Fiordland National Park

Where it sits. Fiordland National Park occupies the southwestern corner of the South Island, about 12,500 square kilometres of it, which makes it the largest national park in New Zealand and one of the largest in the world. Its western boundary is the Tasman Sea, cut by fourteen fiords carved by Pleistocene glaciers and drowned when the sea rose — Milford Sound/Piopiotahi in the north, Doubtful Sound/Patea in the middle, Dusky and Preservation in the deep south. Inland it holds Lakes Te Anau, Manapouri and Monowai, the Murchison and Kepler and Stuart Mountains, and a vast interior with no roads at all. The park was gazetted in 1952 and forms the core of Te Wāhipounamu, the South West New Zealand World Heritage Area inscribed in 1990.

Rain, rock and isolation. The defining fact is water. Milford Sound receives something in the order of six to seven metres of rain a year, falling on perhaps two hundred days, and after heavy rain the walls of the fiord run with hundreds of temporary waterfalls that vanish within a day. The permanent falls are considerable in their own right: Sutherland Falls above the Milford Track drops around 580 metres in three leaps, and Stirling Falls comes off the wall of Milford Sound at about 150 metres directly into the water. The rock is hard gneiss and granite with very thin soil, so the forest grows on a mat of its own roots and periodically sheds in tree avalanches that leave clean vertical scars on the faces. Freshwater from the rain floats as a stained layer several metres deep on top of the salt water in the fiords, which cuts the light and allows deep-water species such as black coral to grow at unusually shallow depths.

Wildlife, including a resurrection. Fiordland is one of the great strongholds of New Zealand's remaining endemic birds. Kea patrol the Homer Tunnel portals and dismantle car trim for entertainment. Fiordland crested penguin, tawaki, breed along the coast and in the fiords in spring. Bottlenose dolphins are resident in Doubtful Sound and New Zealand fur seals haul out on the rocks. The park's most famous story is the takahē, a large flightless rail declared extinct and then rediscovered in the Murchison Mountains in November 1948 by Geoffrey Orbell — a population that survives there today under intensive management and has been used to found colonies elsewhere.

On screen. Fiordland's contribution to Middle-earth is scattered across the park's fringes rather than its famous fiords. The beech forest along Takaro Road, in the Snowdon Forest country west of Te Anau, stood in for Fangorn, the ancient wood where Merry and Pippin escape the orcs and meet Treebeard. The Waiau River, running between Lake Te Anau and Lake Manapouri, doubled for the River Anduin in the Fellowship's boat journey. Kepler Mire, on the flats south of Te Anau, was the Dead Marshes. Aerial plates gathered over the park's interior ranges fed the Misty Mountains sequences of both trilogies. The interior itself is essentially unfilmable without helicopters, which is why the productions worked in the accessible margins.

What you actually see today. For most visitors, Milford Sound is the destination — a two-hour drive from Te Anau on State Highway 94 through the Eglinton Valley, the Mirror Lakes, the Hollyford turnoff and the Homer Tunnel, a rough-walled 1.2-kilometre bore begun in the 1930s and opened to traffic in the 1950s, still single-lane and light-controlled. Boat cruises run from the terminal at the head of the sound past Mitre Peak, which rises about 1,690 metres almost sheer from the water. Doubtful Sound is quieter and reached by boat across Lake Manapouri and a coach over Wilmot Pass. On foot, the park holds three Great Walks — the Milford, Routeburn and Kepler Tracks — plus the Hollyford and a great deal of harder country.

Getting there and timing. Te Anau is the main base, two and a half hours from Queenstown; Manapouri serves Doubtful Sound. Great Walk huts must be booked months ahead for the summer season. The Milford Road crosses major avalanche paths and is closed or convoy-controlled at short notice through winter and spring; carrying chains is a legal requirement in that period. Sandflies are famously ferocious and repellent is essential. Fuel is available at Te Anau and, at a price, at Milford. Rain is not a reason to cancel — the fiords are at their most extraordinary in it.