Daily Photo – Evening Amble on the Esplanade

The Esplanade first became a destination in the 1880s, when Dunedin’s growing population began looking beyond the city for somewhere to escape the noise and smoke of urban life. What they found at St Clair was wind, surf, and an endless stretch of sand facing directly into the Pacific Ocean. At the time, getting there was no simple matter. The road across South Dunedin could be rough and muddy, and much of St Clair itself was little more than dunes and paddocks from William Henry Valpy’s old Forbury estate.

Everything changed with the arrival of the cable tramway in 1881. Suddenly, the beach was accessible to ordinary Dunedin residents, and St Clair quickly transformed into the city’s seaside playground. Families arrived carrying picnic baskets, couples strolled beside the sea, and bathers cautiously entered the cold southern water wearing heavy woollen costumes that must have weighed twice as much once wet.

The Esplanade developed in stages as cafés, hotels, bathing facilities, and promenades appeared beside the ocean. By the early twentieth century it had become one of Dunedin’s social centres, particularly during summer evenings when crowds gathered to walk the waterfront and “take the air” in a tradition borrowed from British seaside resorts. The St Clair Baths, built into the rocks at the southern end of the beach in 1884, further cemented the suburb’s reputation as a place of recreation and leisure.

Yet for all the elegance of the Esplanade, storms repeatedly damaged sea walls, roadways, and buildings, forcing generations of repairs and rebuilds. On calm evenings, when the lights from cafés spill onto the pavement and the ocean fades into darkness beyond the railing, it is still possible to understand why generations of Dunedin people were drawn here in the first place.