New Zealand’s newest Great Walk loops through Waitutu Forest on the remote south coast of Fiordland. From Te Waewae Bay’s beaches and podocarp forest, the track climbs onto the open Hump Ridge — subalpine tors, tarns, and long views toward Stewart Island — then drops past historic timber viaducts to the old Port Craig mill site before returning along the coast.

Along the way the country keeps changing character: rocky shore and lowland bush give way to mountain beech and boardwalks through fragile alpine scrub; on a clear day the ridge looks deep into Fiordland’s lakes and ranges, while the Southern Ocean runs unbroken to the horizon. Lower down, the old Port Craig tramway threads towering rimu and rata, and the weathered trestles of Edwin and Percy Burn still span the burns they were built to cross a century ago.