of similar length - two hours on the bus to Hamilton (a city which makes Auckland look stellar by comparison) then a further hour on to Matamata, the little town thrown a tourism lifeline by all things Middle Earth. The deal here is basically that filmmaker Jackson was looking for the ideal location to film the 'Hobbiton' sequences of The Lord of the Rings movies, and found the perfect fit in an area of land
owned by a local farming family. The family leased the land (for both series of films) and then wisely realised, post Hobbit, there was more money to be made by preserving the set and milking the
franchise than there was milking anything on four legs. As an experience, it's still pure cheese, of course - you troop around with your guide, taking photos of hobbit-holes, before ending up in 'the Green Dragon' clutching a mug of 'hobbit ale'. But for anyone with an interest in the books - or more particularly perhaps the films -it's undeniably fun. Beers actually not bad, either.

Our last full day proper in New Zealand we took the ferry across to Waiheke Island and spent the day there, doing the tour, walking the beaches. Imagine the Isle of Wight, but considerably more exotic. You get the idea.