Tales From Darkest Dunedin

04/09/2026

Fb memory from 14 years ago, and its future is now safe. This was Everybody's Theatre in Princes st, opposite the old BNZ, and going to be part of a new hotel.

27/08/2026

Check out part two of our tunnel history.
Also drone footage of Cliffs Tunnel taken by Dave Napper of aSend FPV

27/08/2026

I had to put part two of the Tunnel Archives into Substack. It was too hard a story to tell with out integrating images.

But enjoy! It's a long one and I'm happy to answer questions about anything that might seem to skirt the realm of sense.

Part Two of a hare-brained scheme that turned out to be mildly interesting but has some great lessons about history.

25/08/2026

Part one

“These are the things which divide the Māori from the Europeans. They feel that the promises made by the Europeans have not been fulfilled, while all that the Māori have promised has been fulfilled.”
Hori Kerei Taiaroa, speaking in NZ Parliament 21 October 1878

“The Public Works Policy seemed, to the Government, the sole alternative to a war of extermination with the natives.”
Julius Vogel, 1893 while living in Britain

This post was originally about a railway tunnel I’ve had a fascination with but nothing is ever that simple and nothing is ever just about a tunnel. As always, the story lies with the people.

For a long time, I’ve been interested in Pūrākaunui’s Cliffs Tunnel. The poor relative to the much heralded Mihiwaka tunnel, it doesn’t seem to have a lot of hype about it in the newspapers or mentions in books other than the reason for it being. So let’s get into both, the reason for it being and part two, my journey through its archives.

Part One

The cliff in Pūrākaunui that had been excavated for the railroad, starting in 1875, was what is referred to as “rotten rock” - rock that is intermixed with smaller stones and soil making it crumbly and prone to slips. The railways would have a special gang of men whose job it was to check the line for debris before trains passed by but that isn’t going to guarantee a wayward rock won’t fall just as a train was passing. And that’s what happened. In 1888 a rock came down and hit the engine causing it to derail. Up to that point, it was suggested that to make the line safer one should shut their eyes but the real threat wasn’t the drop from the cliff, it was the above rock. The train derailed and, luckily, drove inward toward the cliff and stopped rather than toward the massive drop into the ocean. A later train came to pick up the stranded passengers and the derailed one made it back by the morning. For anyone who just breathed a sigh of relief, the carnage had only begun. Gideon Williamson was part of a group who were working on clearing the debris when he was victim to another falling rock - it split his skull open and he died in Dunedin hospital (the one opened in the exhibition building if you’ve read our previous post about the first hospital). During the original excavation of the cliff, Henry Clark died in an accident so the human toll was rising.

Any confidence the public had in this piece of track was gone and it was, at most, immoral and at best, bad P.R. to keep it open. So a new route had to be chosen but the country was heading into a depression, namely the Long Depression - money was tight and the cost of the installation of the railway had already been high.

Millions of pounds had been borrowed from England in 1870 to construct a nation wide railway system. Julius Vogel, the colonial treasurer in New Zealand, had a bold plan to revitalise immigration, build the railway and make New Zealand a commercial outpost of the motherland but the success of this railway depended heavily on acquiring more and more Māori land. Māori land was valuable yet could be purchased cheaply through underhanded and predatory tactics and Vogel thought it better off in the hands of Pākeha so it could be integrated into the economy for the benefit of both (benefits still pending), a view and method David Seymour still banks on today. Because this land was so cheap, train tracks were laid in abstract ways to make better use of it rather than the alternative, costly tunnels and bridges. So, Māori land was gradually bought up from under them or in the case of the land wars in the north, confiscated for these tracks.

So what has this got to do with Pūrākaunui and tunnels? I’m getting there.

Pūrākaunui was sold by Kāi Tahu to the New Zealand Company, on behalf of The Crown through Henry Kemp in 1848 as part of a wider land sale called The Kemp Deed or The Canterbury Purchase. The land from Milford to Kaiapoi (excluding the original Otago block, that was a different deal) was purchased for £2000 ($706,485 today) but under duress - purposefully triangulating and turning iwi against each other for cheaper land prices. As part of the treaty deal, 10% of the land was supposed to be kept for Māori but much less was saved and part of what was allocated was infertile and cut off from water ways where kai moana was plentiful.

So when it came time to build the railway track around the Pūrākaunui cliff in 1875, surprise, surprise, it ran through Māori land.

Facebook only lets you have so many words so stay tuned for part two, which I will write after I’ve done my G.S.T returns (if my accountant reads this, I’m doing them now).

20/08/2026

Darkest Dunedin took a business trip to Invercargill recently so we stopped in a few places to visit some history. As we do. This time it was the Carnegie Libraries.

19/08/2026

The view from the Peninsula today, on the way to Larnach Castle.

16/08/2026

While we're busy creating new content before the summer tours ramp up, check out our past videos on YouTube!

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

16/08/2026

After 1872, Dunedin had easier access to brick materials and a building boom ensued...

13/08/2026

If you haven't already, go back a couple of posts and catch up on the history of Dunedin's first hospital. Here's part two, as promised.

The hospital in the Octagon, where the Town Hall stands now, was completed in October 1851. Clark and Garvie levelled the site, laid freestone foundations and erected the hospital. The interior was brick lined and whitewashed with tongue and grooved ceilings and a shingle roof.

