Daily Photo – The South Sea Hotel in Oban on Stewart Island

This is the South Sea Hotel in Oban on Stewart Island. It began life in the late nineteenth century, when a hotel was first built on this site around 1890. By 1899 it had already been enlarged, an indication that even then there was enough traffic in this far-flung corner of the British Empire to justify expansion.

In those early years it was known as the New Oban Hotel, a name that firmly anchored it’s place in the settlement. Only later, in 1968, did it take on the name South Sea Hotel, which is how most people know it today. So while the bones of the building trace their origins back to the 1890s, the name “South Sea Hotel” has officially been in use since 1968, layering a more recent identity to much older story.