Big Hellfire Dune on the western coast of Stewart Island/Rakiura, New Zealand, is an unusual dune climbing 220 m in altitude on the Ruggedy Range, to dissipate on the leeward side of Hellfire Pass. To record vegetation and environmental characters we ran six transects parallel to the coast, at 50‐m altitudinal intervals up the dune. Topography reflected substrate and sand deposition patterns. Wind speed was higher further up t...