Kaitoke Regional Park

Where it sits. Kaitoke Regional Park covers roughly 2,860 hectares of steep forested hill country at the head of the Hutt Valley, about fifteen minutes north of Upper Hutt on State Highway 2 and forty-five minutes from central Wellington. Two rivers meet inside it: the Hutt River, Te Awa Kairangi, coming down from the Tararua Range, and the Pākuratahi River joining from the east at a broad shingle flat known as Pākuratahi Forks. The valley floor here is unusually open and level for the region, ringed by bush-covered spurs that close the horizon in every direction — no farmland, no houses, no visible road. That enclosure is what made it useful to a film crew, and it is also what makes it pleasant to sit in.

The forest. What grows here is genuinely old. Much of the Wellington region's lowland forest was milled or burned in the nineteenth century, but the Kaitoke catchment was reserved early as part of the city's water supply and kept its cover. The result is mature mixed podocarp-broadleaf forest: rimu and northern rātā emerging above a canopy of tawa, hīnau and kāmahi, with tree ferns, kiekie and a dense understorey below. Kererū, tūī and North Island robin are common; whio, the blue duck, hold territory on the faster water upstream. The park still contains a working part of Wellington's water infrastructure, with the Kaitoke intake drawing from the Hutt River nearby.

On screen. Pākuratahi Forks was Rivendell. Over the summer of 1999–2000 the art department built the Last Homely House and its terraces, walkways, bridges and archways on the river flat, backed by the natural bush so that the elven architecture appeared to grow out of the hillside. The sequences shot here include Frodo waking in Rivendell, the Council of Elrond, Arwen and Aragorn on the terrace, and the Fellowship walking out under the arch to begin the journey south. The production's undertaking was that the site would be returned to its original state, and it was — every structure was dismantled and removed, and nothing of the original set survives. What stands today is a half-scale replica of one elven archway, installed later as a marker, together with interpretive panels that map the footprint of the vanished set: where Elrond's house stood, where the walkways ran, where each camera position was. It is honest about being a reconstruction, which is more than can be said for many film-location attractions.

What you actually see today. The Rivendell site is a short, flat, well-formed walk from its own car park off SH2, taking around fifteen minutes to loop. Elsewhere in the park, the Swingbridge Track crosses the Hutt River on a wire bridge and links to swimming holes that are among the best in the Wellington region — deep, clear, green pools in a gravel bed, busy on hot weekends and empty the rest of the year. Longer routes climb into the ranges: the Puffer Saddle and Marchant Ridge tracks run up to the Tararua Forest Park boundary and give the region's mountain-bike and tramping traffic its main access. There is a large grassed campground at Pākuratahi Forks with basic facilities.

Nearby, and how it connects. Fifteen minutes south, Harcourt Park in Upper Hutt supplied the gardens of Isengard, where Gandalf rides in to consult Saruman. Stretches of the Hutt River between the two were used for river footage cut into the Anduin sequence. Taken together the three sites make a half-day circuit that covers three distinct Middle-earth locations without leaving the valley, which is unusual — most of Jackson's locations are hours apart.

Getting there and timing. State Highway 2 runs past the park entrance; there is no bus, so a car is needed, though the Wairarapa railway line stops at Upper Hutt fifteen minutes south. Entry is free and the park is open at all hours, with the car parks gated overnight in places. Summer gives warm, clear water and long evenings; the flip side is that the Hutt River rises fast and dangerously after rain in the Tararua Range, and the swimming holes that are benign in February become unsurvivable in flood. Winter here is cold, wet and quiet, with the bush at its greenest and the Rivendell clearing frequently to itself. The Rivendell walk is formed and mostly level but has an unsealed surface and a short slope, so it is manageable rather than fully accessible.