Waitomo

This NFU short features the first 'official' colour footage of the Waitomo Caves. Perhaps wary of playing its ace card too early, Waitomo finds time to showcase local beaches and hotel ping-pong tables before moving underground. A wave of Phantom of the Opera-style organ music accompanies the tour party as they enter Waitomo’s limestone grottos, then float down an eerie underground river. Meanwhile the narrator reimagines earlier cave explorations — by English surveyor Fred Mace and local chief Tane Tinorau — into a tale of one lone white man and his candle.

Nature turns sculptor. Though we laugh, we marvel that dripping water could have produced this tiger’s head, and head of George Bernard Shaw.

– Narrator Briton Chadwick

Key Cast & Crew

Michael Hardwick

Writer, Editor

Briton Chadwick

Narrator