South Dunedin is a major inner city suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located, as its name suggests, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) to the south of the city centre, on part of a large plain known locally simply as "The Flat". The suburb is a mix of industrial, retail, and predominantly lower-quality residential properties. South Dunedin's 2001 population was 2,538.
The term South Dunedin is often used in a more general sense to refer to any or all of the various suburbs occupying The Flat, including St. Kilda, Forbury, Kensington, Musselburgh, and Tahuna.
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South Dunedin is a wide area of flat land, much of it reclaimed from the Otago Harbour. This reclaimed area, which lies immediately to the west of the harbour's head, is known as the Southern Endowment,[1] and covers an area of close to 100 hectares (250 acres).
The Southern Endowment was begun with rock removed during the cutting of Bell Hill in the central city during the nineteenth century.[2] This largely extended the area around the wharves close to the heart of the city, but did not extend any further south until 1912, when a causeway was built along the head of the harbour. As part of a Otago Harbour Board scheme to reclaim land for industrial use, dredges started to pump tailings into the area behind the causeway in the 1940s. Reclamation continued for many years, and was not officially completed until the opening of Portsmouth Drive, which runs along the route of the 1912 causeway at the harbour edge, in 1978.[3]
Most of the area of the southern endowment is industrial and storage, though it does contain a small park close to the wharf area and the major sports complex of The Edgar Centre close to its southern edge.
South Dunedin contains the city's second most important retail district, centred on Cargill's Corner, named for Otago provincial founder Captain William Cargill (Hillside Road - at one time called Cargill Road - is named for his house, "Hillside", which lay some 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) to the north).[4] At this junction, two main suburban arterial routes - King Edward Street and Hillside Road - cross. A small shopping mall, South City, is located at Cargill's Corner.
Cargill's Corner had, for many years, Dunedin's only "Barnes Dance" pedestrian crossing. Its use was phased out during the 1980s.
King Edward Street is aligned roughly north-south, linking with the southern end of Princes Street and the centre city in the north with the densely populated coastal suburb of Saint Kilda. Hillside Road links Andersons Bay Road - a further major suburban arterial - in the east with the suburbs of Caversham, Corstorphine and Saint Clair in the west and southwest.
Smaller, older shops stretch south along King Edward Street and west along Hillside Road from Cargill's Corner. To the east, along Hillside Road and Anderson's Bay Road are larger supermarkets and wholesalers, notably Pak'n Save, The Warehouse, and Mitre 10 Mega. Further along Anderson's Bay Road to the south and to the west on Hillside Road are numerous car sale yards and light industrial works. These extend into Caversham in the west, and across the reclaimed land which lies between Andersons Bay Road and Portsmouth Drive in the south and east. At its southern extreme, King Edward Street becomes increasingly residential, though there are also light industrial premises here.
Andersons Bay Road lies roughly parallel with King Edward Street some 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) to the east. This route, which roughly follows the original shoreline, connects with State Highway 1 and Dunedin's one-way street system in the north, and with the suburb of Musselburgh in the south. It also provides a major route from the centre city with Otago Peninsula.
Portsmouth Drive, a further arterial route, lies a further 0.6 kilometres (0.37 mi) to the east. This route links the centre city with Portobello Road, the long, twisting route which travels the length of Otago Peninsula's harbour coast. It is named for Dunedin's American sister city of Portsmouth, Virginia.[5]
Other important roads in South Dunedin include Timaru Street on the Southern Endowment, and several streets which cross or meet King Edward Street, linking it with Anderson's Bay Road in the east or the suburbs of Saint Clair and Forbury in the west. these include Macandrew Road, Melbourne Street, McBride Street, and Bay View Road, the latter of which forms the boundary between South Dunedin and Saint Kilda.
The industrial heart of South Dunedin is the Hillside Railway Workshops, located immediately to the west of Cargills Corner. These workshops cover some 8 hectares (20 acres) and stretch into the neighbouring suburb of Caversham. Other notable buildings in South Dunedin include the Mayfair Theatre,[6] close to Cargill's Corner, and the Edgar Sports Centre,[7] at the southeastern extremity of the suburb on Portsmouth Drive. The city's main sports complex, Carisbrook, is located close to the border of South Dunedin in Caversham. A former stadium, the Caledonian Ground, stood on ground now largely occupied by The Warehouse retail store. It was relocated in 2000 to Logan Park in Dunedin North.[8] The junction of Andersons Bay Road and Hillside Road, located nearby, is still sometimes referred to as "Caledonian Corner".
This corner is also the former site of the country's longest-serving gasworks, which operated from 1863 to 1987, and a small industrial museum, the Dunedin Gasworks Museum, is located on the southern part of its site on Braemar Street. Opened to the public in 2001, this museum is one of only three known preserved gasworks museums in the world.[9] The museum features five steam pumping engines which were used in the gasworks, and an older engine imported from Scotland in 1868.[10]
There are several notable churches in South Dunedin, among them the city's only Eastern Orthodox church, St. Michael's, in Fingall Street, and St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Basilica (designed by Francis Petre) in Macandrew Road.[11]
Other than the Hillside workshops and the gasworks, South Dunedin has several links with Dunedin's industrial heritage. Notable among these was the factory of G. Methven, one of New Zealand's leading bathroom fittings manufacturers. This company, founded by George Methven, was located for many years in Andersons Bay Road on a site now occupied by a Mitre 10 megastore.
Another former landmark in south Dunedin was the former Caledonian sports ground. This was located opposite the gasworks at the corner of Hillside Road and Andersons Bay Road, a site still known as The Caledonian Corner. The sports field was relocated to Dunedin North, and the site is now the car park of The Warehouse - all that remains of the original sports complex is a lawn bowls club and the gymnasium, which is also South Dunedin's main war memorial (Hillside workshops have their own separate memorial by the site's main gate).
At the northeastern edge of the suburb, closest to the city centre, is the smaller suburb of Kensington. Kensington is located on and around King Edward Street at the foot of a spur of Maryhill officially referred to as Montecillo Ridge, and close to the inner city sports ground, the Oval. This 9.3-hectare (23-acre) ground, originally called the Southern Recreation Ground, is often referred to as the Kensington Oval, so as to distinguish it from the University Oval in the north of the city. This ground is actually triangular, but at one time contained a separate oval cricket ground, which gave it its name.[12] Dunedin Southern Cemetery sits on the slope of Montecillo Ridge immediately above Kensington, separated from it by South Road, a main route to Caversham, which joins with Princes Street close to the Oval. These two green areas mark the southernmost extreme of Dunedin's Town Belt, which sweeps around the central city in a broad crescent through the suburbs of Mornington, Belleknowes, Roslyn, Maori Hill, Woodhaugh, and Dunedin North.
The lower slopes of Montecillo Ridge were at one time the site of "Hillside", the home of Dunedin city's founding father Captain William Cargill. Though the house is long gone, its name lives on in that of South Dunedin's Hillside Road.
Kensington is largely separated from South Dunedin by an overbridge carrying the South Island Main Trunk railway. The long-closed Kensington railway halt was located immediately to the east of the bridge,[13] and accessed by a flight of stairs in one of the bridge's supports, long since sealed up. A newer flyover 200 metres to the north carries State Highway 1 through Kensington, though there are no slip roads connecting the suburb with the highway. This flyover separates Kensington into two distinct parts, a light industrial zone to the south of the flyover, and a residential zone to the north, at the foot of the ridge.
A notable feature of Kensington is the city's army drill hall, located in Bridgman Street immediately to the south of State Highway 1.[14]