The ruins of a clifftop castle in Dunedin — once a nightclub raided by police, the site of a fatal fall, and briefly owned by the current mayor's family almost by accident — are finally being stabilised.
Built in 1877 for the eye-watering sum of £14,000 (about $2.8 million today), the 21-room mansion once overlooked Dunedin's southern coast in grand style. Now the Cargill's Castle Trust is hoping to bring it back from the brink and reopen it to the public.
After the Cargill family sold up in the early 1900s, the castle fell into disrepair, becoming too dangerous for the public to visit for decades.
The trust saved it from demolition in the 1990s, buying it from the then-owner with the help of donations.
"He had the demolition crew ready to go, so we had to work pretty quick and hard to put a hold on that and just sort of negotiated and finalised a deal with him," said Cargill's Castle Trust chair Steven de Graaf.
After it was a family home, New Zealand's only clifftop castle was used for entertainment in the 1940s to 1960s.
"It was quite often a cabaret and a nightclub or a venue and they had a lot of drinking up here which wasn't always legal… and the police raided it many times and confiscated liquor," de Graaf said.
It was also not always a safe place to drink.
"There was one American sailor that fell off the cliff and died and the lady who was with him got snagged with a dress on some branches, and she survived," said de Graaf.
The site passed through various owners thereafter and was also the setting for the 1982 Death and the Maiden music video by The Verlaines.
At one stage, the current mayor's family also owned it.
"My father actually bought the castle at one stage… I grew up at Larnach Castle and Dad appeared to have gone to an auction and put his hand up," said Dunedin mayor Sophie Barker.
"So we had two castles in Dunedin. Mum was terribly unimpressed and we moved it on pretty quickly. But it's great to see the group that are involved doing some work with it now."
That work has already cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, the council contributing $199,000 alongside other donors and trusts.
"So we've been getting steel bands put around the top of the walls to sort of lock the building together and stop it from crumbling anymore," said de Graaf.
But the majority of repairs are still to come and are yet to be funded.
"The next thing would be to finalise our future plans, which involve putting in floors and some stairways and viewing platforms.
"Then it's involved following all the cracks and making sure everything's safe and stable. And then, once we do that, get it priced up and get the work done once we fundraise, which could be a million or two, we don't know yet. And then we can get the public up here."
The trust was keen to see a walking track developed to nearby Tunnel Beach.
"It's about two kilometres away, so a clifftop walk with a pretty spectacular coastline, and the Tunnel Beach track is already probably the most popular walk in the area by a long shot."
"It's mysterious and it's intriguing and, as I said, a real icon for the city. And I think that people have it in their hearts," Barker said.
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