Travel and Tourism

Otago’s early settlers laid the foundations for a town known as Lower Dunstan (being down the river from the then larger township of Dunstan – now Clyde) before being officially named Alexandra. It is situated where the Clutha River (Mata - Au) meets the Manuherikia River, appropriately named Ka Moana Haehae – the split waters – by Maori. Alexandra came into its own with the dredging boom of the 1890s and early 1900s. Fruit-growing was also established around that time and remains to this day the economic cornerstone for the Alexandra district.