Oamaru

Oamaru is a town which has in recent years come to appreciate the importance of its Victorian architecture and the wildlife on the coast. Oamaru is also the gateway to an interesting region.

The town has given its name to a limestone building block that is now mined at Weston. This 'Oamaru' stone was popular with both poor and rich when it was first mined in the 1870s. Quarried in 7 locations then, it was readily available and cheap. The rich also liked it because it could easily be sawed and chiselled into elaborate designs for buildings reflecting their status. During rural boom times for North Otago in the late 19th Century wool and grain barons, architects and stonemasons prospered. Businesses spent lavishly on Italian designs embellished with urns, scrolls, wreaths, acanthus capitals, columns and pilasters. Government departments followed suit and Oamaru became known as Whitestone City and the 'best built and most mortgaged town in Australasia.' The boom period was short-lived but it gave rise to a Victorian street-scapeunrivalled in New Zealand and in turn to Oamaru's annual Victorian Heritage Celebrations.

From the Imperial Album of New Zealand Scenery – About 1896 *OAMARU. -Situated on the coast about midway between Timaru and Dunedin-seventy-six miles from the latter-Oamaru is also on the main trunk line from Christchurch, and is the centre of a very fine wheat-producing country, and must eventually be a very important town. The buildings in the town strike the visitor as being very substantial and clean in appearance, the majority being built of the celebrated white limestone, for which the Oamaru quarries are so well known. The hotels, banks, churches, and public buildings generally show **much *enterprise and taste, and the breakwater and appliances for loading and unloading the vessels in the harbour will be sure to result in Oamaru being a very favourite port in the course of a few years.

Hometown New Zealand Photographs by Derek Smith

Photo Credits: Derek Smith and Maclean Barker Photographers and David Baldock Photographer