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Dunedin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Dunedin (disambiguation).
| Dunedin Ōtepoti (Māori) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| — Metropolitan Area — | |||
 | |||
| |||
| Nickname(s): Edinburgh of the South[1] Dunners (colloquial)[2] | |||
  Dunedin Location of Dunedin | |||
Coordinates:  45°52′S 170°30′E | |||
| Country |  New Zealand | ||
| Region | Otago | ||
| Territorial authority | Dunedin City | ||
| Settled by Māori | c. 1300[3] | ||
| Settled by Europeans | 1848 | ||
| Incorporated[4] | 1855 | ||
| Named for | Dùn Èideann – Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh | ||
| Electorates | Dunedin North Dunedin South | ||
| Government[5] | |||
| • Mayor | Dave Cull | ||
| • Deputy Mayor | Chris Staynes | ||
| Area | |||
| • Territorial | 3,314 km2 (1,280 sq mi) | ||
| • Urban | 255 km2 (98 sq mi) | ||
| Population (June 2011 estimate)[6] | |||
| • Territorial | 126,000 | ||
| • Density | 38/km2 (98/sq mi) | ||
| • Urban | 117,700 | ||
| • Urban density | 460/km2 (1,200/sq mi) | ||
| Demonym | Dunedinite | ||
| Time zone | NZST (UTC+12) | ||
| • Summer (DST) | NZDT (UTC+13) | ||
| Postcode | 9010, 9011, 9012, 9013, 9014, 9016, 9018, 9022, 9023, 9024, 9035, 9076, 9077, 9081, 9082, 9092 | ||
| Area code(s) | 03 | ||
| Website | www.Dunedin.govt.nz | ||
listen) du-NEE-dən; Māori: Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons.[7] Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until superseded by Auckland on the creation of the Auckland Council in November 2010. Dunedin was the largest city in New Zealand by population until about 1900.The Dunedin urban area lies on the central-eastern coast of Otago, surrounding the head of Otago Harbour. The harbour and hills around Dunedin are the remnants of an extinct volcano. The city suburbs extend out into the surrounding valleys and hills, onto the isthmus of the Otago Peninsula, and along the shores of the Otago Harbour and the Pacific Ocean.
The city's largest industry is tertiary education – Dunedin is home to the University of Otago, New Zealand's first university (1869), and the Otago Polytechnic. Students account for a large proportion of the population: 21.6 percent of the city's population was aged between 15 and 24 at the 2006 census, compared to the New Zealand average of 14.2 percent.[8]
| Contents [show] |
[edit] History
Main article: History of Dunedin
[edit] Māori settlements
Archaeological evidence shows the first human (Māori) occupation of New Zealand occurred between AD 1250–1300,[3] with population concentrated along the southeast coast.[9] A camp site at Kaikai's Beach, near Otago Heads, has been dated from about that time.[10] There are numerous archaic (moa hunter) sites in what is now Dunedin, several of them large and permanently occupied, particularly in the 14th century.[11] The population contracted but expanded again with the evolution of the Classic culture which saw the building of several pā, fortified settlements, notably Pukekura at (Taiaroa Head), about 1650.[12] There was a settlement in what is now central Dunedin (Ōtepoti) occupied as late as about 1785 but abandoned by 1826.[13]
Maori tradition tells first of a people called Kahui Tipua living in the area, then Te Rapuwai, semi-legendary but considered to be historical. The next arrivals were Waitaha followed by Kāti Mamoe late in the 16th century and then Kai Tahu (Ngai Tahu in modern standard Māori) who arrived in the mid 17th century.[14] These migration waves have often been represented as 'invasions' in European accounts but modern scholarship has cast doubt on that. They were probably migrations like those of the European which incidentally resulted in bloodshed.[15]
The sealer John Boultbee recorded in the 1820s that the 'Kaika Otargo' (settlements around and near Otago Harbour) were the oldest and largest in the south.[16]
[edit] European settlement
Lieutenant James Cook stood off what is now the coast of Dunedin between February 25, 1770 and March 5, 1770, naming Cape Saunders on the Otago Peninsula and Saddle Hill. He reported penguins and seals in the vicinity, which led sealers to visit from the beginning of the 19th century.[17] The early years of sealing saw a feud between sealers and local Maori, from 1810–1823, the "Sealers' War" sparked by an incident on Otago Harbour, but William Tucker became the first European to settle in the area in 1815.[18] Permanent European occupation dates from 1831 when the Weller brothers founded their whaling station at Otago, modern Otakou, on the Otago Harbour. Epidemics badly reduced the Maori population. By the late 1830s, the harbour was an international whaling port. Johnny Jones established a farming settlement and a mission station, the South Island's first, at Waikouaiti in 1840.[19]
In 1844, the Deborah, captained by Thomas Wing and carrying, among others his wife Lucy and a representative of the New Zealand Company, Frederick Tuckett, came south to determine the location of a free church settlement.[20] After inspecting several areas around the eastern coast of the south island, Tuckett selected the site which would become known as Dunedin.[21] Tuckett turned down the site, which would become Christchurch, as he felt the ground around the Avon river was far too swampy.
The Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland founded Dunedin at the head of Otago Harbour in 1848 as the principal town of its special settlement. The name comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland.[14] Charles Kettle the city's surveyor, instructed to emulate the characteristics of Edinburgh, produced a striking, 'Romantic' design.[22] The result was both grand and quirky streets as the builders struggled and sometimes failed to construct his bold vision across the challenging landscape. Captain William Cargill, a veteran of the war against Napoleon, was the secular leader. The Reverend Thomas Burns, a nephew of the poet Robert Burns, was the spiritual guide.
[edit] Gold rush era
In 1852, Dunedin became the capital of the Otago Province, the whole of New Zealand from the Waitaki south. In 1861 the discovery of gold at Gabriel's Gully, to the southwest, led to a rapid influx of population and saw Dunedin become New Zealand's first city by growth of population in 1865. The new arrivals included many Irish, but also Italians, French, Germans, Jews and Chinese.[23] The Dunedin Southern Cemetery was established in 1858, the Dunedin Northern Cemetery in 1872.[24]
Dunedin Railway Station, built in 1906. 
360° Panorama: Railway Station from inside. Dunedin and the region industrialised and consolidated and the Main South Line connected the city with Christchurch in 1878 and Invercargill in 1879. The University of Otago, the oldest university in New Zealand, was founded in Dunedin in 1869.[25] Otago Girls' High School was founded in 1871. Between 1881 and 1957, Dunedin was home to cable trams, being both one of the first and last such systems in the world. Early in the 1880s the inauguration of the frozen meat industry, with the first shipment leaving from Port Chalmers in 1882, saw the beginning of a later great national industry.[26]After ten years of gold rushes the economy slowed but Julius Vogel's immigration and development scheme brought thousands more especially to Dunedin and Otago before recession set in again in the 1880s. In these first and second times of prosperity many institutions and businesses were established, New Zealand's first daily newspaper, art school, medical school and public art gallery the Dunedin Public Art Gallery among them.[27] There was also a remarkable architectural flowering producing many substantial and ornamental buildings. R.A. Lawson's First Church of Otago and Knox Church are notable examples, as are buildings by Maxwell Bury and F.W. Petre. The other visual arts also flourished under the leadership of W. M. Hodgkins.[28] The city's landscape and burgeoning townscape were vividly portrayed by George O'Brien 1821–1888.[29] From the mid 1890s the economy revived. Institutions such as the Otago Settlers Museum and the Hocken Collections – the first of their kind in New Zealand – were founded. More notable buildings such as the Railway Station and Olveston were erected. New energy in the visual arts represented by G.P. Nerli culminated in the career of Frances Hodgkins.[30]
Geography
Dunedin (grey area to lower left) sits close to the isthmus of the Otago Peninsula, at the end of Otago Harbour. Dunedin City has a land area of 3,314.8 square kilometres (1,279.9 sq mi), slightly smaller than the American state of Rhode Island or the English county of Cambridgeshire, and a little smaller than Cornwall. It was the largest city in land area in New Zealand until the formation of the 5,600 km2 (2,200 sq mi) Auckland Council on 1 November 2010. The Dunedin City Council boundaries since 1989 have extended to Middlemarch in the west, Waikouaiti in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the east and south-east, and the Waipori/Taieri River and the township of Henley in the south-west.Dunedin is the farthest city in the world from London at 19,100 km (11,870 mi) (90 km (56 mi) more than Invercargill, and 100 km (62 mi) more than Christchurch), and from Berlin at 18,200 km (11,310 mi). Its antipodes are some 300 km (190 mi) north of the Spanish city of A Coruña, in the Bay of Biscay.
