Peter Jackson's wife had visited the area around Matamata and recommended it as a possible location for filming the Shire scenes in the Lord of the Rings movies. The location scout visited thirteen farms before locating one with the lake, massive tree and seclusion needed for the shoot. They rented the farm, built the sets, and spent three months filming on the farm.
Always intended to be temporary, the sets were scheduled for destruction about the time the first of the Lord of the Rings movies was released. As the story goes, the tear down was started, but a storm delayed the work. During the three week delay, Fellowship of the Rings was released, and a few New Zealanders recognized the place where the scenes in the Shire had been shot and showed up at the farm to take a look.
Recognizing a revenue source when he saw one, the farmer put a stop to the destruction of the set and instead started organizing tours.
Jump ahead to the Hobbit. When the production company returned to the farm to again secure permission to film, the farmer said sure, provided the new set was built not with untreated wood and polystyrene but steel and silicon. At this point, then, the set is a permanent part of the farmland.
And, in fact, the original farmer has retired to the city. The farm is now run by his two sons, one of which farms sheep (the wool from which becomes carpeting in China) and cows (which become Big Macs) and the other of which farms tourists.
They didn't tell us which half of the farm is the more profitable.
But if you're in the neighborhood and at all a fan of this sort of thing, it's a pretty fun tour -- especially if, like us, you manage to get put in a tiny group of just seven people. It probably would've been less fun with forty.
I will say, though, that with tours leaving every fifteen minutes, you do have to work a bit to get pictures without a bunch of people wandering through them...
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