The main street of Tapanui must be the smartest in the country. Maybe the world. The remake of its 1977 hit, Pete’s Dragon, was mostly shot in and around Tapanui. For its starring role as the fictitious town of Millhaven, Tapanui was given a make-over so it looked more, well, ‘American’.

After filming was finished, Disney repainted everything, either back to the original colour, or something else if that’s what was wanted.

Robert Redford had a significant role in the movie, but it’s impossible to find anyone in town who actually clapped eyes on him. Some say he stayed in a nearby upmarket home complete with personal staff, others say he stayed in Queenstown and was choppered back and forth. But Redford must have been around as he’s reported as saying Tapanui is a town “with a smile on its face …”.

Doesn’t matter, the shooting of Pete’s Dragon obviously had a huge impact on the town and surrounding area.

But Pete’s Dragon isn’t the only movie to have been shot in Tapanui – a considerable portion of Goodbye Pork Pie II was also set here, and back in 1990 there was a NZ-produced horror movie shot here called The Returning. The location for that movie was a very large and very stylish historic homestead on the way south called Mainholm Lodge – today a mix of accommodation and restaurant.

Not that the major industry here is film-making … it’s farming and timber.

Tapanui is in West Otago – a relatively obscure region that is off the beaten track and on the way to nowhere in particular. Although it’s part of the greater Otago provincial region and part of the Clutha District, it’s geographically isolated by the barrier of the Blue Mountains and is closer in both spirit and distance to Eastern Southland. When West Otago-ites talk of ‘going to town’ they mean either Gore, or Invercargill, not Balclutha or Dunedin.