Shag Point / Matakaea is a headland and township in

East Otago East Otago is the name given to that part of Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand that lies directly to the north of Dunedin. To the south, its limit is approximately the rough hill pass of the Kilmog, 25 kilometres north of Dunedin city ce ...

, New Zealand. It is located close to

State Highway 1 The following highways are numbered 1. For roads numbered A1, see list of A1 roads. For roads numbered B1, see list of B1 roads. For roads numbered M1, see List of M1 roads. For roads numbered N1, see list of N1 roads. For roads numbere ...

nine kilometres to the northeast of

Palmerston Palmerston may refer to: People * Christie Palmerston (c. 1851–1897), Australian explorer * Several prominent people have borne the title of Viscount Palmerston ** Henry Temple, 1st Viscount Palmerston (c. 1673–1757), Irish nobleman and ...

, at the southern end of a long open bay known as Katiki Beach. The point itself is a hilly promontory between Katiki Beach and the mouth of the Shag River. Both the river and point take their English name from the shag, a species of

cormorant Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the IOC adopted a consensus taxonomy of seven ge ...

. A historic

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

site, the Matakaea/Shag Point Occupation Site, is located close to the headland. It is listed as a Category II site by

Heritage New Zealand Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (initially the National Historic Places Trust and then, from 1963 to 2014, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust) ( mi, Pouhere Taonga) is a Crown entity with a membership of around 20,000 people that advocate ...

. Geologically, the area is an exemplar of the

Katiki Formation The Katiki Formation is a Late Cretaceous (Campanian to Maastrichtian, or Haumurian in the regional stratigraphy) geologic formation of the South Island of New Zealand.Kaiwhekea katiki ''Kaiwhekea'' () is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian age) of what is now New Zealand. History of discovery The type species, ''Kaiwhekea katiki'', was first described by Arthur Cruickshank and Ewan Fordyce ...

''.

References

Headlands of Otago Populated places in Otago NZHPT Category II listings in Otago {{Otago-geo-stub