Blog

By Roselyn Fauth

A mini drainage systems in the sand at Shark Bay, Dashing Rocks, Timaru at low tide. - Photo Roselyn Fauth 2026. South Canterbury is not a fixed landscape. It is still being shaped, grain by grain, by mountains, ice, rivers, wind, waves, and time.

Have you ever notices the patterns in the sand of tiny water ways finding their way to the ocean? These mini river systems in the sand are not random, and if you look closely then compare what you see by your foot from what you could see if you were in a plane, it tells us a little bit more about the way water moves from mountains, across plains and into the Pacific Ocean.

Taking notice of how water shapes the sand, can help us think about the larger shapes of the rivers in South Canterbury. A catchment is the area of land where rainwater, stormwater, streams and groundwater drain towards a shared waterway, river, estuary, coast or groundwater system. One catchment or water zone can include urban streets, parks, drains, streams, industrial areas, farms, hillsides, wetlands, estuaries and coastline. Water does not stop at suburb boundaries. What happens in one part of of Canterbury, such as sediment, rubbish, pollution, planting, development or stormwater runoff, can affect waterways further downstream.

For us in Timaru and the wider Canterbury area, we care for more braided rivers than any other region in New Zealand, covering about 164,000 hectares. Seven alpine braided rivers provide about 88%of Canterbury’s river flow. DOC states that Canterbury contains about 60% of New Zealand’s braided river habitat. We live in a very complex and diverse area. Water is managed as a connected system. For example, the Ōrāri Temuka Ōpihi Pareora water zone, which includes Timaru’s wider water context, has hill-fed braided rivers, coastal areas, and strong, complex links between groundwater and surface water. 

Understanding the geomorphology of the area helps us appreciate how water connects places. This knoledge then supports plans, processes and projects for flood protection, emergency management, biosecurity, environmental and regulation. I started this blog as a lesson I learned with the sand, and as I delved into this deeper I realised how it is also a story about local knowledge, long-term relationships and integrated planning across land, water, and communities... wouldn't be a WuHoo Blog with out a side quest hey?!

Explore our shore at low tide and see what WuHoo's you can find... 

By Roselyn Fauth

The famous twin, the quieter story, and why public girls’ education matters

Tennis Team, 1900. Christina Cruickshank is identified as the teacher on the back right. Courtesy Timaru Girls’ High School Archives.

On this day, 1 January 1873, Dr Margaret Cruickshank and her twin sister Christina were born in Palmerston, Otago.

Margaret is the easier twin to find in public memory. In nearby Waimate, she is remembered by a magnificent marble monument, unveiled in 1923. She was the second woman in New Zealand to complete a medical course, and the first New Zealand woman to register as a doctor. She served the Waimate community for more than twenty years, and died in 1918 after caring for others during the influenza pandemic.

Her statue was raised in an era when public monuments to women were rare. If women appeared in stone or marble, they were usually royal. Margaret’s memorial is one of New Zealand’s few public monuments to a woman other than Queen Victoria.

There are plenty of history websites where you can learn about Dr Margaret Cruickshank. There are fewer places where Christina gets the same attention.

So this blog is about Christina... because Christina’s story shows us something different. It tells us about women in the margins of public memory. It tells us about girls’ education. It tells us about Timaru Girls’ High School’s place in a much bigger story: the long push for women to enter universities, gain qualifications, teach serious subjects, lead schools, and break through ceilings that were not always made of glass. Sometimes they were made of money, expectation, curriculum, distance, and doubt...

A WuHoo guide to free fun, hidden stories and the places we love! 

Welcome to Timaru. I am rose, a 6th generation Timaru-vian who is half dutch! I’m so glad you’re here.

You could rush through town with a checklist, take a photo at Caroline Bay, grab a coffee, and keep driving. Lots of people do. But if you have a little more time, I’d love to show you another way to explore Timaru... a local insight on how to find some free meaningful fun in timaru!

By Roselyn Fauth

[Timaru], New Zealand, by Muir & Moodie. Te Papa (C.014801)

The maker’s mark on the Timaru Customhouse fence turns a grand government building into a local workmanship story, linking the polished world of customs and commerce with the foundrymen of King and Edward Streets.

Look closely at the iron fence around Timaru’s old Customhouse and there is a small clue to a local founry. It's not the massive fluted columns. Not the lettering above the entrance, “HM Customs 1902”. Or even the elegant sweep of the rounded corner at Strathallan Street. The clue is a little humbler than that... It is a maker’s mark in the metal of the fence, a practical stamp that says, “we made this”.

That mark leads us to J. Storrier and Co., one of Timaru’s great working firms. The Customhouse itself was built in 1901 to 1902, designed by local carpenter turned architect Daniel West and built by Thomas Pringle, with plasterwork by Emil Hall. It was a confident little government building, placed where it could keep watch between the port, the railway station and the town. Customs mattered. Goods, duties, shipping and paperwork all passed through this part of Timaru.

