Musselburgh, New Zealand

Musselburgh is a residential suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located in the southeast of the city's urban area, 2.8 kilometres (1.7 mi) southeast of the city's centre, and at the narrowest point of the isthmus which joins Otago Peninsula to the rest of the South Island (here just 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) in width). The suburb takes its name from the similarly named town in Scotland. Musselburgh's 2001 population was 2,835.

Geographical features

Musselburgh's most distinctive feature is a rocky outcrop called the Musselburgh Rise, which rises prominently above the eastern end of "The Flat", the local name for the broad coastal plain which stretches across the suburbs of Saint Kilda and South Dunedin. The Rise is located close to the southernmost point of the Otago Harbour immediately to the west of the Andersons Bay Inlet. Another outcrop, geologically part of the same formation, lies several hundred metres to the east, and has been extensively quarried.

The rise lends its name to the suburb's main street, Musselburgh Rise (differentiated in name from the outcrop by always being written without the definite article), which connects with the southern end of Andersons Bay Road and skirts the southern flank of the outcrop. Musselburgh Rise contains the suburb's small retail area, consisting of some dozen or so shops. This shopping area and the southern flank of the Rise is sometimes considered a separate suburb, Sunshine, which was at one time known as Goat Hill.