Tararua Tramping Club members Colin Cook and Ken Fraser help with repair work and a new wood-shed at Cone Hut.

Vandalism of a unique back-country hut has 'backfired' – the historic shelter is now looking better than ever.

In June, members of the Tararua Tramping Club were sickened to find 70-year-old Cone Hut on the Tauherenikau River, west of Greytown, had been trashed by vandals.

The hut was strewn with rubbish and splashed with white paint, left over from a working bee; mattresses were slashed and the hut book was missing, its case smashed and burnt.

Barry Durrant Tramping club volunteers and DOC workers at work restoring Cone Hut in the Tararuas, after it was vandalised recently.

Cone, a three-hour tramp into mature bush from the Waiohine Gorge road-end, was built by Tararua Tramping Club in 1946. The club restored it in the 1980s using the rare technique of adding totara timber into framing and splitting it into slab walls.

It is the second-oldest hut in the Tararuas, and one of the best slab huts left in the country.

Club members were so distraught about the vandalism they discussed removing the hut with the Department of Conservation, which helps the club look after Cone and other huts. But "it was obvious that no-one wanted to see the hut pulled down, even though it was in a perilous state," wrote Masterton DOC ranger Joe Hansen in a post on DOC's conservation blog.

Instead, earlier this month, DOC and the club took advantage of the destruction to extensively renovate the old hut, choppering in materials for a new wooden floor over the old earth one, more comfortable bunks and a new wood shed.

A kitset shed was flown in, then clad with totara slabs left over from Hutt Valley Tramping Club's Baines Hut in the Orongorongo Valley, which was pulled down a few years ago.

"This meant that the wood shed would blend in perfectly and be a fitting part of our back-country heritage," Hansen wrote.

DOC partnerships manager for Manawatu and Wairarapa Allanah Irvine said the rebuild showed the importance of DOC working with community groups, and how strongly people felt about historic back-country huts. "The older a hut is the more likely that a large number of people feel a close association with it."

Reports of the vandalism on Stuff.co.nz prompted readers to contact DOC with information that could help identify the vandals, which was passed onto police. DOC's Masterton conservation services manager Kathy Houkamau said no-one had been identified yet.

The renovation will be finished off during a club working bee at the end of this month.