Victory Beach is located on the Pacific Ocean coast of the Otago Peninsula, in the South Island of New Zealand, 24 kilometres (15 mi) by road from Dunedin city centre. The longest beach on the peninsula, Victory Beach is located northeast of the entrance to Papanui Inlet and stretches for 3.5 kilometres. It is backed by a series of high sand dunes. The beach's name derives from the wreck of the SS Victory on the beach in 1861. The beach and headlands to the north and south form Wickliffe Bay.
Administered partly by the Otago Peninsula Trust, the beach is a habitat for many rare species, notably yellow-eyed penguins. Other notable birds found in the area include spoonbills, and the beach is located close to the Royal Albatross breeding colony at Taiaroa Head. Both Hooker's sealions and New Zealand fur seals are also found in the area.
Access to the beach is via a narrow metalled road which links to Portobello on the Otago Harbour coast and also, via further narrow roads, with the Highcliff Road which runs along the spine of the peninsula. At the end of the road, a 2 kilometre walking track leads to the beach past two large outcrops of columnar basalt known as The Pyramids. The southern, smaller outcrop is called Little Pyramid, or Te Matai O Kia.
The beach was used as a location for the television movie Out of Ashes, starring Elisabeth Lanz.
Read more about Victory Beach: Victory Wreck
Famous quotes containing the words victory and/or beach:
“...I discovered that I could take a risk and survive. I could march in Philadelphia. I could go out in the street and be gay even in a dress or a skirt without getting shot. Each victory gave me courage for the next one.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)
“They will tell you tough stories of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not presume to doubt utterly,—how they will sometimes upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in it. I can easily believe in the undertow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach a hundred miles long.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)