The “No Exit” Allure: Why is it that a faded, slightly bent rural road sign that explicitly reads “No Exit – No Turning” acts as an immediate, irresistible invitation to carry on and see if it’s fictitious?
Daily Photo -The Meridian Mall
Before the Meridian Mall was a fashionable retail outlet and Arthur Barnett was one of Dunedin’s most recognisable department stores, and long before shoppers wandered between chain stores carrying takeaway coffees, this entire block was something quite different.
In fact, if you had stood here in the 1860s, you may well have found yourself ankle-deep in mud.
The land occupied by today’s Meridian Mall sits on what was once part of the lower floodplain of the Water of Leith. Early Dunedin was a city of hills, swamps, and ambitious dreams. As settlers expanded north from the original settlement, marshy ground was gradually drained and reclaimed, transforming wetlands into valuable commercial land.
Then came the gold rush.
The discovery of gold in Central Otago in 1861 brought an explosion of people, money, and opportunity to Dunedin. The future Meridian Mall site became part of a bustling commercial district lined with small businesses. Drapers, bootmakers, tobacconists, jewellers, photographers, tailors, boarding houses, and hotels occupied the narrow sections that once covered the block. Horses clattered along George Street while miners, sailors, merchants, and travellers crowded the footpaths.
Unlike today’s enclosed shopping centre, the area was a patchwork of separate buildings, each housing its own trade and its own stories. A visitor could buy a new pair of boots, sit for a portrait, order a suit, and find a bed for the night, all within a few metres of where shoppers now browse modern retail stores. Beneath the polished floors of the Meridian Mall lies ground that has witnessed more than 160 years of Dunedin history, from swamp and gold rush to department stores and shopping malls.
What all of this shows us is that cities are never really finished. They simply keep reinventing themselves, one generation building over the footprints of another, until a modern shopping mall stands where horses once splashed through mud and gold-rush merchants haggled over the price of a pair of boots.
