Eight years ago this weekend, a bunch of people sat down around a table and discussed a crazy idea – a documentary about how our Scottish city came into being. Why did the Scots and the Irish come here, and what drove them to leave their homeland? That day, Seán Brosnahan, Will McKee, Rua McCallum, Tom Brooking, and Angela McCarthy, started what eventually became the incredibly successful Journey to New Edinburgh series, produced by Toitū Otago Settlers Museum.

The Otago Scottish Heritage Council were proud to support this documentary, and the accompanying Pioneer Stories from Southern New Zealand. The final episodes have just been published online, so we thought it was time to journey back through the journey, making sure this wonderful piece of film-making is appreciated well into the future.

We begin this week with episode 1: Genesis. Setting the scene for the Otago story, this episode looks at how the idea first emerged for a Scottish and Presbyterian settlement in the South Island of New Zealand