The instructions were to build two wards, each 40ft long by 12 feet by 10 feet with a steam bath room with all the necessary apparatus - about 12 feet by 10 feet, with a sweating room adjoining about 10 feet square. A surgery about 16 feet by 12 feet. A kitchen 20 feet by 16 feet, two small apartments for the hospital attendants; each about 12 feet square. 2 store rooms; 2 water closets; 1 pump etc. The hospital was asked to be built of wood, brick nogged with stone foundations, weatherboarded on the outside and brick flat. And of a neat and ornamental design. I can't find a single photo so we'll have to assume that this was the case. No morgue was included, bodies were still taken to hotels. It wasn't until 1879 after the fire that took down the Ross Building in The Octagon where the Regent is now that Dunedin saw the need for a morgue and it was a small room in the previous Courthouse to the current one. As you can anticipate, it was disgusting. The next was built in the Southern Cemetery. I'm not sure where the urban legend of an Octagon morgue came from but they certainly weren't shelling out the big bucks for a beautiful, underground, stone room when the hospital itself was so basic!

The hospital was equipped with 12 iron bed-steads, 12 sackings to be filled with straw for mattresses, 12 cords, 12 palliases (thin fabric mattresses), 12 bolster cases (stuffed rolls for around a bed), 24 blankets, 12 rugs and 24 sheets. If 24 blankets and 24 sheets for 12 beds sounds like a recipe for a disaster, you'd be right. Hygienically but also politically.

Robert Williams, an Oxford educated Welshman (he had studied under Lister, the pioneer of antiseptic surgery) was appointed Colonial Surgeon by Governor Grey alongside his private practice. He was to attend Government employees, Māori and prisoners as well as hospital cases and was given 120 pounds a year which is worth about $50,000 now.

His first case was Andrew Doig. He was a prison inmate who became mentally unstable and was placed in isolation in the hospital on 24 July 1852. The next two patients used the hospital like a hotel since they lived rurally and had private treatment at their own cost and then in October - a "lunatic" was admitted at cost to the Crown. The hospital was rarely used for the first 15 months. Māori were admitted for free but Europeans only if they had a certificate from the Bench Of Magistrates - a body of local citizens appointed by the crown in case the hospital gave free healthcare to someone who could afford to pay. In 1853, the hospital advertised for a male and female attendant at 30 pounds a year, free board and rations of 9lb flour, 12lb bread, 7lb meat 1.5lb sugar, .25lb tea a week.

1853 also saw New Zealand move to a different system of leadership. Provinces were given more autonomy and were required to set up their own system of government secondary to the Central Government. That meant Otago now had the autonomy it had always wanted but had to pay for its own hospital it had never wanted and still refused to pay for until 1856.

Robert Williams was continued on in his role but now as Provincial Surgeon even though his anti government attitude rubbed the new Provincial Government up the wrong way but he took it a step too far by not agreeing to keep those opinions to himself now he was a member so he was let go.

Edward Hulme, who had also applied for the job of Provincial Surgeon was up next and the story of the hospital from here on is as much a story about Dr Hulme.

Hulme was trusted with the day to day running of the hospital by the P.G. and had autonomy over most things. The hospital hadn't grown or changed much over the decade but Hulme, who had been highly educated in mental illnesses for the time, was concerned at the harmful effects of combining sane and insane patients but also at the lack of space for mentally ill prisoners who had to stay in prison so he campaigned for a separate asylum. He was in luck because by 1861, the gold rush hit and he was inundated with 43 cases from 1861 to 63 so his lunatic asylum was granted by the Provincial Government. A temporary asylum was set up in what is now the Otago Boys Highschool playing field, became less temporary and more a permanent hodgepodge of prison-like buildings and by 1884, a newer, larger asylum had opened in Seacliff.

Between when the Provincial Government finally took over the cost of the hospital and 1863, new buildings had been added and a large, three story building for male patients. The descriptions of the buildings sound Dickenson, very much living up to the Work and Poor Houses it was derived from. Toilets flowed into a literal cesspool, buildings had outside stairs, wind blew through the roof and walls and it was largely patronised by men, men who were working class and brought a liveliness to the place, if you will. They were often hired as attendants once discharged so where the middle class complained of the run down, disgusting manner in which the rooms were kept, the working class inhabitants weren't aware they could have anything better.

1865 is when Dunedin had New Zealand's first international world's fair or exhibition. In King Street (now Great King Street, roughly where today's hospital is) was a large two-storey stone Italianate building with clock tower and a series of annexes all designed by Mason and Clayton, with a central courtyard derived from Fowler's design of Covent Garden market. By 1867, the hospital in The Octagon had moved in and although major changes were made, they were disappointing to Hulme who constantly championed for a better, cleaner and more friendly space - as most modern doctors will know well. And this new hospital still had a cesspit.

Hulme never stopped working tirelessly for the hospital and it was probably what ended up killing him - he died suddenly in 1877 amid stressful administration changes.

I could write forever about the hospital and other institutions but you may as well read it all for yourself in "A History Of The Otago Hospital Board - And It's Predecessors" by John Angus, 1984.

Further reading:
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h37/hulme-edward/print

Hulme's residence and private practice:
https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/4711/Listing