Spittle Hill Access/Closed????

Hi All

Went to Castle Hill today (Sunday) with a few friends to try and climb and throw a few snowballs.

When we got there we met a guy from Castle Hill Station (who own Spittle Hill) and he was putting a sign up that said "Castle Hill is a working station no access". This is just at the end of the new car park and at the point you would normally walk to Spittle.

We chatted with him for a while and he said that the landowners have had a lot of problems with DOC and they have decided that they are going to close off Spittle Hill to public access. We chatted about the reasons and to be honest they seemed fairly wide ranging and mostly to do with problems with DOC and OSH rather than anything climbers have done. In fact he was of the opinion that they were happy for climbers to carry on going there for present but that this may not continue.

The long and the short of it is that now there are two signs clearly stating no access to Spittle!

Was just wondering if anybody knew more about this?

Cheers Dave

ps have a couple of photos of the signage if you want to check it out but don't know if I can upload photos here.