Whacky DOC accommodation you might try

Zaniest hut?

Westies Hut is in a sea cave. With plenty of rock above.  | South Coast Track, Southern Fiordland

Westies Hut. Who wouldn’t want to stay in a fully equipped hut located in a sea cave?

Carpet on the floor, and Victorian pictorial wallpaper on the walls. Just a few metres from the spring tide mark where the Southern Ocean rolls its booming way in.

Sure it’s damp, and smells of rat, a lot.

But who doesn’t want to have at least one night pretending to be a pirate?

+++++horizontal rule+++++

Runners-up? Lower and Upper Gridiron Shelters.

There is a fireplace, table and outdoor couch.  Neat. |  Lower Gridiron Shelter, Kahurangi National Park

Lower Gridiron Shelter is a tree house, accessed by a ladder.

Upper Gridiron Hut, Kahurangi National Park

Upper Gridiron Shelter has a fourth wall that looks like hand-hewn rock by a skilled sculptor. And a swinging seat that hangs from a cliff.

+++++horizontal rule+++++

Caves?

West Ruggedy Cave, Rakiura National Park, Stewart Island

Of the two well-known Stewart Island/Rakiura caves the one at West Ruggedy Beach is preferable. It has been kind of fitted out with the bed base from stray driftwood, and once boasted a fireplace complete with a chimney.

+++++horizontal rule+++++ Doughboy cave, Southern Circuit, Stewart Island

The cave at Doughboy Bay is shallower and damper, but once housed a reclusive Japanese woman in the late 1970s, and some stranded sealers sometime in the early 1800s. Only for the desperate now the marvellous Doughboy Hut is only 100 m away.

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