He Tangata: Actor, tour leader, Stewart Islander Bruce Hopkins

Actor and tour guide Bruce Hopkins at Hobbiton.

The actor, tour leader, walker, Stewart Islander talks to Elisabeth Easther.

I'm a fourth-generation Stewart Islander, and my first memory of travel was moving to Russell. Dad was a fisherman, the climate was quite favourable and they bought Matauwhi Wharf. They had a smokehouse where they used to smoke fish. Mum had the fish and chip shop in Russell and dad had the one in Kawakawa. Spending the day with dad at the Kawakawa fish shop, that was the big time. And Whangarei? That was like New York.

In Russell, my childhood was spent in the water, going from school to the wharf. If you saw birds working, you'd grab a dinghy, it didn't matter whose dinghy it was, then throw a line out the back and catch some kahawai rowing like crazy. It was a bit of a paradise. When I was about 9 we went back to Stewart Island for about three or four months and it was like a parallel universe. I remember walking to school there, and cracking the ice on puddles. Or going up Paterson Inlet with dad to check the possum traps.

I left school at 18 and went to Iowa as an exchange student with AFS. AFS isn't about travelling or being a tourist it's about living with a family and being part of a community. I didn't see the ocean for a year but I made some wonderful friendships in that tiny little farming town. It was very hard to leave.

When I came home I studied phys-ed at Otago University and one summer holiday I was hitchhiking in the US. After checking out the Grand Canyon, I got picked up by a couple who were moving to LA with all their belongings in their car. When we got to the city where I got out, they asked if I would give them some cash as they had closed their bank account in that state. They wrote me a cheque for the amount of cash I gave them - but, as could be predicted, it bounced.

After three years at uni, I realised I wasn't a teacher, so went crayfishing with my father. When I was 22, an American mate came to visit and I took a break from fishing and we drove around New Zealand. Stopping in Wellington to visit a friend who was a dancer, when I saw her rehearsing, I thought "I have to do this" and seven months later I was a professional dancer with Impulse Dance Theatre.

Later, with Limbs, in about 1984, we toured to New York. One night after our show, four or five of us decided to walk a different way to our subway station. We got lost, walking through a pretty scary dark park, we ended up walking through the middle of Harlem at midnight. We were on a knife-edge the whole way, walking past gangs of dudes hanging out on the footpaths who would separate so we had to walk between them. Needless to say we were more wired from the walk home than the adrenalin of the show.

When the kids were small, family holidays were to the Gold Coast. It's pretty sad but it was cheaper to chuck them on a plane and visit my sister who's been living there for over 40 years than to go to Stewart Island.

But my first real travel happened through Lord of the Rings fan conventions. I loved that brief exposure I got to various cultures, to history, visiting Germany, Holland, France, England.

New Zealand actor Bruce Hopkins as Gamling in the film The Lord of the Rings.

After

Lord of the Rings

in the summer of 2000, I hired a campervan with the kids, they were still quite young, and we did a week down the West Coast of the South Island, then a week on Stewart Island and it was just magic. We went to Karamea, Westport, Punankaiki, Greymouth, Hokitika, and Haast. Driving along we noticed a Bruce Bay on the map and decided to stay a night there. We went down to the beach, lit ourselves a little fire, and it was stunning. But the next morning, waking up, we almost couldn't see out the windows because of the sandflies.

I lead Lord of the Rings tour groups, from eight to 15 days, I drive the coach and share stories from the movies. What it was like working with Peter, or going to parties with Elijah, Orlando and Viggo. There were some very cool experiences. I was there when Elijah filmed his very last shot in 2002 and I heard his speech about spending five years of his life on those movies. He was only 22 at the time. The people on my tours tend to be Tolkien buffs. I let them use my clapperboard for making their videos.

There was a German guy recently, his passion was music, he's in a band and he wrote a song about our journey through Middle-earth and we recorded it in a motel unit. That was fun.

The plan that's demanding my attention today is the Te Araroa trail. Starting in October, I'll walk 3000km from Cape Reinga to Bluff plus I'll tag Stewart Island on at the end, finishing in March. It's my expression of gratitude for being born in this land and I'll also be walking some of my father and brother's ashes from where we used to crayfish, taking them home to Stewart Island. It's a significant undertaking, daunting and unknown, with something of the odyssey in there. All I know is that, when I get back, things will be different.