Matamata

The Matamata district was long settled by Ngāti Hauā and related hapū of the Waikato, on fertile land between the Waihou River and the Kaimai Range. Its best-known figure is Wiremu Tamihana Tarapipipi Te Waharoa, the Ngāti Hauā leader known as the kingmaker for his part in the Māori King Movement, which raised Pōtatau Te Wherowhero as the first Māori King, and later for favouring negotiation during the fighting in the Waikato.

The European town began with one man's estate. The Auckland merchant Josiah Firth leased a large block here in 1865, after negotiating with Wiremu Tamihana, cleared and drained swamp, planted pasture and grain, and worked to make the Waihou navigable for river craft. In 1882 he built a castellated tower of concrete, an experimental material at the time, as part of his house; it still stands as Firth Tower. Firth's venture eventually failed, and by 1904 the Crown had taken over the estate and subdivided it into dairy units. Drainage, refrigeration and cooperative dairy factories turned the plains into some of the country's most productive farmland, and a service town grew along the main street.

In the 20th century the district added horses: studs and training stables spread across the free-draining soils around the town, making Matamata a centre of New Zealand thoroughbred racing. The most public change came when Peter Jackson saw the Alexander family's farm on Buckland Road from the air in 1998 and chose it as the Shire for his Lord of the Rings films. Open for tours since 2002 and rebuilt permanently in 2010 for The Hobbit, it has made a quiet farming town internationally recognisable.

Three cultures share the town. The oldest is Māori: Ngāti Hauā marae in the district, the memory of Wiremu Tamihana, and a continuing presence in local schools, sport and district affairs. The second is farming, which sets the rhythm of the year and the conversation — milk payouts, feed, the weather — and shows itself in A&P-show culture, dog trials, rugby clubs and volunteer fire brigades.

The third is horse racing. A large share of the country's thoroughbreds are bred or trained within a short drive, stables employ riders, farriers and trainers, and the town's mornings include strings of horses working. Sale and race days matter locally in a way that outsiders often miss, and the industry ties the town to Cambridge and to Australian racing.

Over all this sits the film business. Matamata leans into it: a "Welcome to Hobbiton" sign stands on the main road, and a significant number of residents work in tours, hospitality and transport serving visitors who come for a few hours. Locals are used to international crowds and generally friendly about it, though the gap between a quiet dairy town and a global film attraction is a standing local joke. Gliding gives the town one more identity, with the soaring centre flying from the airfield at Waharoa.

About 9,500 people live in Matamata, in a district of about 39,000 that also includes Morrinsville and Te Aroha. The town is compact, mostly single-storey, and surrounded immediately by farmland, so the countryside is a few minutes from any front door.

Dairying underpins the economy, with milk processed at plants in the wider Waikato, alongside beef, sheep, maize and horticulture. The thoroughbred industry is the second employer, and tourism the third, concentrated on the film set and rising steadily since it opened for tours. Engineering, transport and farm-servicing businesses fill the industrial edges of the town, and some residents commute to Hamilton or over the range to Tauranga.

Daily life runs early, on farm time: stock work and stable work before dawn, school buses on country roads, the main street busy at lunchtime and quiet by evening. Shopping for anything substantial means Hamilton or Tauranga. Local issues are those of much of rural New Zealand — the cost and availability of housing, staffing for farms and tourism, water quality in the Waihou catchment and the effect of intensive dairying on it, and how much a small town should build around a single attraction.

Matamata eats what the Waikato produces. Dairy is everywhere in the form of milk, butter, cream and cheese; beef and lamb come off the surrounding hills; and the plains grow maize, sweetcorn, avocados and berries, sold from farm gates and roadside stalls in season. The town's own food is the New Zealand small-town canon: bakery pies, filled rolls, fish and chips, a café brunch of eggs and sourdough, pub steaks and roasts, and takeaway Chinese and Indian.

The film set has added a curiosity. The rebuilt Green Dragon Inn has served drinks to visitors since 2012, and banquet-style dinners are staged in the Shire, which is the closest thing the district has to a signature meal for visitors.

Māori food traditions remain part of community life: hāngī cooked in earth ovens for gatherings at marae and fundraisers, rēwena bread raised with a potato starter, and freshwater eel and watercress from the Waihou and its drains. Nearby towns fill in the rest — the Bay of Plenty's kiwifruit and avocados arrive over the Kaimai, Te Aroha has its mineral water, and craft breweries and cheese makers scattered across the Waikato sell at markets in Cambridge, Tirau and Hamilton.