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One aspect that makes Dunedin unique is its Scottish heritage. The city's Scottish beginning gives it a special flavour which makes it quite different from anywhere else in New Zealand or Australia.

Late nineteenth century visitors, like the French political scientist Andre Siegfried, the Irish land radical Michael Davitt and the inimitable Mark Twain, were struck by the city's Scottish character. Although immigration from Scotland has declined to almost nothing, the Scottish character of the city remains intact.

Dunedin is the old Gaelic name for Edinburgh, yet Dunedin is nothing like the Scottish capital except for the street names and the entrancing "Juliet" towers which grace some of the older houses. Dunedin is hillier, smaller, nearer the sea and has better climate than Edinburgh.

Yet the place somehow reminded the founding settlers of the Midlothian countryside from which the majority came. Its rugged hills were familiar and they were delighted to discover that a bracing winter's frost was usually followed by a still, blue day, that the surrounding country was ideally suited to running sheep and growing oats, wheat and barley and that the river water was clear and clean. Dunedin seemed tailormade for settlement by Scots.

Scottish nature flavours Dunedin

These Scots, who established their own special Free Church Presbyterian settlement would make three major contributions to Dunedin's distinctive character.

Education

They brought with them a passionate enthusiasm for education. The wealth generated by the gold rushes was soon put to good use in setting up Otago Boys' High School in 1864, the University of Otago in 1869 and Otago Girls' High School in 1871. Girls' High was one of the first state run secondary schools for girls in the world. New Zealand's oldest university has gone on to become the second largest in the country and boasts a range of special schools, including the first medical school in New Zealand.

Today, education is one of the city's biggest industries and the Scots were instrumental in establishing the first three institutions which made this growth possible.

Religion

The Scots' leaders also had a passion for their religion. This enthusiasm was not shared by all the settlers but it did produce several fine church buildings and the elegant spires of First Church and Knox remain as reminders of the idealism which fired the city founders. This idealism also included a concern for democracy and social justice which helped shape actions taken in the 1890s to end exploitation of labour and to promote a fairer distribution of land.

Tone

The rather stiff Presbyterian "tone" of Dunedin gave later generations something to kick against. The dour faces glaring down from the walls of the Otago Settlers Museum seem to have inspired much creative rebellion. Dunedin has produced more than its fair share of writers including James K Baxter, whose reaction against Calvinism resulted in some of our finest poetry. Robert Burns, uncle of the Reverend Tom Burns, would have understood and approved Baxter's challenge.

Dunedin - a city with its own style

Dunedin has many Scottish traits other than the performance of the haggis ceremony - fine golf courses, pipe bands, the finest range of malts and whiskies in New Zealand. Yet it is not a carbon copy of a Scottish city. It is rather a place where Scots came to start again and in interacting with a new environment, an indigenous people and other migrants from an overcrowded Europe, made a special city with a Scottish flavour all of its own.