Zelie Jenkinson was born in 1926 and has a long connection with Broad Bay. She shared some of her early memories in a couple of the Broad Bay newsletters in 2008. They have been compiled here. There is also an interview with Zelie, made at the same time, which is available on CD at the Portobello Museum. At time of writing (January 2026) Zelie is about to celebrate her 100th birthday!). Watch Zelie’s interview here. My mother’s parents moved to Broad…
Unique in many ways, Broad Bay is fortunate in being far enough from Dunedin to have an identity of its own, yet close enough to enjoy the many benefits of the City. More than a century ago, following the gold-rush era, and with the growing Edwardian fashion for ‘picnics and holidays’, Dunedin townsfolk became increasingly familiar with the attraction of the Bays of the Otago Peninsula. These mainly were the domain of the small farmers and landholders who had felled…
When I visited the Looking Back, Moving Forward exhibition in October 2023, seeing this photograph brought back many memories. The photo is from the 1950’s, the launch in the foreground was the “Betsy” belonging to my father, Gus Paterson and my uncle, Andy Wilson. The “Betsy” originally came from Stewart Island. It was one of the four or five commuter boats, from ship to shore, used by Norwegian whaling ships. The commuter boats were called “Snekka’s”. The large shed in…
The name STOP, by which the local environmental organisation is usually known, is the acronym for Save The Otago Peninsula and it reflects its beginning, as did its original logo. The society was formed in late 1980 as a protest organisation against the proposal to build an aluminium smelter at one of four locations that included Aramoana and Okia Flats in Wickliffe Bay, behind Victory Beach. Eventually Aramoana was selected and STOP, along with other organisations, actively protested against the…
Down the path, across the road, down the bank, and I was on the beach. This would have to be the most favourite spot of my childhood. I spent hours on the stretch of rocky shore between Grassy Point and King George Street. As a child these were the boundaries set by Mum. In the rock wall foundation of the road, built many years ago by prisoners who must have painstakingly lifted and placed every rock into its own special…
Background The Broad Bay Co-op began in the late 1970s (probably about 1976, but the date is uncertain even amongst the founding members). It was started originally as a way of providing goods to a group of vegetarians. At the time, items like wholemeal flour, pulses and even nuts other than walnuts were difficult to source from the local dairy. This was pre-supermarket days. These dry goods were purchased in bulk and then repacked in smaller quantities for sale to…
My birthplace is Gore, but I shifted to Dunedin when I was nearly two, and apart from two years in Wanaka as a year 2 and 3 teacher, and two years “OE” spent mostly in the back of a VW Combi in Europe and the UK in 1976-77, I’ve lived (and taught and played music,) all of my 77 years in Dunedin. My holidays were spent mostly in Wanaka, where in the early days of there being one speed boat and…
I feel I’m the luckiest girl in the world! After searching for six years for a tranquil place with bird song and water, a place to settle, I found it in Broad Bay. But it has been quite a journey to get here. For 22 years I ran Gowrie House B&B in Roslyn. For 10 of those years I managed on my own following the death of my dear husband, Rod. Finally, I’d had enough and decided it was time…
Before 1873 the harbour road from Dunedin stopped at Company Bay. From there a bridle track joined up with Camp Road in Broad Bay. The paper road had been ‘surveyed’ with no obvious regard to the topography! The Camp Road bridle track climbed steeply: a 1:7 gradient from sea level to 300m on the high road at Pukehiki. It passed by Larnach’s first cottage ‘The Camp’ situated below the present gateway to his ‘Castle’, designed by Lawson and built between…
In December 2016 the massif of Mt Cargill retreated and rotated. This was not in the tradition of Mt Taranaki, because Mt Cargill stood still. It was us who moved. We moved from Normanby to our Camelot, at Ross Point in Broad Bay. Six months earlier we’d discovered 37 Oxley Cres thanks to the sporadic purchase of an ODT and we visited during the following day’s open home. Our house, built in 1996, is a two-storeyed, gentrified log cabin straddling…