Firefighters and air crew battling a large vegetation fire south of Invercargill have stood down for the night

The blaze, which has ripped through about a thousand hectares of manuka scrub at Awarua, is expected to take a fortnight or more to extinguish as it is burnng in peat.

Incident controller Mark Mawhinney says they'll resume at 8 tomorrow mornng, with nine helicopters and eight ground crews.

He says there'll also be heavy machinery to construct fire breaks.