By Roselyn Fauth 

Samuel McBride was one of South Canterbury’s key makers of memory in stone. Born in Dumfries and settled in Timaru in the early 1870s, he moved from stone-house work into monumental masonry and later general contracting. His known work links shipwreck grief, South African War commemoration, school memory, church foundations, civic architecture, cemetery craft and family mourning. His Sophia Street yard stood opposite the Wrecks Monument, one of his own major works, while his family’s repeated losses are gathered in Row 91 of Timaru Cemetery.. McBride’s work brought together local stone and imported memory materials. Newspaper advertisements in the 1930s and 1940s include the contact details 29 Sophia Street, Timaru, with telephone number 572 for “S. McBride, Established 1874” Timaru township. The Press (Newspaper) :Negatives. Ref: 1/1-008713-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/29947494 - https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD19380913.2.3.1

When I was taking cemetery tours in Timaru, people began noticing a name carved low on old headstones: McBride. At first glance, it can look like the name of the person buried there. But on many old stones, a small name near the base, side or plinth is something else. It is the mason’s mark. It is the signature of the person or firm that made the memorial.

That realisation opened up a much bigger story... Because McBride is not only a name you might notice on cemetery headstones. Samuel McBride helped shape some of South Canterbury’s most important civic, church and public memorials. His work appears in the places where Timaru and surrounding communities remembered disaster, war, school service, faith, empire, family and grief.

So who was McBride?

 By Roselyn Fauth

I have learned that our CBD is a mash-up of centuries of ideas, styles, and influences. Kings, queens, wars, relsions, politicians – all those global stories filtered down and ended up shaping the facade on the streets of Timaru. This blog features bluestone our very special rock that has been quarried localy for construction.

Bluestone is the local name for the rock. It is also called Basalt, which is cooled lava. The lava in Timaru flowed here from near Waipouri/Mt Horrible to what is now the coast around 2 - 2.5 million years ago. It flowed like flingers creating the ridges of our towns geography. Many of our streets and roads follow the humps and hollows. You can see the cooled lava along our coast, which now forms reefs and important marine habitat. 

Centennial Park was a former quarry. The Harbour Board used the rock to construct the Port. There were multiple quarries in Timaru. The rock was used for civil work like underground stromwater drains, bridges, to mitigate coastal erosion, the historic Reservoir was lined in basalt. And many of our special heritage buildings and monuments had bluestone incorporated into its construction.

Below are photos that I have collected over time of bluestone buildings, monuments, fences etc... incase you are curious about how we have used our lava rock in the past.

For me, the bluestone, bricks and mortar in our town are more than just structures. They help us connect to our past, like bookmarks in our history timeline that remind us who we were and where we’ve come from...

By Roselyn Fauth

Frank Duncan & Co Ltd, In the Gardens Timaru NZ (1920). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 09/04/2026, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/29

I have walked past the band rotunda in the Timaru Botanic Gardens more times than I could count... I remember it as a young child, and now my children enjoy playing there too.

If you look closely by the steps, you will find a plaque that records the rotunda's establishment. It was erected at the initiative of the footballers, with the assistance of the citizens of Timaru, in commemoration of the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911. I hadn't realised that this rotunda was a memorial. A public gift. And it gives us a insight into what Timaru cared about at a particular moment in its history.

Timaru in 1911 was doing fairly well for itself. It was a busy port town serving a strong South Canterbury farming district, with goods moving in and out through the harbour and a town that was growing in opportunity and confidence. This was not a place content with bare necessity. People were thinking about improvements, about public life, about how the town looked and felt. They were looking for the nice to haves that maade living in Timaru as my friend often says "a delight".

That matters when you think about the gardens. The land had been reserved back in 1864 and for years it was simply known as The Park. It developed slowly, and not in a straight strategic line either. There was planting, shelter belts, grazing, a ranger’s cottage, convict labour from the nearby gaol, public donations, and of course a lot of patience and practical work that often goes unnoticed behind the scenes of the beauty of public places.

By the early 1900s something was changing. The old reserve was starting to feel more deliberate, established and more cared for... like a place people might come not only to pass through but to enjoy.

By Roselyn Fauth

Jonathan Roberts appears in the Bush Advocate, Volume IV, Issue 285, 8 March 1890, Page 3 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BA18900308.2.13

A pine tree led me to Timaru Gaol... I had been learning about one of the great old pines at the Timaru Botanic Gardens, a tree said to have been planted by prisoners doing hard labour from the local gaol. The early gardens were shaped in part by prison labour, so I began following that thread backwards, looking for the men and the institution behind it. That is how I stumbled across Jonathan Roberts, a man who did not begin life as a gaol character at all, but as a bank clerk.

