3-047-010 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Otago Great Northern Railway, New Zealand: Port Moeraki, 1872. View 'of New Zealand scenery taken from portions of the Great Northern Trunk Railway, a line upon a 42-in. gauge, which the New Zealand Government is proceeding to construct under the Public Works Act of 1870. This line of railway will connect the two principal cities of the Middle Island, Dunedin and Christchurch, distant about 200 miles from each other; the former is the capital of Otago, the latter of Canterbury Province. Mr. John Millar, civil engineer, was retained by the colonial Government to survey and lay out that portion of the railway commencing at Dunedin and extending northward to the boundary of the Otago Province on the Waitangi River...The view [from a drawing by Mr. Millar] shows the termination of a branchlet off the trunk line, forty miles from the provincial boundary, to communicate with the shipping pier at Port Moeraki. This settlement, so beautifully placed, is destined, at a future period, to become the Brighton of the province of Otago. The bay is sheltered from all except the most genial northerly wind; its climate is agreeable and salubrious; and Moeraki will be a fashionable watering-place in the middle of the next century'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.