Oamaru ( (listen); Māori: Te Oha-a-Maru) is the largest town in North Otago, in the South Island of New Zealand, it is the main town in the Waitaki District. It is 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of Timaru and 120 kilometres (75 mi) north of Dunedin on the Pacific coast; State Highway 1 and the railway Main South Line connect it to both cities. With a population of 13,900, Oamaru is the 28th largest urban area in New Zealand, and the third largest in Otago behind Dunedin and Queenstown. The town is the seat of Waitaki District, which includes the surrounding towns of Kurow, Weston, Palmerston, and Hampden. which combined have a total population of 23,200.Friendly Bay is a popular recreational area located at the edge of Oamaru Harbour, south of Oamaru's main centre. Just to the north of Oamaru is the substantial Alliance Abattoir at Pukeuri, at a major junction with State Highway 83, the main route into the Waitaki Valley. This provides a road link to Kurow, Omarama, Otematata and via the Lindis Pass to Queenstown and Wanaka. Oamaru serves as the eastern gateway to the Mackenzie Basin, via the Waitaki Valley. Oamaru has been built between the rolling hills of limestone and short stretch of flat land to the sea. This limestone rock is used for the construction of local "Oamaru stone”, sometimes called "Whitestone" buildings. Oamaru enjoys a protected location in the shelter of Cape Wanbrow. The town was laid out in 1858 by Otago's provincial surveyor John Turnbull Thomson, who named the early streets after British rivers, particularly rivers in the northwest and southeast of the country. The name Oamaru derives from the Māori and can be translated as "the place of Maru" (cf. Timaru). The identity of Maru remains open to conjecture.

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