South Island
Otago & Dunedin
A Victorian city, a wild peninsula, and albatross on the headland.
South Island · Nature lovers · Culture & history · Photographers
Dunedin is the most Scottish of New Zealand's cities, settled by Free Church Presbyterians in 1848, built in Oamaru stone and Scots baronial style, and possessed of a certain northern melancholy and dry humour that suits the climate. The railway station is a masterpiece of Flemish Renaissance architecture. The campus of Otago University, the country's oldest, gives the city a youthful energy that its heritage buildings otherwise belie.
The Otago Peninsula is where nature takes over: a narrow finger of land between Otago Harbour and the Pacific, home to the world's only mainland albatross colony (Royal albatross nest here, just twenty minutes from the city centre), yellow-eyed penguins, little blue penguins, and the rare New Zealand sea lion. Wildlife encounters here are managed carefully and are all the more extraordinary for it. Further afield, the Catlins Coast to the south, waterfalls, a petrified forest, sea lions on the sand, rewards those who follow the road to its end.
Among its moments
- Royal Albatross Centre, Taiaroa Head
- Yellow-eyed penguin conservation reserve
- Dunedin Railway Station and historic precinct
- Otago Peninsula wildlife drive
- Larnach Castle, the only castle in the country
- Baldwin Street, the world's steepest street
Dunedin & Otago in photographs
Reading on Dunedin & Otago
The whole journal- New Zealand wildlife: where to find the rarest species on Earth
Conservation, 7 min read
Near here
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