His life began in Cornwall in 1861. This was just a few years before the Timaru Botanic Gardens were set aside as a reserve in 1864. Roberts was brought up in New Zealand, and employed as a bank clerk by the Bank of New Zealand at Temuka, Timaru, Christchurch, Akaroa and Wellington. He was a Bank of New Zealand clerk at Temuka in 1877 and by 1885 it was reported he had left banking "discharged after a quarrel with another official. He had been out of work, and made some choices that change his world of signatures, ledgers, reputation and trust - I wonder if anyone expected him to become a colonial outlaw?

His first clearly documented fall was the forging of a cheque in 1886...

By Roselyn Fauth 

Photo By Roselyn Fauth

The 'Prisoner Pine' at the Timaru Botanic Gardens are one of two trees that were pointed out to me by the late Wayne McCay as being planted by prisoners when the gardens were being established. The majority of early planting was carried out with convict labour from the local Timaru Gaol and floral fetes were organized to raise money for development of The Gardens. PINACEAE. BAJA CALIFORNIA. Pinus radiata. var. binata. TWO-NEEDLED MONTEREY PINE. Pinus radiata is one the most domesticated of all forest trees. Monterey pine is a fast-growing evergreen conifer. - Photo Roselyn Fauth 2026

If Wayne McCay hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known that there are two enourmous trees on the Southern boundary of the Timaru Botanic Gardens that link to Timaru's goal and prisoners. Timaru's The Park became one of the countries oldest botanic gardens.

In 1864, 56 acres of open land on the Southern town belt in Timaru was set aside for the town’s future public park and by 1868 planting was underway.  The Park took a long time to establish. By the early 1870s, parts were already planted with donations of trees, shrubs, flower roots, bulbs and seeds were sought from the public. Other areas of the reserce were laid down in grass.

In 1873, tenders were called for a cottage on the reserve and for fencing to help manage the reserve. Horses and cattle found wandering there were to be impounded. Mr William Hislop was appointed to present to the head gardener Mr W Wilson of Christchurch of the Timaru Park.

In February 1875, the Timaru Park Bye-Laws were published in the Canterbury Provincial Government Gazette. They said the domain was open from sunrise to sunset, that people had to use the gates, that anyone crossing the fences would be prosecuted as trespassers, and that visitors were to keep to the walks and “on no account” touch the trees, shrubs, or flowers. It might seem a bit over to the top to us today, but at the time The Park was precious. There was a huge effort to source seeds and plants from overseas, to bring them to Timaru, grow and establish them here. the gardens plants were not there for casual damage or taking.

One of the most important parts of that early park history is labour. The majority of the early planting was carried out with convict labour from the local Timaru Gaol.

Timaru's gaol was in use by 1866, and it remained part of the town’s landscape until the old reserve and buildings were transferred in 1913. 

I have written a few blogs about the history of the Timaru Botanic Gardens, but I haven't delved into the history of our prison, or "gaol" as it used to be known. So here is a riveting read for your Sunday, about Timaru's prisoner pines. Well that was the plan until my hunting through papers past sent me on a prisoner escape side quest...

By Roselyn Fauth

Timaru’s “independence” did not begin with fanfare, polished council chambers, or a settled main street. It began in a town that was still half made.

By the time Timaru became a borough in July 1868, it was already a busy little place of surf boats, timber yards, drapers, boarding houses, hotels, schools, banks, a newspaper office, and the Mechanics’ Institute. Ships still anchored offshore in the shelter of the reefs, and cargo had to be brought ashore through the landing service at the foot of Strathallan Street. By 1866, around 1,000 people lived here, but this was not yet a tidy, fully serviced township. It was a working port settlement, practical and ambitious, still finding its way.

In fact, Timaru was not even one tidy plan on paper. It had grown out of two separate townships. To the north was Rhodes Town, laid out by E. H. Lough on Rhodes land. To the south was the government town, surveyed by Samuel Hewlings. The two met at North Street, awkwardly enough that the roads still do not quite line up today. Stafford Street began as a cart track, and the commercial heart of the town grew around the practical business of landing goods and serving settlers, rather than around some ideal surveyor’s vision. Even the shape of Timaru tells a story of two places learning how to become one.

Before frozen meat, before motorways, and before Timaru’s harbour was fully formed, grain helped build South Canterbury. Wheat sacks filled the streets, mills rose beside transport routes, merchants expanded their stores, and flour from Timaru was shipped as far as Britain. This was not just a farming story. It was a story of invention, risk, trade, port development, and a region learning how to feed both itself and the world. South Canterbury became one of New Zealand’s great grain districts, and Timaru stood at the centre of it.

South Canterbury’s fertile plains offered ideal conditions for growing wheat, barley, and oats. As production increased, the need for local milling grew with it. In the early years, flour was imported from Australia, but local processing soon became essential. Early mills were powered by water and wind before later developments introduced steam and electricity. This shift marked the beginning of a major regional industry that would shape the economy and physical landscape of Timaru for decades...

