Charles Kettle

Charles Henry Kettle (6 April 1821 – 5 June 1862) surveyed the city of Dunedin in New Zealand, imposing a bold design on a challenging landscape. He was aiming to create a Romantic effect and incidentally produced the world's steepest street, Baldwin Street.

Born in Kent in England, Charles Henry Kettle was the son of the impecunious Matthew Kettle. Charles was a teaching assistant at Queens Grammar School in Faversham in Kent before sailing for New Zealand on the Oriental in 1839.

Kettle arrived at Port Nicholson, Wellington in 1840. He was a cadet in William Mein Smith's survey corps, and was soon promoted on the strength of his abilities. In 1842, he led an exploration party up the Manawatu River penetrating to the Wairarapa district, helping to stimulate its pastoral development. In 1843, he returned to Britain and became a publicist for the projected New Edinburgh settlement in Otago in New Zealand's South Island. He travelled widely for this purpose for two years and appeared before a House of Commons Select Committee on New Zealand in June 1844 as an expert on the country. In September 1845, he was appointed to head the survey of the new Scottish settlement. He married Amelia Omer at St Peter's Sandwich, Kent, 10 September 1845.

Kettle and his wife reached Otago Harbour in February 1846.

In his Otago surveys, Kettle made the first extensive use in New Zealand of trigonometrical methods and his urban and rural surveys have been described as 'painstaking'. He travelled extensively over the rugged Otago Block, whose daunting contours scarcely warrant a mention in his correspondence. He climbed Mount Maungatua on the Taieri Plain in 1847 and from there saw the interior of Central Otago. He identified the land as suited for pastoralism and correctly saw that as the colony's future economic mainstay. By March 1848, when the first immigrant ships arrived, the surveys' outlines were virtually complete.

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