When I think of Otago, I’m inclined to think of it as a place of solid, practical people – people like Henry Shacklock, who made cast-iron coal ranges, the original Sir James Fletcher, founder of the construction company that bears his name, and Bendix Hallenstein, a 19th century businessman whose name lives on in a national menswear chain.
Dunedin today still has an aura of Presbyterian sturdiness and self-reliance (although Hallenstein, of course, was Jewish). The Otago Daily Times is the last of the traditional New Zealand daily newspapers, still family-owned, still concentrating on what it does best – which is local news, delivered on paper – and faring pretty well compared with digitally focused papers elsewhere.