By Roselyn Fauth

Facebook has made it much harder now to find those very early posts. I am so glad I had already started copying some of them and rewriting them into blogs, because otherwise a lot of those first thoughts and discoveries might have slipped away completely.

Each day Facebook offers up a memory, and this time it took me back to 23 April 2023, to a post I had written after visiting Timaru Cemetery.

I remembered the day and the feeling of walking through that older part of the cemetery, reading names, wondering about their lives. But then I looked through the comments of my old post I realised I had missed something. In the comments on that old post, Jason Westaway had shared a fascinating newspaper clipping. Somehow, at the time, I had not properly seen it. Reading it now felt like being handed a key to a door I had walked past years earlier without opening.

The article was about retiring Timaru Cemetery sexton G. E. Edgeler, a man who had spent decades caring for the cemetery and the people in it. It was not just a piece about his retirement. It was really about care, memory, dignity, and the quiet human work that happens in places like cemeteries...

By Roselyn Fauth 

Desmarestia ligulata (Stackh.) J.V.Lamour., collected 12 October 1988, Dashing Rocks, near Timaru, New Zealand. CC BY 4.0. Te Papa (A018984)

I have been really enjoying looking at photography of Timaru on Te Papa online collection. When I search 'Timaru', the first tabs bring up some really interesting historic images. They are really high resolution, so I have been enjoying zooming in and seeing what is the same, what has changed over the years. After about five tabs there are heaps of records of plants linked to Timaru. Why are they there?

At first I wondered whether the plant images had somehow been mixed into the Timaru results by mistake. But they are not mistakes, and it turns out that they are not just botanical photographs... they are herbarium specimens from Te Papa’s botany collection. Te Papa says its herbarium contains about 350,000 dried plant specimens, was founded in 1865, and is especially rich in marine algae, ferns, and mosses. That means these images appear because Te Papa is surfacing collection records connected with Timaru as a locality, not just scenic or historic images of the town.

Once I understood that, the plant tabs made way more sense. These are digitised specimen sheets, part of a scientific archive that records what species were found, where they were found, and when. Te Papa explains that collections like these help underpin knowledge of what plant species occur where in New Zealand and how that has changed over time. So when Timaru appears in the record, the specimen can appear in a Timaru search.

There are a few names that have collected many of these specimens and one I was keen to learn more about was Dr Cameron Hay, a New Zealand marine botanist...

By Roselyn Fauth inspired by W A Anderson

It appears on coats, jackets, school blazers, memorial tables and donation boxes. We pin it on carefully, trying not to prick our fingers, and somehow that little burst of red changes how a whole day feels. In New Zealand the red poppy is most closely associated with Anzac Day, and the first national Poppy Day was held on 24 April 1922 after a shipment of French-made poppies arrived too late for Armistice Day the year before. Today the RSA’s Poppy Day remains its main fundraising activity, supporting veterans and their whānau.

For a long time, that was how I knew the poppy too, as remembrance, rather than a plant. The red Flanders poppy became linked with the dead of the First World War because it was one of the first flowers to grow on the battlefields of Flanders in Belgium. John McCrae’s 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields.” inspired people such as Moina Michael in the United States and Madame Guérin. Guérin became known as “The Poppy Lady of France” who helped to turn the red poppy into an international remembrance emblem. She promoted the sale of artificial poppies to raise money for children, veterans, and communities affected by war. 

Colonel Samuel Moffatt was Madame Guérin’s representative in New Zealand in 1921. He is the man credited in the history books for bringing her poppy appeal idea to the New Zealand Returned Soldiers’ Association suggesting they join other Allied countries in wearing it. After Moffatt's visit, the NZRSA ordered 350,000 small and 16,000 large silk poppies from Madame Guérin’s French Children’s League. They were intended to be used for Armistice Day, but the shipment arrived too late. So the appeal was shifted to the day before Anzac Day in 1922, and it was such a success that the custom stuck. Since then, the poppy has been worn in New Zealand around 25 April 1922, making it the best-known flower of Anzac remembrance here.

I remember making poppies with our kids during covid lockdown, when we couldn't gather for our annual ceremony out of red shopping bags and staking them into the lawn verge on the street.

I remember poppy's growing in our backyard growing up. I also remember someone telling my mum to avoid growing poppies in her garden as they could attract unwanted visitors.

I went back to A. W. Anderson, the Timaru botanist, conservationist and author who served as Curator of Reserves for Timaru City Council from 1932 to 1956. His book The Coming of the Flowers was published in 1950 and later republished as How We Got Our Flowers. Anderson wrote as a man who loved flowers deeply, but he also wrote as a storyteller. In his hands, the poppy was not just a symbol. It was a plant family full of geography, breeding, travel, fashion, memory and his own personal feelings from plants.

