Port Chalmers

Port Chalmers is a suburb and the main port of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand, with a population of 3,000. Port Chalmers lies ten kilometres inside Otago Harbour, some 15 kilometres northeast from Dunedin's city centre.

Much of Port Chalmers is located on a small hilly peninsula, at the northern end of which is a large reclaimed area which is now the site of Dunedin's container port. Close to the southeastern shore of this peninsula are a pair of islands, which lie across the harbour between Port Chalmers and the Otago Peninsula. These two islands are Quarantine Island/Kamau Taurua and Goat Island. Prior to the local body reorganisation in the 1980s Port Chalmers was made up of several suburbs, as well as the central area, Roseneath, Blanket Bay, Upper Junction, Brick Hill, Sawyers Bay, Mussel Bay, Upper Port Chalmers, Dalkeith, Careys Bay, Reynoldstown, Deborah Bay, Hamilton Bay, Waipuna Bay, Te Ngaru, and Aramoana, as well as the outlying townships of Long Beach, Purakanui and several other smaller nearby villages and farmsteads.

Although the harbour beyond Port Chalmers is regularly dredged, most of the port activity is centred on Port Chalmers rather than on central Dunedin. Part of the reason for this is the narrowness of the Victoria Channel, the one part of the Otago Harbour navigable by large ships, which makes it far easier for berthing to take place at Port Chalmers, closer to the open sea. Any big ships venturing into the upper harbour wharfs need to be piloted in with the help of tugs.

According to Herries Beattie an old Māori name for Port Chalmers was 'Potakere' or 'Pou-takere' which may have indicated the hill where the tuahu, or altar, was sited. 'Koputai' is a later name and refers to an incident in which the tide rose and beached canoes were set adrift. When a peace was made between Kati Mamoe ('Ngati Mamoe' in modern standard Māori) and Kai Tahu ('Ngai Tahu' in modern standard Māori), about 1780, Koputai was one of two southern terminuses of Kai Tahu territory.

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