Burnside is a mainly

industrial suburb An industrial suburb is a community, near a large city, with an industrial economy. These communities may be established as tax havens or as places where zoning promotes industry, or they may be industrial towns that become suburbs by urban spra ...

of the

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

city of

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

. It is located at the mouth of a long valley, the

Kaikorai Valley Kaikorai Valley is a long broad valley which runs through the west of the New Zealand city of Dunedin, to the west of the city centre. It is the valley of a small stream, the Kaikorai Stream, which runs from northeast to southwest down the l ...

, through which flows the

Kaikorai Stream The Kaikorai Stream is a short river which runs through the city of Dunedin, in New Zealand's South Island. Course The stream drains the south eastern and eastern slopes of Flagstaff, Kaikorai Hill and the Balmacewen area, flows through Kai ...

. This valley stretches to the northeast for . Burnside is to the southwest of the city centre, close to eastern end of the much larger suburb, Green Island. Other suburbs located nearby include Concord, immediately to the southeast and Kenmure further up Kaikorai Valley. Burnside is separated from the central urban area of Dunedin by the large ridge which surrounds the city's heart. This ridge is part of the crater wall of the long-extinct Dunedin Volcano. The ridge lies immediately to the east of Burnside, with the main pass over it, the

saddle The saddle is a supportive structure for a rider of an animal, fastened to an animal's back by a girth. The most common type is equestrian. However, specialized saddles have been created for oxen, camels and other animals. It is not kno ...

Lookout Point Caversham is one of the older suburbs of the city of Dunedin, in New Zealand's South Island. It is sited at the western edge of the city's central plain at the mouth of the steep Caversham Valley, which rises to the saddle of Lookout Point. Ma ...

, lying to the east.

Major industries

Kempthorne Prosser & Co's New Zealand Drug Company

Kempthorne Prosser Kempthorne Prosser & Co. Ltd, also known as the New Zealand Drug Company Ltd, was the leading drug and fertiliser manufacturer in New Zealand from 1869 until 1978. The company's full name was Kempthorne Prosser & Co.'s New Zealand Drug Co. Ltd, es ...

's Burnside Chemical Works that made fertilisers from Sulphuric acid opened in 1881 and were the first of its kind in the colony. It closed in the early 1960s and was sold to Dominion Fertiliser before being demolished.

New Zealand Refrigerating Company

Burnside is the site of the former Burnside

Freezing Works A slaughterhouse, also called abattoir (), is a facility where animals are slaughtered to provide food. Slaughterhouses supply meat, which then becomes the responsibility of a packaging facility. Slaughterhouses that produce meat that is no ...

of New Zealand Refrigerating Company, the first works of its kind in New Zealand. This large complex has its origin in a plant opened in 1881, and an abattoir continued to operate at this site until 2008. Plans from 2009 to turn the site into an industrial city are yet (as of 2021) to come to fruition.

Otago Iron Rolling Mills

Previously Smellie Brothers' Iron Rolling Mills. The rolled metal was manufactured from scrap iron. Heated to a white-hot mass before being put under a steam hammer the metal was then rolled and converted to square, angle, flat, rolled and standard iron sold to wholesale merchants throughout the country.The Cyclopedia of New Zealand 1905
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Other industries

A tannery, flour mill, and several fellmongeries. Another former landmark industry in the area was the Burnside Cement Factory, which also operated until the 1980s. A warehouse for a fire manufacturer was built on the site in 2018. Among other industries in the area are numerous small manufacturing plants and wholesalers, and several car sales yards, all in lower Kaikorai Valley Road. To its west and northwest Burnside is predominantly rural hillsides which contain one of the city's main reservoirs, the Southern Reservoir, which is stocked with rainbow trout. Burnside's location means that there are several major transport routes associated with it. A large motorway interchange lies in Burnside, with

slip road In the field of road transport, an interchange (American English) or a grade-separated junction (British English) is a road junction that uses grade separations to allow for the movement of traffic between two or more roadways or highways, using ...

s from the

Dunedin Southern Motorway The Dunedin Southern Motorway is the main arterial route south from the South Island city of Dunedin, part of New Zealand's State Highway 1. Despite its name, only a portion of the route is officially classified as motorway. The route is the so ...

to Green Island and the Kaikorai Valley, as well as routes connecting the motorway and Kaikorai Valley with Concord and the southwestern hill suburb of

Corstorphine Corstorphine (Scottish Gaelic: ''Crois Thoirfinn'') ( ) is an area of the Scottish capital city of Edinburgh. Formerly a separate village and parish to the west of Edinburgh, it is now a suburb of the city, having been formally incorporate ...

. The

South Island Main Trunk The Main North Line between Picton and Christchurch and the Main South Line between Lyttelton and Invercargill, running down the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, are sometimes together referred to collectively as the South Isla ...

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

passes through Burnside (though there are no longer passenger stations in the suburb) entering a tunnel which runs beneath Lookout Point, emerging in

Caversham, New Zealand Caversham is one of the older suburbs of the city of Dunedin, in New Zealand's South Island. It is sited at the western edge of the city's central plain at the mouth of the steep Caversham Valley, which rises to the saddle of Lookout Point. Ma ...

Demographics

Burnside covers , and is part of the larger Kaikorai-Bradford statistical area statistical area. It had a population of 141 at the

2018 New Zealand census Eighteen or 18 may refer to: * 18 (number), the natural number following 17 and preceding 19 * one of the years 18 BC, AD 18, 1918, 2018 Film, television and entertainment * ''18'' (film), a 1993 Taiwanese experimental film based on the sho ...

, an increase of 18 people (14.6%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 33 people (30.6%) since the

2006 census 6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number. In mathematics Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...

. There were 48 households. There were 75 males and 66 females, giving a sex ratio of 1.14 males per female. The median age was 33 years (compared with 37.4 years nationally), with 27 people (19.1%) aged under 15 years, 36 (25.5%) aged 15 to 29, 63 (44.7%) aged 30 to 64, and 12 (8.5%) aged 65 or older. Ethnicities were 83.0% European/Pākehā, 17.0% Māori, 6.4% Pacific peoples, 6.4% Asian, and 2.1% other ethnicities (totals add to more than 100% since people could identify with multiple ethnicities). Although some people objected to giving their religion, 66.0% had no religion, 17.0% were Christian, 4.3% were Hindu, 2.1% were Buddhist and 4.3% had other religions. Of those at least 15 years old, 18 (15.8%) people had a bachelor or higher degree, and 24 (21.1%) people had no formal qualifications. The median income was $34,100, compared with $31,800 nationally. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 72 (63.2%) people were employed full-time, 15 (13.2%) were part-time, and 3 (2.6%) were unemployed.

References

External links

Views inside the abandoned Burnside cement factory
{Dunedin suburbs Suburbs of Dunedin