By Roselyn Fauth 

Gate at St Mary's Anglican Church in Timaru. Photography By Roselyn Fauth. Gothic architectural elements, such as pointed arches and detailed stone pillars.

A small shape on a Timaru gate can lead to a big story... I keep noticing them now. Little fleur de lis shapes on old Timaru gates.

Some sit on the tops of iron pickets. Some repeat in rows. At first they look like decoration, but then I wondered why that shape? What did it mean to the person who chose it? And what else have we all walked past without really noticing?

That is the joy of a history hunt. You do not begin with a grand monument. You begin with one small clue... The origin of the fleur de lis has been debated for centuries. Tthe design can be found in many places long before heraldic times, as far back as Mesopotamia.

I thought the little white daisy in the lawn must be the “marguerite” in A. W. Anderson’s chapter. But once I started reading through his words, I realised that the flower most of us know from the lawn is usually a lawn daisy, not a marguerite. Now I realised that the everyday lawn flower is the starting point of a bigger story about names, gardens, fashion, migration, and how people once grouped flowers by likeness long before modern classification pulled them apart...

by Roselyn Fauth

Did you know that some of Geraldine’s trees are more than just beautiful? They can also be bat trees!

When people think about wildlife in New Zealand, they often picture kiwi, kererū or maybe a cheeky fantail. But bats? Many people are surprised to learn that bats are the only native land mammals in all of New Zealand, and that long tailed bats, or pekapeka, live right here in South Canterbury. They are critically endangered and have the highest threat status of Nationally Critical, with only around 200 to 300 bats in the local area. They are also the only bats on the east coast of the South Island.

These tiny creatures are extraordinary. A long tailed bat weighs about the same as a $2 coin, can fly up to 60 kilometres an hour, and may eat up to 600 insects in a single day. They are small, dark brown, and have a wingspan of about 25 centimetres. They use echolocation to find food and navigate, roost by day, and feed by night. Females have one pup a year, and the young begin flying when they are only four to five weeks old.

By Roselyn Fauth

When I spoke at the New Zealand Gardens Trust conference in April 2026, I began by saying that I was not there as a gardening expert... I was there as a lifelong user of gardens.

That mattered to me, because when I saw the conference theme, Honouring the Past, Gifting to the Future, I thought that is exactly what gardens do. They carry one generation’s vision into the next. They hold history, beauty, labour, and care, yes, but they also hold something less measurable and just as important. They hold memory...

By Roselyn Fauth

"The White Rose of York is generally believed to have been a form of Rosa alba which grows wild all over the great Eur-Asian continent from the hedgerows of England to the roadsides of far Cathay. This old favourite can always be recognized by its pale glossy-green leafage and fragrant flowers. When Henry III of England married Eleanor of Provence in 1236 she had already adopted the white Rose as her emblem. In due course it was inherited by her son, who became Edward I, and he had it incorporated in the Great Seal of State." -  The coming of the flowers https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924000404834&seq=28

Roses are a big part of Timaru District landscape. They are beautiful and smell amazing. Did you know they can also be the center of our customs and tradtions, symbolic, decorative and even theme wars.

A few years ago, my friend Kate O'Conner and I had the privilege of walking through the Timaru Botanic Gardens with the late Wayne McLay, a former gardener whose knowledge of the gardens was extraordinary. Wayne did not just know plant names. He knew why things were planted where they were, how the different areas worked together, and the stories quietly living inside them.

One of the most memorable stops on that walk was in the Species Rose Garden with the late Wayne McLay. 

Wayne pointed out a rose and told us the story behind it. Of everything he shared that day, that story stayed with me. Lately, as I have been frantically saving old Facebook posts as blogs, I found myself thinking about that walk again and about Wayne, who sadly passed away a few years ago.

Read on to learn about the meaning behind the bower, the mystery of the white rose, and the Jacobite connections that give these old stories their deeper layers of romance, secrecy, and history.

By Roselyn Fauth

F Gibson Timaru 1904 1939 scratched into basalt rock which would have been part of the caretakers homes back garden. The house was removed and the garden was incorporated into the Bay Tearooms garden. - Photo Roselyn Fauth 2022. The steps behind the tea rooms are called the Gibston Steps in recognition of the Bays Caretaker. Timaru’s Caroline Bay used to be known as the Riviera of the South. A wide, sandy beach, it was where Cantabrians would flock (by train) to swim, sunbathe and attend carnivals and concerts. Though it doesn’t quite draw the crowds of ‘Riviera’ times these days, it’s still a beautiful bay, enjoyed by Timaru locals.

