Freedom camping notices on DOC land: Central Otago

What the notices mean in Central Otago

DOC's Central Otago district has 13 current freedom camping notices on public conservation land, and 11 of them prohibit freedom camping outright. Only 2 areas are restricted rather than closed. These notices were made by DOC for land it manages. They are not council bylaws, and they do not cover reserves, roadsides or car parks run by a council. All the listed areas lie in Queenstown Lakes District, around Wanaka, Albert Town, Luggate, Makarora and the Crown Range, so wherever you are on council land rather than conservation land, the Queenstown Lakes District Council freedom camping rules apply instead.

Most of the prohibited land sits in just two notices. Newcastle Track is the largest notice area at 81.8 ha, and Deans Bank, Dublin Bay tracks covers 51.4 ha, which together account for most of the 143.4 ha where camping is prohibited. The rest are small: Roys Peak Track carpark (0.3 ha), Diamond Lake, Wanaka (0.3 ha), Cameron Flat River Access (0.6 ha), Albert Town Outlet carpark (1.2 ha) and the Mt Aspiring National Park Visitor Centre, Wanaka (0.4 ha) among them. Prohibited means no freedom camping in that area at all, whether or not your vehicle is certified self-contained.

The 2 restricted areas, 1.2 ha between them, carry quite different conditions, so read each one on its own. At Crown Range Summit you may freedom camp only in a certified self-contained vehicle, and for no more than 4 nights in a calendar month. At Raspberry Creek carpark the notice sets a time window instead: camping is allowed only between 5 pm and 9 am, so arrive in the evening and be gone by morning.

The current notices come from two dates. Of them, 7 were made on 1 December 2012 and 6 on 1 December 2017, with notice numbers running from 119 to 290, and together they sit on 10 distinct conservation land parcels. A further 2 notices for this district are historic and no longer current, so if an older list names a spot that is missing here, check it against the current notices before relying on it.