example, probably of New London in the United States, Captain Chester, was reported at "Otago Bluff" south of Kakanui, with 2,500 barrels (400 m) of oil, on 1 December 1839.
Edward Shortland visited the area in 1844, coming overland from Waikouaiti. On January 9 he recorded "Our path to-day was sometimes along the edge of a low cliff, sometimes along the beach, till we approached Oamaru point, where it turned inland, and crossed a low range of hills, from which we looked over an extensive plain ... Towards the afternoon, we ascended a range of hills called Pukeuri, separating this plain from another more extensive. The sky was so remarkably clear that, from the highest point of the pathway, Moeraki was distinctly in view..." He made a map and placed Oamaru on it. He was one of several Europeans who passed through the area on foot in the 1840s. James Saunders became the first European resident of the district some time before 1850 when he settled to trade among the M?ori of the Waitaki River mouth.
More European settlers arrived in the Oamaru area in the 1850s. Hugh Robison built and lived in a sod hut by the Oamaru Creek in 1853 while establishing his sheep run. J.T. Thomson surveyed the place as a town in 1859, and the Otago Provincial government declared "hundreds" there on 30 November 1860. The town grew as a service-centre for the agricultural/pastoral hinterland between the Kakanui Mountains and the Waitaki River, and rapidly became a major port, starting construction of a breakwater in 1871. For many years there was a commercial and fishing harbour under Cape Wanbrow at Friendly Bay.
With the development of pastoralism and the associated frozen-meat industry having its historical origins in New Zealand just south of the town at Totara, Oamaru flourished. Institutions such as the Athenaeum and Waitaki Boys' and Waitaki Girls' High Schools sprang up. The locally plentiful limestone (Oamaru stone) lent itself to carving and good designers,
