Mt Sunday (a.k.a. Edoras)

Mount Sunday is a couple of hour's drive from Christchurch, nestled between Mt Potts and Erewhon Stations. In NZ a station is not just something found on a railway line, it is also a term referring to large high country farms or ranches and that is the context for Mt Sunday. It's name refers to days gone by when the farm hands would race their horses to the peak on their day off, Sunday. Kirwin and I found ourselves atop Mt Sunday during a 4WD tour on 15-Dec-2008.

Mt Sunday's biggest claim to fame is as the setting for Edoras in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, specifically "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King". Kirwin was a bit miffed that it was a drizzly day when we got there and now nobody will believe us that the scenery really wasn't computer generated. Behind those clouds we promise you there are big mountains!

If you're a LotR buff, you might remember a scene in which the flag of Rohan is torn from its flagpole by a gust of wind just as Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn arrive at the base of Edoras? Well, Mt Sunday lies in an extremely windy valley. During one take of filming the flag tore free (unplanned) but director Peter Jackson thought the shot looked so good that he decided to keep it in the movie. Kirwin and I had a good hunt around and managed to find it. This picture is more or less taken from the same angle as in Return of the King at a point just after the fire beacons have lit and Theoden agrees to come to the aid of Gondor. He walks out in front of the great hall and looks down the valley as the Rohirrim muster. He tells Gamling to make haste across the Riddermark.

Another interesting fact about the filming of Lord of the Rings is that the Tolkein family requested that none of the sets were left in tact upon completion. This was out of respect for J.R.R. Tolkein's imagination which held that Middle Earth was located in Europe. The set for Edoras took 8 months to build, and it was only used for about a week's worth of filming before being dismantled. Prior to construction, the position of every plant on Mt Sunday was noted using GPS. They were then temporarily replanted in a purpose-built nursery. After the set was dismantled all the plants were returned to their original position. Today there are very few signs that Edoras ever existed there. Now, that's commitment to the environment!

Here's a different shot of Mt Sunday, with a storm rolling in over the mountains to the north. In this photo it looks like a small hillock on the flat, just below and to the right of the clouded valley. You can click on the pic to see a larger version. At least now you can see the mountains surrounding it are real. As I write this Kirwin is making some smart remarks about summertime weather in NZ.