Big plans for small towns
A $1.7 million chunk of funding for Waikato could help form a tourism triangle between Matamata, Morrinsville and Te Aroha.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced $900,000 will go towards building an investment case for Te Aroha – her daughter’s namesake – becoming a boutique health and well-being destination.
It would link Te Aroha with Hobbiton and Morrinsville’s giant cow and Wallace Art Gallery, Ardern said.
The other $800,000 will investigate the potential for Waharoa to become a major industrial and food processing hub.
The funding is part of the Government’s $3 billion allocated to enhance economic development in New Zealand’s regions over three years through a Provincial Growth Fund.
It was part of the Government plan to see regions thriving, Ardern said.
Before the announcement, Ardern – recently back from New York – took her first tour of Matamata’s picturesque Hobbiton.
She wove through camera-clad tourists flanked by farm owner Russell Alexander, Matamata-Piako District Mayor Jan Barnes, Labour-list MP Jamie Strange and the usual gaggle of media.
While she sipped a ginger beer at the Green Dragon, she was gifted a drawing of her as a hobbit in honour of her visit, drawn by Will Buchanan.
There had been a lot of pressure to do her image justice, Buchanan said, although he didn’t think she resembled a hobbit, even in the picture.
‘‘I think Jacinda actually looks quite elfish.’’
Ardern joked that she was the only person to audition unsuccessfully for Lord of the Rings asa university student in 1999.