This is a magnetic micro cache with log provided inside but bring your own pen. There is parking nearby and it is also right next to the West Harbour cycle/walkway.
The sculpture of a kuri / dog was made by Stephen Mulqueen in 2008. It looks out towards the harbour entrance as a cultural guardian and watch dog looking after people and the environment.
More information about the sculpture from the Otago Sculpture Trust:
As a site-specific work the sculpture is at once a local/national and universal motif. The work casts a local shadow back into a pre-European past drawing on the narrative of place within the OtagoHarbour; Te Umu Kuri also known as Wellers Rock is a place name and promotes a poetic translation; Umu meaning either ‘oven’ or ‘swift current’ and kuri ‘dog’.
The Kuri / Dog structural form is based on a railway spike nail also known as a dog. Dogs were used to hold down the rail iron track to the wooden sleeper and have been replaced with steel clip-ons and now concrete sleepers. The sculpture Kuri / Dog sits on railway bogie wheels atop twenty metres of rail iron track.
The first railway line between Dunedin to Port Chalmers was built in 1856 and the sculpture pays homage to Otago-Dunedin railway histories and the many generations of railway workers who built and then maintained the rail line to the present day.
The dog as subject matter and representation, image & object, has a unique place across many cultures and has come to embody a wide spectrum of values and emotions. Te Kuri / Dog is no exception as its maker Stephen Mulqueen believes it takes its place in a rich cultural tradition of painting and sculptural development representing the theme of Canis familiaris.
Kuri / Dog was the only domesticated animal of the Maori and was brought to Aotearoa New Zealand by Polynesian mariners several hundred years ago, and has become embedded into the cultural memory of place. Kuri was also a valuable hunting companion, used extensively in theSouth Island and provided a source of food, skins and industrial bone.
With the arrival of European dogs and consequent cross-breeding many of the resulting progeny ran wild in packs, threatening the livestock of the early European settlers. As a result they were shot in considerable numbers, with the last part kuri being destroyed in the later nineteenth century. Kuri lives on through tribal name Kati-Kuri, in sculptural form and in place names. 700 year old images speak from black charcoal drawings on rock overhangs on South Island caves while mythologies recall narratives around Kuri / Dog.
Kuri / Dog is a conjunction of many meanings. It emerges from under the layers of our shared cultural and industrial heritage where place has been infected by both personal and collective memory and redefines a sense of place by its physical presence. Today the domestic dog plays a central role as family companion and on this level the artist wants the work to represent a shared value in the community.
The sculptor Stephen Mulqueen suggests the work will open up conversations and connections in a myriad of ways that will ask the viewer to reflect on local and cultural histories. The sculpture can communicate meaning on a number of levels offering connections to the natural and built environment. Placed on a site next to the Otago Yacht Club in Magnet Street, Kuri / Dog looks out towards the harbour entrance as a cultural guardian and watch dog looking after people and the environment.