Although dry stone walls were popular around North Otago about 100 years ago, many had fallen into disrepair because not enough people knew how to build them.
However, Barry Todd, from Danseys Pass, thinks he may now have built at least a kilometre of stone walls in the Kurow and Duntroon areas, after teaching himself how to do it.
"I just picked it up," Mr Todd (67) said.
"I had quite an area at home that I dug up and ended up with tonnes of rock, so I just started building walls with them to get rid of them.
"It sort of grew from there really.
"I have probably done more in the last couple of years than I did early on."
People from local farms are not the only ones taking an interest.
Tourists have also been stopping to admire his handiwork.
"We get quite a lot. At this one here [in Duntroon] we get quite a few stopping, taking photos," Mr Todd said.
"The Elephant Rocks are just up the road, so a lot of tourists go past here.
"I had an English couple, come out from Kurow, they heard I was doing it and they came out for a yarn. They used to do a lot of repair work of walls in England."
Dry stone walls are built without mortar or cement, and although they are common in England and Ireland, even in Europe dry stone walling is considered a dying art.
Mr Todd said that was probably due to the physical nature of the work.
"You get people that are all keen, and do half an hour and give up. You have got to really like what you are doing, otherwise it's too hard."
He said he had single-handedly lifted about 500 tonnes of rock during the past year.
"On a good day, I have done about four metres, but you will normally average two or three at most. It's between about one and a-half to two tonne of rock per metre."
The trick to building dry stone walls was to ensure the stones had a slight lean backwards, he said.
"What you do is, you just run a line round the bottom, and you can get it fairly even all the way round."
Despite not having any mortar, he said the walls were still strong, as a recent episode with a cow in Kurow proved.
"The cow jumped on the top of it, and just knocked two wee stones off the side of it. So it took the weight of a cow on top of it."
