In tune with nature

By PHILIPPA JONES

In the Glenorchy area, close to the beginning of the Routeburn, Caples, Greenstone and Rees Dart tramping tracks, there is accommodation for everyone: from hotels to farmstays, backpackers to campground, a backpacker's retreat, even a "farm motel". But Little Paradise Lodge must be the most original.

Your experience will depend on the season. In summer you will arrive to a blaze of flowers, a swimming pool complete with water lilies and fed by running water from a stream, a stone barbecue that can roast a pig on a spit, swings and shaded places from which to enjoy the garden and the view. And what a view it is.

In the winter and early spring, however, you will be drawn to this cosy refuge with its smoking chimney and firewood stacked up against the walls, Swiss style. The fruit trees are bare, matching the stark hills across cold, deep Lake Wakatipu, with their ever changing levels of snow.

Whatever the season, an experience you will have, because Thomas Schneider has created a little paradise in this idyllic spot.

With his philosophy of being in harmony with nature, he has turned this ordinary farmhouse, originally the Mt Creighton Station homestead, with its white plaster walls and corrugated iron roof, into a unique place.

Trained as a forester in Switzerland, he took on this weedy, stoat-ridden 2ha property 10 years ago and transformed it. Schneider collects the materials around him, flat schist pebbles and driftwood from the lakeshore, flax and gum tree bark, pine cones, moss, to add interest to every surface.

Enormous pine cones encrust the veranda posts, shingles cut diagonally from fallen beech trees resemble fish scales where they clad a wall, strips of bark appear to thatch the roof.

From wood and stone to feathers and dried flowers everything he finds has an imaginative use in embellishing this piece of paradise.

Inside his empathy for wood expresses itself in furniture: his eye saw a potential table in a huge fallen tree, on its side - its severed branches act as legs - and planed down and oiled. The floor is overlaid with a patchwork of crosscut beech, a task that took three months working full-time, but provides a feel and look that is extraordinary.

The bathroom is a mosaic of flat green pebbles that swirl around fret cut wooden veneer fern and flax leaves. A piece of driftwood holds toothbrushes, another a mirror.

But not by any means is Little Paradise Lodge a museum or gallery, it's peaceful- but at the same time it's an ongoing project. It lives and breathes.

While we were there Schneider was building another pond with a fountain that operated on the principles of gravity. He was more than happy to explain his innovations. And as he worked outside on this wintry day, his beloved Canada geese, ducks and chickens followed him around, and an emu and ostrich craned their necks from their enclosure to see what he was doing.

Inside, the long winter nights are great for talking round the coal range. The beds are soft and there's electric blankets, but if you prefer, Schneider will fill you an old-fashioned hot water bottle that lasts all night. And when you wake up there's that wonderful view again across the lake.



Where to find it

Thomas Schneider, Mount Creighton, Glenorchy Rd, Queenstown. Ph: (03) 442 6196, fax: 03 442 6196 .

Just 20 minutes from downtown Queenstown, on the sealed road to Glenorchy, it couldn't be easier to find. The most spectacular part of this scenic road is just before the lodge at 24.7km.

From here you can see the three islands: Tree

Island, a small one on the left, then Pig Island and Pigeon Island and beyond up to the head of Lake Wakatipu.

What it costs

Moderately priced from $100 to $120 a room.

Double rooms $100-120, single share rooms with three beds, $35-45 a person.

There is also a separate chalet near to the house which has an ensuite and facilities to make tea or coffee, $120.

Access

Call for details of wheelchair accessibility.

Smoking

Not inside

Food

Hosts Thomas and Christie can provide a full breakfast at around $20, as well as simple meals as required.

The well-equipped share kitchen is congenial and the view from the kitchen window across the lake is so wonderful it is almost too hard to concentrate on cooking.

Glenorchy has restaurants and a good cafe with an open fire, a cat and good, wholesome food.

Things to do

Kayaks, a dinghy and fishing gear are available at the lodge. Glenorchy has a variety of outdoor activities to enjoy, jet boating, fishing, hunting, horse trekking, canyoning and easy and strenuous walking and mountaineering experiences.

Little Paradise Lodge