Ten things you may not know about Southland's history
Southland Heritage Month is here.
Today marks day one of Southland Heritage Month presented by Heritage South.
We thought we’d delve into the various history books1 and offer up ten things you may or may not know about Southland’s early history.
10. Māori arrival….
Māori trace their arrival in Southland to the chiefs Rākaihautū and Tamatea. Rākaihautū, an ancestor of the Waitaha people, was a commander of the Uruao waka (canoe). Tamatea’s waka, the Tākitimu , was wrecked near Te Waewae Bay. The lower South Island was known as Murihiku, a name that loosely means ‘the tail end’ of the land.
9. Mapping out Invercargill….
John Turnbull Thomson, chief surveyor for the Otago province, selected the site for the new town, and laid out the streets in 1856.
Sections were first sold in March 1857. By December the town had 14 houses, two hotels and three stores. A hospital serving Invercargill and surrounding districts first opened in 1861.
8. Should Invercargill in fact be Inverkelly?….
Irishman John “Jimmy” Kelly lived in the now-named Invercargill before it actually existed as a town. He had been at Ruapuke Island but arrived by boat parking up at the Otepuni Creek.
He built a whare in Invercargill for him and his family where Reading Cinemas now stands on Dee St.
The area was called Inverkelly. However, at a banquet in Dunedin on January 17, 1856, New Zealand Governor Gore Browne announced that it had been decided to establish a town.
He suggested it should be called Invercargill in honour of Captain William Cargill. Cargill was the superintendent of the ‘province'. It was a time when Southland was lumped in with Otago.
The prefix 'inver' is a term for an estuary, particularly a meeting of waters.
7. Riverton’s firsts….
Riverton is Southland’s oldest Pākehā settlement, and as a result, Aparima Riverton won a number of firsts for Southland. The first school was opened in 1837, and within a few years there were three, including one for Māori children. The first hospital opened in 1861. Also in 1861, the first recorded horse race was held at a newly built track on the edge of town.
Before the arrival of Europeans, it was home to a substantial Māori settlement called Aparima due to its proximity to the ocean and river as well as the abundance of kaimoana (seafood). Captain John Howell established a whaling station at Aparima in the mid-1830s and married a high-ranking local Māori woman which saw him acquire a lot of land. Today, a large memorial beside the Aparima River estuary commemorates Howell.
6. Campbelltown, sorry I mean Bluff….
The area now known as Bluff has been permanently occupied since the establishment of a whaling station in 1836. Originally named Campbelltown, the local moniker “Bluff” (in reference to the prominent 265m conical hill which the township nestles beside) became the town’s official name in 1917.
5. The growth of Gore….
In 1862 sawmiller Daniel Morton opened Long Ford House, an accommodation house providing stables, beds and liquor for travellers. The first sections were surveyed that year where Gore now is situated. The settlement expanded rapidly in the 1890s and 1900s. Gore was named after Thomas Gore Browne, governor of New Zealand between 1855 and 1861.
4. Breaking away from Otago….
The Southland Rugby Union was founded in 1887 after splitting from Otago, Southland and its former stablemate has gone on to forge what is New Zealand’s longest inter-provincial rugby rivalries. The two sides have played more games against each other than any other representative teams in New Zealand.
3. The stockman and Winton….
The town was established in 1861, and was named after Thomas Winton, who regularly drove stock through this area in the late 1850s. Whilst searching for strayed stock, he had occasion to camp by the banks of the small stream, which became known as Winton Creek. The town took its name from the creek.
Winton first came to prominence in the days of the gold rush, as it was one of the stops en route to the goldfields. On 22 February 1871, a railway line from Invercargill was opened to Winton, built to the international standard.
2. Lennel lives on….
From 1880 to 1882 John Turnbull Thomson built a Victoria home where the now Invercargill suburb of Gladstone is. At the time it was covered by Waihopai bush.
It was Thomson’s house for his retirement and was named Lennel, a reference to the ancient name of Coldstream on the Scottish border.
Built two stories high and with 10 bedrooms, some dressing rooms and bathrooms, a drawing room, dining room, study, nursery, kitchen, scullery, wash house, two stair cases and at least 6 store rooms. It was a masterpiece on a massive scale even for today’s standards. In 1884 Thomson died, two years after the home’s completion.
The house in Albert St remains today with its current owners taking on the mammoth task of restoring the gardens.
1. The railway arrives….
The first railway in the south was built in 1864. It ran between Invercargill and Makarewa, part of a scheme to improve access to the Wakatipu goldfield. Wooden rails tended to warp, and when gold seekers moved on, the line was abandoned in 1866.
But railways had come to stay. A workshop opened in Invercargill in 1868. During the 1870s, railways were built from Invercargill to Lumsden, Kingston, Ōtautau and Riverton, and between Lumsden and Gore. Dunedin and Invercargill were linked in January 1879. By 1911 branch lines operated to Hedgehope, Mossburn, Nightcaps, Tūātapere, Glenham, Waikaia, Waikākā, Tokanui and Ōhai.
The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, nzhistory.govt.nz, southlandnz.com