Oamaru Harbour - a coastal port's rise and demise

A Burton Brothers view of Oamaru Harbour in the 1880s, a small town port on the South Island east coast whose glory days were the interwar years: in 1938 the port handled 148,000 tons and in April 1939 the 10,107-ton Opawa became the largest ship to call. Three years earlier the harbour board had started an extension to the breakwater to deepen the entrance channel.

But in 1941 the overseas lines consolidated their ports of call and dropped the secondary ports; supposedly a temporary wartime measure, but the big UK merchant ships never returned to Oamaru. In 1950 the cargo handled in Oamaru was only 35,000 tons. Nevertheless, the port stayed active, handling oil, lime, grain, flour and general cargo and annual tonnage rose to 55,000 in 1957. The advent of the inter-island roll-on, roll-off railway ferries in 1962 saw the beginning of the end, however; coastal traders still called at Oamaru for over a decade, but the end came in 1974. The Holmdale was the last trader to visit Oamaru.

Coastal motor ships Parera and Storm (see the book The Era of Coastal Shipping in NZ) berthed alongside Oamaru's Holmes Wharf in the 1960s. (North Otago Museum)