There is a large piece of basalt tucked into the garden into the cliff behind the Caroline Bay Tea Rooms. It is easy to miss if you are not looking for it, I suspect for years it was covered in ivy and hidden from view. Scratched into the stone are a few words: A F Gibson Timaru 1904 1939. At first glance it feels it looks like graffiti. But it is not random at all... it traces a person whose work helped shape Caroline Bay, even if his name is no longer widely known.

Local heritage sources identify the man as Alexander Gibson, remembered as Caroline Bay’s first caretaker. They also connect the rock to the old caretaker’s cottage garden, which once stood beside the tea rooms before that house was removed and the garden absorbed into the area people know today. I remember the fence of the caretakers house, a big green corrigated iron one. but I can't remember much more about it, today the house is long gone, and in its place is a garden where people enjoy nosh at events and celebrations. Those same sources say the steps behind the tea rooms up the cliff were named after him...

By Roselyn Fauth

I have this amazing book that was given to me by my dad. It is called Jubilee History of South Canterbury, printed in 1916, and it is a real treasures. It smells of decaying animal glue, a scent I have grown to love. To me, it smells like a 110 year old book... full of peoples research and memories of the first years of European arrival in the area.

It is not an easy book to get your hands on now. That makes it even more precious.

Inside is a treasure trove of information gathered just 50 years after many of South Canterbury’s earliest colonial changes were still fresh in living memory. One of its earliest chapters looks at the fauna of this region. At first glance it seems to be about birds, fish, insects, and animals. But really it is about something much bigger... It is about environmental change.

It is about what was here before, what disappeared, what was introduced, what adapted, and what happened when people tried to reshape the land to suit farming, sport, settlement, and empire.

It is also a reminder that this land was never empty. Long before this 1916 book was written, Māori knew these places deeply, named them, travelled them, harvested from them, and lived in relationship with birds, rivers, coasts, wetlands, and seasons. Any reading of South Canterbury’s natural history is incomplete without acknowledging mana whenua and all those who lived with this land before the book, before settlement writing, and before the species lists were turned into print.

So I thought I would share a blog based on this remarkable early chapter...

By Roselyn Fauth

Walk through Timaru Botanic Gardens and it is easy to think first about beauty... The trees. The softness of the lawns. The ducks. The old-fashioned and formal layout of the space. Our Timaru Botanic Gardens feel old, established, like a green heart of our town for a very long time.

But places like this do not simply happen... someone had to imagine them, advoate and establish them into being.

What fascinates me about the Timaru Botanic Gardens is that they are not just a collection of plants or a pleasant public reserve. They are a record of what people in this town valued, admired, and sometimes, while well meaning at the time, got it wrong.

The gardens began in the 1860s, when land was reserved and local people began the long work of shaping a public space that would bring order, beauty and civic pride to a growing settlement. There is something hopeful here. Where European settlers were not only building roads and shops. They were also trying to build identity. They wanted beauty, permanence and perhaps a sense of home in a place that still felt raw and unsettled. They wanted to feel like they were at their old home in their new home. 

By Roselyn Fauth

One of the most extraordinary trees in Timaru stands in the Botanic Gardens Chinese Garden lawn, on what was once part of the old nursery area.

This is Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the Dawn Redwood, recorded as a significant tree in the Timaru District Plan under DP2005 ID 47. It was planted in 1948 after seed was obtained by Parks Director A. W. Anderson, and it is especially meaningful because the tree was left standing in its original nursery row. That little detail makes it feel even more special. This is not simply a handsome specimen. It is part of a remarkable botanical story that connects Timaru with one of the great plant rediscoveries of the twentieth century.

The Dawn Redwood was once thought to have been extinct and known only from fossils... Then, in the 1940s, living trees were discovered in China, stunning the botanical world. Seed was later shared with botanic gardens internationally, and Timaru became part of that story when Anderson successfully sourced seed and grew trees here. The Timaru specimen is believed to be the first recorded cultivation of Metasequoia in New Zealand, which is quite an astonishing claim for our little corner of the world.

by Roselyn Fauth

The Anderson Rose Garden from the southern arch at dusk April 2026 - Photography By Roselyn Fauth

I have walked past the Anderson Rose Garden in the Timaru Botanic Gardens more times than I can count. It has been recognised as one of New Zealand’s Gardens of National Significance. Near the entrance is a lovely formal rose garden with a central fountain in a hedged walls. This fountain was gifted by the Friends of the Timaru Botanic Gardens in 2002. It has been a while since I learned about the man the garden was named after. So here is today's blog with my relearning of his story.

Alexander Walter Clarke Anderson, known as A. W. Anderson born on 3 March 1901 in Auchleven/Premnay, Aberdeenshire to Catherine Anderson and Alex Clarke.  He died aged 86, 8 Oct 1986 in Timaru. He was a conservationist and author who was Curator of Reserves for Timaru City Council from 1932 to 1956. (Director of parks and reserves) until his retirement in 1957. He was married to Prudence Rose Collier born 1904 and had three sons.