Climate
The climate of Dunedin in general is temperate, however the city is recognised as having a large number of microclimates and the weather conditions often vary between suburbs mostly due to the city's topographical layout.[citation needed] It is also greatly modified by its proximity to the ocean. This leads to warm summers and relatively mild winters. Winter can occasionally be frosty but sunny, and significant snowfall is uncommon (perhaps every two or three years), except in the inland hill suburbs such as Halfway Bush and Wakari, which tend to receive a few days of snowfall each year. Spring can feature "four seasons in a day" weather, but from November to April it is generally settled and mild. Temperatures during summer can reach over 30 °C (86 °F)
Dunedin has relatively low rainfall in comparison to many of New Zealand's cities, with only some 750 millimetres (30 in) recorded per year. Despite this fact it is sometimes misguidedly regarded as a damp city,[citation needed] probably due to its rainfall occurring in drizzle or light rain (heavy rain is relatively rare). Dunedin is one of the cloudiest major centres in the country, recording approximately 1650 hours of bright sunshine per annum [39] Prevailing wind in the city is mainly a sometimes cool southwesterly and during late spring will alternate with northeasterlies.[40] Warmer, dry northwest winds are also characteristic Foehn winds from the northwest. The circle of hills surrounding the inner city shelters the inner city from much of the prevailing weather, while hills just to the west of the city can often push inclement weather around to the west of the city.
Inland, beyond the heart of the city and into Inland Otago the climate is sub-continental: winters are quite cold and dry, summers hot and dry. Thick freezing ground fogs are common in winter in the upper reaches of the Taieri River's course around Middlemarch, and in summer the temperature sometimes reaches into the mid-30s Celsius.
| [hide]Climate data for Dunedin | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Average high °C (°F) | 18.9 (66.0) | 18.7 (65.7) | 17.2 (63.0) | 15.5 (59.9) | 12.6 (54.7) | 10.2 (50.4) | 9.8 (49.6) | 11.0 (51.8) | 12.8 (55.0) | 14.6 (58.3) | 16.1 (61.0) | 17.4 (63.3) | 14.6 (58.3) |
| Daily mean °C (°F) | 15.2 (59.4) | 15.1 (59.2) | 13.7 (56.7) | 11.9 (53.4) | 9.2 (48.6) | 7.0 (44.6) | 6.5 (43.7) | 7.5 (45.5) | 9.3 (48.7) | 10.9 (51.6) | 12.4 (54.3) | 13.9 (57.0) | 11.0 (51.8) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 11.5 (52.7) | 11.4 (52.5) | 10.2 (50.4) | 8.3 (46.9) | 5.7 (42.3) | 3.8 (38.8) | 3.2 (37.8) | 4.1 (39.4) | 5.7 (42.3) | 7.2 (45.0) | 8.6 (47.5) | 10.4 (50.7) | 7.5 (45.5) |
| Rainfall mm (inches) | 72 (2.83) | 63 (2.48) | 70 (2.76) | 60 (2.36) | 72 (2.83) | 74 (2.91) | 69 (2.72) | 65 (2.56) | 53 (2.09) | 71 (2.8) | 63 (2.48) | 82 (3.23) | 812 (31.97) |
| % humidity | 73.1 | 77.0 | 76.3 | 77.2 | 78.0 | 79.0 | 80.2 | 78.1 | 74.2 | 71.8 | 71.4 | 73.1 | 75.8 |
| Avg. rainy days (≥ 1mm) | 10 | 8 | 10 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 12 | 124 |
| Sunshine hours | 178 | 153 | 140 | 121 | 100 | 86 | 101 | 114 | 129 | 147 | 161 | 169 | 1,585 |
| Source: NIWA CliFlo data Musselburgh[41] | |||||||||||||
