Mystery mud huts with stunning views appear on the side of Wellington's Mt Victoria

Two one-bedroom hillside homes on the side of Wellington’s Mt Victoria offer panoramic views, indoor-outdoor flow, and they’re available immediately.

The two well-constructed huts, made out of sticks and dirt, have emerged under a massive pine tree off one of the numerous walking tracks that look down from Mt Victoria over the city and the harbour.

Neither is visible from the track, but it’s clear each one has been carefully made.

The largest is more than two metres high with thick, igloo-shaped walls and a soft carpet of hay which lines its walls and floor. 

The other, smaller hut is made from sticks and sits about 1.6m high, and around 2m wide. A flax mat is on the floor inside. 

Stuff first spotted the two huts in September, and since then, a third has begun to emerge up against a nearby tree. 

It’s unclear whether someone has been living in the huts, but developments have been made over the past few weeks, including the addition of a small pit, that suggest someone is frequenting the site.

On Monday evening a Wellington resident wanting to be known only as Rory said he had been building the main hut for about a year, and it had cost him $200.

The idea was spurred by a curiosity to put his building skills to the test, after stumbling across the open space that had a lot of spare timber laying about.

“I’ve been tempted to build a decent bush hut for quite a while. It’s just been an ongoing project that I’ve done in [my] downtime.”

At first there was water flowing nearby that would have made the construction of mud walls a lot easier, but he said they dried up and he had to resort to carrying water to the site.

“Three bottles at a time. It would have been at least 100 trips up the hill to do all that mud to the stage it’s at now.”

He said a group of “kids” was responsible for building the other huts, and he had been communicating with them by letters about the construction of what they called “Hut Vic”.

Wellington City Council said it was aware of the huts, and had no plans to destroy them.

The largest one was understood to have been there for a couple of years, a spokesman said.

Wellington is known for being a bit quirky, so it’d be a shame to destroy the huts. They’re not a hazard and they don’t appear to be in regular use.”

The council did not consider the huts to be dwellings.

This article was originally published by Stuff.