The rebranding of Otago Settlers Museum involved reconnecting with a prominent feature of early Dunedin.
When Dunedin's history museum was rebranded as ''Toitu Otago Settlers Museum'' in 2012, there was some surprise at the unfamiliar name, which seemed unconnected to the Early Settlers heritage.
In fact, Toitu takes us right back to Dunedin's beginnings.
When Otago's pioneers first stepped ashore in 1848 on to the site at the head of Otago Harbour around which Dunedin would be developed, their feet squelched into the mud of the Toitu estuary.
This fabulous painting, created some eight years later by the surveyor John Turnbull Thomson, shows us the Toitu stream as the first settlers knew it.
You can see here how much this now-forgotten waterway defined the site of the embryonic settlement.
The Toitu stream ran down the hills into Maclaggan St, crossed underneath the present-day Southern Cross hotel, then flowed into the harbour, creating the ragged shoreline, shingly beach and shallow estuarine waters that characterised early Dunedin.
All these features would soon disappear beneath the settlers' land reclamation and construction projects.
Indeed, the very first public works project in Dunedin - forming Princes St - had involved creating a primitive bridge over the Toitu just near where the Cargill monument stands today.
By 1858, town development had progressed to the point where the stream could be channelled completely underground, and it was soon forgotten.
The Toitu is still there of course, flowing quietly beneath our feet as we walk along Princes St or through the Exchange.
By bringing its name to the fore, the museum has taken us back to the very earliest days of the settlement, and to the place where the ''Early Settlers'' took their first tentative steps through the mud.
To where, in fact, Dunedin began.
What could be more appropriate for a museum concerned with our history?
Thomson's marvellous painting can be seen in the museum hanging directly opposite the Cobb and Co coach.
A talk
On Monday, Bill Dacker will present a talk on the Toitu stream to mark Otago Anniversary Day. Monday March 23, 2pm, Toitu Otago Settlers Museum auditorium.
