Mr Marshall (23), originally from Sydney, made national headlines this week after Mountain Scene reported the tree hut he constructed in a 28-year-old wilding pine on Mr Clark’s Arawata Terrace land was given the axe at the weekend.
He said he’d been living in it for close to two months but wasn’t there at the time — because he had broken his collar bone and couldn’t climb up to it.
When the Otago Daily Times spoke to Mr Marshall yesterday afternoon, he said he had just received a phone call from the police, informing him he was "going to get done for trespassing, or something".
Senior Sergeant Paula Enoka, of Queenstown, confirmed police had trespassed Mr Marshall at Mr Clark’s request.
That meant he could not return to Mr Clark’s land for two years. If he did, he would be arrested and charged.
Mr Marshall, who has lived in Queenstown for about a year, said he was not expecting his tree hut to receive the attention it had.
"I can’t believe it’s gone so ridiculous — from building a tree house to being in the paper, getting the police calling me now ... "
He said the idea of building the tree hut — which was constructed from leftovers — came after a chat with friends.
"We were all sitting around having a few beers and we were talking about when we were little kids and building tree houses.
"And one of the boys was like ‘I wonder if we should build a tree house?’.
"I was like ‘Yeah, sweet’.
"I had a week off work so I just went hard and did it."
When he googled the area he didn’t realise it was privately owned.
"Then I found out I was on some guy’s land [so] that sucked."
One good thing had come from the attention his cheeky construction project had received, though.
"Someone messaged me yesterday saying I can build on their land, which will be nice.
"It was someone I met in town. They’ve got property in Queenstown so I was like ‘sweet’.
"I’ve got to wait eight weeks until my collar bone’s not broken."
As to how he injured himself: "I fell out of my tree house when he cut it down — nah, it was on the trampoline."