Walter Anderson was known for more than his passion for roses. His full name was Alexander Walter Clarke Anderson. He was a botanist, writer, collector, propagator, curator, and public gardener whose influence ran right through Timaru’s reserves, parks and gardens, and far beyond them into the world of New Zealand native plant conservation.

Aoraki Heritage's website describes him as a well known local botanist, conservationist and author, and records that he served as Curator of Reserves for Timaru from 1932 to 1956. The Department of Conservation’s history of the Loder Cup remembers him as the 1974 winner and places him firmly among the important New Zealand champions of indigenous flora...

By Roselyn Fauth

The opening of the Coronation Band rotunda in the Timaru Botanical Gardens in 14 March 1912. Crowds surrounding the rotunda watch as the Timaru Garrison Band, under Bandmaster Schnook, play the first tune. Bears a standard divided verso, postally unused, but with a brief message of good wishes.

I thought that our Timaru Botanic Gardens have been always been known by that name... turns out it was originally called the The Park.

I have been visiting the Timaru Botanic Gardens throughout my life. I was born at Jean Todd ward of the Timaru Public Hospital. And my mothers window looked out to the gardens. Mum and dad have photos of me in a pram being pushed around with my Oma. And I have many memories of licking ice creams and feeding ducks here with my nana.

Like most locals, I knew the Timaru Botanic Gardens as a peaceful place. A place to wander, sit, to bring children. A place to smell the earth, crane your neck up the trunks of old trees, smell roses, look closely at memorials and visit reguarly to take in the seasonal and changing colours. 

I thought I knew the gardens, but the more I have looked into its history, the more I have realised that I did not really know it at all.

Our public gardens are also a record of how a young town thought about itself. What it valued. What it hoped to become. What it believed public life should include. Not just roads and shops and houses, but beauty, shelter, recreation, memory, and science...

By Roselyn Fauth

Honouring the past, gifting to the future by sharing our past with historic plaques

I recently wrote about the Lone Pine in the Timaru Botanic Gardens as a living link to Gallipoli. The signs circling the tree tell a much wider story, tracing South Canterbury’s connection to some of the most significant and devastating events of the First World War, from Hill 60 and the Marquette tragedy to the Somme, Passchendaele, the final Allied advance of 1918, and the celebrations and memorials that followed peace.  From men and boys in mud and trenches, to nurses on the Marquette, and grief.. the signs tell a wide story of the war events and its impacts long after of war, here at home.

The tree planted by the roadside (to the left of this photo with a fence around it), reminds us about the tree and its history, and also what it means to honour the past and gift something to the future. We stop. We notice. We let something living draw us into stories that still very important for us to take notice of today.

It is amazing to stare into the piney needles and realise this tree is a living descendant, carrying memory.. literally... A cone collected. A tree grown from the seeds. A story carried forward. Memory, quite literally, planted for others. Honouring the past, gifting to the future...

By Roselyn Fauth

Lone Pine tree at the Timaru Botanic Gardens. It was planted here on 23 August 2015 to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the assalt on Hill 60. The Battle of Lone Pine was fought from 6-9 August 1915, Gallipoli, Turkey, 1915. Its seed is connected to the Paeroa Gold Club in the Waikato. Photography By Roselyn Fauth April 2026

As our Anzac service approaches and we prepare to gather at dawn ceremonies around the country, I thought I would return to a story I first began a few years ago. 

I was at the Timaru Botanic Gardens recently and noticed how much the Lone Pine has grown since I last photographed it. I wonder if you have walked past it too. Have you stopped and read the signs that circle the tree? It is easy to miss what grows in front of us. When people gather for dawn ANZAC ceremonies, do they notice this tree to the west of the Timaru War Memorial. Do they realise this is not just another pine in the gardens... it is a living memorial. It is a tree that carries memory in its very lineage. 

I think the Lone Pine is one of the most powerful trees of remembrance in the Timaru Botanic Gardens. Once you stop and really take in its story, you begin to understand why it is protected by a fence. It is a witness, a conversation starter, and a bridge between South Canterbury and one of the most painful chapters of Gallipoli... an unsuccessful military campaign in the First World War on the Gallipoli Peninsula, where roughly 180 South Canterbury boys and men had been killed and about 400 wounded, amongst the overall New Zealand casualties of 2779 killed and 5212 wounded.

If you are looking for something free to do today, head to the gardens.

Timaru has some beautiful public gardens, and WuHoo Timaru has free resources to help turn a simple walk into a fun little adventure for families, grandparents, visitors, or anyone who feels like exploring...

By Roselyn Fauth

Meet James Craigie: The man, the wife, and the children behind the name... “Practical Birdstuffer.”

