Remote Stewart Island bach offers chance to escape from crowds
If Waiheke Island is becoming a tad crowded for you these days, then you might want to consider buying one of the nation’s most isolated baches.
Two-bedroom cottage Kidney Fern is now for sale on remote Stewart Island, south of Invercargill on one of the last stops before Antarctica.
Valued by the local council at $500,000, the holiday home can be reached only by a two-hour hike or 15-minute water-taxi ride from the island’s only town, Oban.
And it is so remote, the real estate agency selling the property hasn’t been able to get a professional-quality picture of it for its online listing.
It has no electricity, no running water and no cellphone coverage. Contact can only be made using a battery-powered radio.
Heat for cooking and warmth comes from coal and gas carried to the bach in bottles, while the toilet is an “eco-friendly long-drop”.
A local fisherman and guest-house operator bought the place in 1970 as a holiday home away from the “hustle and bustle” of Oban and its population at that time of about 270.
“Over the ensuing decade, weekends and summers were spent at the secluded cottage, where the children fished for blue cod off the beach and picked mussels off the rocks at the end of the front lawn,” said Mike Peterson of Bayleys Real Estate.
Holidays also included cutting firewood for the barbecue, fishing, stargazing and tramping into the Rakiura National Park.
The family moved off the island in 1981 but regularly returned to the bach for the tranquillity and solitude.
“Kidney Fern truly was, and is, the essence of what it was to be a Kiwi kid,” Peterson said.
“And nothing much has changed since then. The cottage is in pretty much the same state it was when the family enjoyed it as children.”
It has views over two beaches and sits on about 221ha of waterfront land, bordering the Rakiura National Park — New Zealand’s southernmost wilderness reserve. The sale price is up for negotiation.