Waikouaiti

Waikouaiti is a small town in East Otago, New Zealand, within the city limits of Dunedin. The town is close to the coast and the mouth of the Waikouaiti River.

Today, Waikouaiti is a retail trade and servicing centre for the surrounding district, which has sheep farming as the principal primary activity. A major egg producer, Zeagold Foods, a branch of Mainland Poultry LTD has a 460,000-hen factory farming operation here and is in the process of expanding over the next year to meet demand for egg products. Hawksbury, 3 km southwest of Waikouaiti, has a cheese factory and shop, a swimming pool and housing developed from the old mental health institution, Cherry Farm. Karitane, 3 km to the southeast has a small fishing port.Waikouaiti is in the process of getting a new town hall which is costing $5.5 million to construct, it will provide the town with a new basketball court/Hall, Medical Centre, Plaza, Information Centre, Plunket and also there is the possibility of a chemist. It is due to be finished around late 2009.

History

An 1826 sketch of the coast north of Otago (made in May 1826), shows the 'Karitane' and 'Waikouaiti' coast. [Otago coast map sketch - Thomas Shepherd (1779-1835), Original in the Mitchell Library, Sydney. Reproduced in Entwisle, 2005, illustration 17]

Established in 1840, Waikouaiti was the first European settlement in southern New Zealand to be mainly based on farming, and one of the first major European settlements in Otago.The first school serving Waikouaiti and Karitane was built by whalers including Johnny Jones on the Matanaka headland. Johnny Jones later brought settlers from Sydney, Australia to farm the district, several years before the foundation of the Otago Settlement in 1848. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the area was frequented by Maori, who had a pa at nearby Karitane.

Jones' homestead and some of the associated buildings of his colonial manor farm dating from 1843 still stand on Cornish Head. The farm buildings, though not the homestead, are owned by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and are open to the public. They are said to be the oldest surviving farm buildings in New Zealand.

In Beach Street in Waikouaiti proper, the wooden shingle roofed St. John's Anglican Church remains. The cost of building was met by Johnny Jones and it was opened in 1858. It was designed by Benjamin Mountfort of Christchurch who also designed the Provincial Council Building there.

Place names

The town of Waikouaiti was initially called "Hawksbury," a name that still applies to the lagoon located in the centre of the town and also adopted in the name of the residential/industrial redevelopment at the former Cherry Farm Hospital.The name Waikouaiti is Maori, and is believed to come from phrases meaning "small bitter waters" ("wai-kawa-iti") or "braided streamlets" ("wai-koua-iti"). This name once applied to a whaling station at Karitane, but subsequently shifted to the present location.

Transport

Roads

Waikouaiti is located on State Highway 1 40 kilometres north of Dunedin city centre and 666 kilometres from the start of the highway at Picton.Highway operator Transit New Zealand recently completed a realignment from Waikouaiti to Flag Swamp in order to reduce the number of accidents that occurred on the Tumai railway overbridge just north of Waikouaiti. The new road includes a north-bound passing lane and opened in September 2007 ['Official opening of the Tumai deviation', p19, "The Review "September 2007, Palmerston, New Zealand.]

Railway

The Main South Line railway between Christchurch and Invercargill passes through Waikouaiti. It was constructed in the 1870s, and daily passenger trains passed through Waikouaiti until the cancellation of the Southerner in February 2002. Currently, the only passenger service is a tourist service operated by the Taieri Gorge Railway. Named the Seasider, it operates between Dunedin and Palmerston, once or twice a week in the summer months and occasionally during winter.

Freight trains operate through Waikouaiti multiple times daily.

References

*Entwisle, P (1998) "Behold the Moon the European Occupation of the Dunedin District 1770-1848" Dunedin, NZ: Port Daniel Press ISBN 0-473-05591-0.
*Entwisle, P (2005) 'Taka a Vignette Life of William Tucker" Dunedin, NZ: Port Daniel Press ISBN 0-473-10098-3.
*Knight, H & Coutts, P (1975) "Matanaka" Dunedin, NZ: John McIndoe.