The small, windswept settlement of Fortrose sits near a lagoon at the mouth of the Mataura River on Toetoes Bay, in Southland's south-east. The site of an early Māori settlement and a whaling station for a couple of years in the 1830s, it thrived as a port until the railway from Invercargill reached nearby Waimāhaka in 1899, making it practical to ship goods through the larger port at Bluff.