“Autumn”

Paradise is a really beautiful place....you can see why it is called Paradise (that is the official gazetted placename).

The road up the Dart Valley to Paradise used to be rather rough & ready and it petered out at that farm, although the legal public road carried on as a 4WD track to Chinaman's Bluff where the Dart tramping track begins.

However, it is now quite a good road to Paradise, although gravel, and it has been properly formed beyond the farm all the way to Chinaman's Bluff, although there are no bridges and you have to drive through fords at the many side-streams feeding into the Dart River. At Chinaman's Bluff, there are even proper flush toilets now complete with toilet paper, handbasins with running water, soap and paper towels, rubbish bins, etc. I guess the pressure of tourists visiting the area has forced DOC to bit the bullet and spend money putting in flash toilets to stop hoardes of people shitting in the forest or along the river bank.

Since the Lord of the Rings movies were made, the number of tourists driving up to Paradise has gone ballistic. Quite a few scenes in the movies were shot around Paradise and heaps of tourists want to go and take a look. And they all photograph the farmhouse at Paradise.

One interesting thing about the area....there used to be a large glacier on the side of the mountain range running along the true left side of the valley past the farm. That was seventeen years ago. I have been down that valley at the end of a tramping trip since then (after crossing Cascade Saddle from the West Matukituki Valley) but that was in the evening when it was dark. However, last month was the first time I had been up that valley in daylight since 1992 and I was shocked to discover that the entire glacier had melted apart from a couple of small patches of dead ice. That's global warming for you! I wonder how long before the rest of the glaciers up the valley also melt? You can see some of them in the photographs I took at Paradise.