Shiel Hill is a residential suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located at the southeastern edge of the city's urban area, 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) southeast of the city's centre at the western end of the Otago Peninsula, close to the isthmus joining the peninsula to the mainland. As the name suggests, it is situated on the slopes of a hill at the start of the ridge which runs along the spine of the peninsula. The slopes rise to a series of crests generally known collectively as Highcliff, a name also often applied to the last suburban vestiges which remain as Dunedin's urban area becomes the rural land of the peninsula. More accurately, the name is that of a cliff which lies on the Pacific coast of the peninsula 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) east of Shiel Hill.
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland.
The Otago Peninsula is a long, hilly indented finger of land that forms the easternmost part of Dunedin, New Zealand. Volcanic in origin, it forms one wall of the eroded valley that now forms Otago Harbour. The peninsula lies south-east of Otago Harbour and runs parallel to the mainland for 20 km, with a maximum width of 9 km. It is joined to the mainland at the south-west end by a narrow isthmus about 1.5 km wide.
An isthmus is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated. A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea counterpart of an isthmus.
The suburb is almost entirely residential, though there are some retail premises on the suburb's main road, Highcliff Road. These include a small nexus of shops at the southwestern edge of Shiel Hill, at the point where the suburb joins the neighbouring suburb of Andersons Bay. At this point, there is a road junction, with the western end of Highciff Road meeting four other roads, notably Silverton Street (which leads down into Andersons Bay and is the main route from Shiel Hill to central Dunedin) and Tomahawk Road (which leads to Dunedin's Pacific coastal suburbs of Tahuna and Ocean Grove).
Andersons Bay is a suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located in the southeast of the city's urban area, 2.8 kilometres (1.7 mi) southeast of the city's centre.
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east.
Ocean Grove, also known as Tomahawk, is a suburb in the southeast of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. A semi-rural residential suburb on the Pacific coast at the southwestern end of the Otago Peninsula, Ocean Grove is located 6.5 kilometres (4.0 mi) southeast of Dunedin city centre.
Notable features of Shiel hill include Rotary Park, a small public reserve surrounding reservoirs which serve the Peninsula hill suburbs. This park is located above steep slopes which drop 166 metres (545 ft) to the waters of the Otago Harbour close to The Cove, half a kilometre to the north of the park. From Rotary Park, views can be obtained across and along the harbour to central Dunedin to the northwest, Signal Hill to the north, and Port Chalmers to the northeast. [1]
Port Chalmers is a suburb and the main port of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand, with a population of 3,000. Port Chalmers lies ten kilometres inside Otago Harbour, some 15 kilometres northeast from Dunedin's city centre.
The suburb of Shiel Hill hit the news headlines in Dunedin in 1995 after one of Dunedin's most notorious crimes was committed in Every Street, close to the boundary of Shiel Hill and Andersons Bay. The case, in which five of the six members of the Bain family were slain led to one of New Zealand's most prominent causes célèbres after the remaining member of the family, David Bain was arrested for the murders despite evidence indicating that the slayings may well have been a murder-suicide by his father Robin. David Bain was found guilty and served 13 years of a life sentence before succeeding in having the case reopened. His retrial, in 2009, resulted in a verdict of not guilty.
A cause célèbre is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning, and heated public debate. The term continues in the media in all senses. It is sometimes used positively for celebrated legal cases for their precedent value and more often negatively for infamous ones, whether for scale, outrage, scandal or conspiracy theories.
