South Dunedin is a major inner city suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located, as its name suggests, to the south of the city centre, on part of a large plain known simply as "The Flat". The suburb is a mix of industrial, retail, and predominantly lower-quality residential properties.
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.
Geography The flat land which makes up much of Dunedin's heart is enclosed to the south and east by Otago Harbour and to the north and west by a ridge of hills. At the southern end of central Dunedin, these hills form a ridge that (prior to reclamation) came close to the line of the harbour. To the south of this lies a broad plain, initially swampy but now drained and expanded by reclamation. This plain is the site of South Dunedin.
The boundaries of South Dunedin are vaguely defined. Though the area was a separate borough briefly in the late nineteenth century, the borders which delimited that borough are no longer widely used as descriptors for South Dunedin. One major exception is South Dunedin's boundary with St Kilda, which was a separate borough until far more recently. The line of Bay View Road is still seen as a border between South Dunedin and St Kilda. This notion is enhanced by the change of name of one of the suburbs' main arterial roads at this boundary, with King Edward Street becoming Prince Albert Road as it passes into St Kilda.
To the east, South Dunedin's natural limit is Otago Harbour, and to the north a ridge of hills also forms a topographical boundary. At the foot of this ridge, however, lies the small suburb of Kensington and parts of the much larger borough of Caversham. Caversham also marks a limit at the western edge of South Dunedin, though in both cases the exact boundaries are not well-defined.
Southern Endowment
Much of eastern South Dunedin is land reclaimed from Otago Harbour. This area, which lies immediately to the west of the harbour's head, is known as the Southern Endowment,Herd and Griffiths (1980), p. 113 and covers an area of close to . The Southern Endowment was begun with rock removed during the cutting of Bell Hill in the central city during the nineteenth century. 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 an 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.Hamel (2008), p. 1.12
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.
Flooding issues Much of South Dunedin was built at a time when groundwater was up to 17cm lower than it is now. A 2016 report by Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright identified South Dunedin as the single biggest community in New Zealand exposed to sea level rise, with 2700 houses identified as within 25cm of the mean high tide mark, some of which are already below sea level.
Currently, more than half of buildings in South Dunedin are at risk of surface flooding, and this is expected to increase to almost 70 percent by the year 2100. While residents have expressed concern that the flooding is caused by malfunctioning pipes and pumping stations, the Dunedin City Council have attributed the issue to high groundwater levels.
Proposed plans to lower the groundwater level include restoring the former Forbury Park Raceway, to the southwest, to its original state as a wetland.
Cargill's Corner 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 to the north).Herd and Griffiths (1980), p. 40 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 stopped during the 1980s. In 2011, Dunedin City Council considered reintroducing Barnes Dance control at Cargill's Corner as part of other improvements, but the work has since been completed without the change in traffic control.
King Edward Street is aligned roughly north-south, linking with the southern end of Princes Street, and linking the centre city in the north with the densely populated coastal suburb of St 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.
Main roads
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'nSave, The Warehouse, Woolworths, 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 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 to the east along the edge of Otago Harbour, at the edge of the reclaimed Southern Endowment. 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.Herd and Griffiths (1980), p. 95
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 St Kilda.
History Geological history The South Dunedin plain was first formed about 18,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Period. At the time, the sea level was about 120 metres lower than today and the coastline stretched out as much as 35 km offshore further from its present extant. Following the Last Glacial Period, sea levels rose, reaching their present level about 7,000 years ago. The Otago Harbour was a former stream valley that was flooded during this period. During the post-glacial sea level rise, the South Dunedin plain was covered in ocean. A dune barrier was later formed between St Clair and Lawyers Head through the flow of fine sediment from the Clutha River and other smaller catchments. After the barrier formed, fine sediment accumulated in the waters at the head of the Otago Harbour, causing the sea in that area to became increasingly shallow. The gradual sediment accumulation led to the formation of a coastal wetland known as the South Dunedin plain, which also became a land bridge between the mainland South Island and the Otago Peninsula.
19th century Prior to European settlement, much of South Dunedin was covered by salt marshes, wetlands and lagoons. Local Māori people referred to this area as Kaituna (which translates as "eating eels") due to the abundance of eels. A shallow lagoon also terminated through the salt dunes near St Clair. This flat coastal area functioned as a drainage basin for the hilly, catchment area that formed the rest of Dunedin. European settlers referred to this area as "The Flat." As the city's population expanded during the Otago gold rush, European settlers began reclaiming swampy land in "The Flat." The land was filled using sand from the coastal dunes of St Kilda. Consequently, much of South Dunedin was built on land consisting of soft, sandy sediment that was only slightly above the water table (which was up to 17 cm lower than the present day).
Early settlement of the area took place along the hill fringes at Caversham and St. Clair. The arrival at St Clair of William Henry Valpy (1793–1852) in 1849 led to the first development of permanent roading in the area; Valpy, reputedly the wealthiest man in New Zealand,Reed (1975), p. 128 had a branch dray road built from Dunedin's central settlement to his St. Clair farm which ran along the edge of what is now South Dunedin.Newton (2003), pp. 13–16 With the rapid expansion of the city at the time of the Otago gold rush of the 1860s, settlement expended, notably around what is now Hillside Road.
Chinese settlers were notable among early residents in the St Clair area, and largely through their effort the swampy land inland from the beach was drained and converted into market gardens. Much of the young city's vegetable production was centred on Chinese allotments in an area close to what is now Macandrew Road, Forbury, and there were further allotments in both Andersons Bay and Tainui.Newton (2003) pp. 42–44 The opening of a quarry in the Forbury area (which provided building materials for the young city) also increased the impetus towards development of the southern end of the city. South Dunedin became a borough in 1876.
During the late 19th century, marram grass was planted and sand-catching structures were also built along Ocean Beach, creating high sand dunes south of present-day Victoria Road that runs across St Kilda and St Clair. To accommodate the expansion of housing in South Dunedin, drainage of the wet lands through the dunes was blocked off to prevent storm tides from coming in through these dunes.
20th century By 1905, South Dunedin had become a thriving industrial and residential suburb.
The South Dunedin borough amalgamated with Dunedin City in 1905, a year after its neighbour Caversham.
During the 1923 New Zealand Storm, South Dunedin along with Caversham and St Kilda experienced heavy rain and extensive flooding.
During the 1960s and 1970s, further land reclamation occurred between Andersons Bay Road and Portsmouth Drive through the use of dredging spoil excavated from Otago Harbour. This reclaimed land was used predominantly for commercial activity and including a pumping station on Portobello Road.
As part of the Fourth Labour Government's local government reforms, the St Kilda Borough Council was merged into the newly formed Dunedin City Council in November 1989.
21st century
In June 2015, South Dunedin experienced heavy flooding after a low weather system brought heavy rain to the coastal Otago region. Flood damage was exacerbated by the area's high water table and the breakdown of the Portobello pumping station. 1,200 homes and businesses were damaged by flood damage, with total flood damage reaching $138,000,000. This flood was caused by land reclamation, human settlement, roads and buildings disrupting the natural flood basin by preventing water from seeping into the ground.