Story: Otago places
Journalist and politician Thomas Bracken is largely remembered for the words of New Zealand’s national anthem, ‘God defend New Zealand’. But for many years he was much more famous for his poem ‘Not understood’, the words of which appear on his grave in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery. Dunedin locals were also familiar with ‘Dunedin from the bay’ (1890):
Go, trav'ler, unto others boast
Of Venice and of Rome;
Of saintly Mark's majestic pile,
And Peter's lofty dome;
Of Naples and her trellised bowers;
Of Rhineland far away:—
These may be grand, but give to me
Dunedin from the Bay.
About this item
Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Photograph by Janine Faulknor
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