"Dunedin’s Historic Firsts" at Wall Street Mall celebrates some of the people and events that shaped the development of the city since European settlers arrived in the 1840s.
Marketing consultant Anna Schmid said the inspiration for the exhibition was the glass-covered corduroy causeway inside the Wall Street Mall, constructed to bridge an area of boggy ground sometime in the 1860s.
"Firsts" include the first reference to the city of Dunedin in May 1862 and the first Great Exhibition in New Zealand in 1889, inspired by the London exhibitions of 1851 and 1862.
Another first was the founding of the University of Otago in 1869, New Zealand’s first university.
Another first was the opening of Otago Girls’ High School in 1871, the first public girls high school in the southern hemisphere.
The school had its own firsts, including former pupil Dr Margaret Cruickshank, the first registered female doctor in New Zealand, and long-jump athlete Yvette Williams, the first New Zealand woman to win gold, at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
- "Dunedin’s Historic Firsts" runs to the end of January at Wall Street Mall, George St.
