Freedom camping notices on DOC land: Te Anau

What the notices mean in Te Anau

DOC's Te Anau district has 24 current freedom camping notices on public conservation land, and every one of them prohibits camping. There are no restricted areas here, so no notice lets even a certified self-contained vehicle stay: if a place is on this list, you cannot freedom camp there at all. The notices cover 4,046.5 ha in total. They were made by DOC for land it manages and are not council bylaws; on council land around Te Anau, the Southland District Council freedom camping rules apply instead.

One notice dwarfs the rest. Patience Bay, Milford Road is the largest notice area at 2,107.6 ha, more than half of the total. Eweburn covers 609.3 ha, Queens and Rainbow Reaches carparks 370.2 ha and Margin Forest 181.7 ha. At the other end, Pearl Harbour, Waiau River is the smallest at 1.1 ha, and Te Anau AO and Visitor Centre Carparks covers 1.6 ha, so the list runs from large blocks of land down to single car parks in town.

Many of the notices sit along the road to Milford: The Divide Carpark, Lake Gunn Walk Carpark, Lake Marian Falls Track Carpark, Mistake Creek Track Carpark, Monkey Creek, The Chasm Carpark, Hollyford Roadend and Moraine Creek Carpark, Homer Nature Walk & Gertrude Valley Track and Tutuko Valley Track. Of the 24 notices, 12 share one conservation land parcel. Kepler Track and Control Gate Carparks and Te Anau Downs and Lake Mistletoe Carparks are on the list too, so trailhead parking is not a place to sleep.

All 24 current notices were made on the same day in December 2012, with notice numbers running from 230 to 256, and none for this district is historic, so this list is the whole current picture for DOC land here. For somewhere to stay, look at the DOC campsites in the area or the council's rules for its own land, and read the freedom camping rules guide before you set off.