Page 3 Advertisements Column 4. Timaru Herald, Volume XV, Issue 640, 15 July 1871, Page 3. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18710715.2.20.4

Practical Birdstuffer... it's note really a advert you come across these days... but in 1876 that was a notice placed in the Timaru Herald by James Cragie. We all start somewhere... and this is one of the earliest starts I could find about James.

The reason he was on my radar is because I have been learning about the streets in the Timaru Girls High neighbourhood. and of course, Cragie Ave is very close to the schools eastern boundary. I know a fair bit about Cragie, mostly as a past mayor of Timaru and his civic improvements and generosity, who supported the mechanics institute, found funds for our public library, gifted clock chimes, a Robbie Burns statue, and the foundations of the Aigantighe Art Gallery's art collection via the South Canterbury Arts Society. Like many history blogs though, it is pretty easy to learn about the men, and you will see by this blog, there is a big story about the man of the house James.

However, if you hunt... there is a big story about the women of the family too. so here is my blog, to learn about the Cragie's, and their ripples of impact on the town we know today, as the city of Timaru...

By Roselyn Fauth

New Zealand Geographic - Women's Suffrage Centenary

I was looking for a bit of wet weather entertainment and thought the kids might enjoy making a collage. I spotted a banana-box stack of New Zealand Geographic magazines on Facebook for a song. Twenty dollars. What a score. So off we popped to collect them.

But once they were home and I started flicking through them, I realised they were far too good to chop up. Instead of cutting them into pieces, I’ve found myself swapping screen time for the pages of a vintage collection. Not a bad trade, really.

I’ve read two so far. One featured a Timaru Girls’ High lass, which was enough to catch my attention straight away. The other was a celebration of women’s suffrage, and honestly, it was one of the clearest and most enjoyable articles I’ve read on the subject. It set out the events in a way that made the whole story feel alive rather than distant, so naturally I did what I always do when something sparks my interest. I made a timeline.

I love timelines. They help give context to a person’s story. They help me see what else was happening around them. They help me edge a little closer to understanding what life might actually have felt like back in the day.

So here you go. First, the timeline. Then, because I can never quite leave things there, a bit of Google hunting to see how Timaru and South Canterbury fit into that wider line of milestones. And that was where it got even more interesting...

By Roselyn Fauth

Well that was unexpected. I was admiring the gates at the Aigantighe the other day and spied a makers mark. I expected to plug the name into Google and not find much, but it turns out there's a good yarn here about the Faulkners and their gates. So here is today's blog inspired by the Aigantighe Art Gallery's gates.

By Roselyn Fauth

A park, two entrances, and a civic ambition

After tracing the Ashbury Park gates back to the North End Ratepayers and Improvements Association, I found myself asking a wider question. If the North End had its gates, and the Botanic Gardens had theirs, what about the West End? Was there another gate story there too?

The answer is a little different, and perhaps more interesting for that. This is not quite a neat surviving-gate story. It is more a story of civic ambition, and that in itself tells us something important about Timaru.

By Roselyn Fauth

A neighbourhood leaves its mark

After learning more about the Gloucester Gates at the Botanic Gardens, I began to wonder whether they were part of a wider Timaru pattern. Were other parts of town also marking their public places with gates? That question led me north, and to a story that feels quite different in tone but just as revealing.

According to the Aoraki Heritage Collection, the Evans Street gates to Ashbury Park were erected by the North End Ratepayers and Improvements Association in 1926, and the site includes an accompanying plaque. That is such a good built heritage clue because it ties the gates directly to the people who cared enough to make them happen.

By Roselyn Fauth

More than an entrance

After writing recently about the cemetery gates opposite the Timaru Botanic Gardens, I found myself looking across the road with fresh eyes. If gates can hold stories, what about these ones? The Gloucester Gates are easy to admire, but the more I looked, the more I realised they are not simply decorative. They are part of a bigger story about how Timaru once marked its public places with pride, ceremony, and care.

Timaru District Council identifies them as the Queen Street entrance to the gardens and records that they were opened by the Duke of Gloucester in 1935. The Aoraki Heritage Collection also holds photographs of the gates, including close-ups of the 1935 opening plaque. That alone gives them presence, but the deeper interest lies in what that ceremony meant.

By Roselyn Fauth

Why public parks mattered, and why their entrances mattered too

After writing about cemetery gates, I found myself noticing other gates around Timaru. Once you start looking, they are everywhere — at parks, schools, memorials, galleries, and older homes. And once you really start looking, they stop feeling like practical leftovers from the past. They begin to look like clues.

By Roselyn Fauth

J. & W. Faulkner Limited, Playground equipment manufactured by J. & W. Faulkner Ltd (1930s). Hocken Digital Collections, accessed 04/04/2026, https://hocken.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/68169

Until recently, I would not have expected many people in Timaru to know the name Faulkners.

I probably would not have either, if I had not already stumbled across it in another context. Faulkners was a long-running Dunedin engineering and metalworking firm. Over the years it made all sorts of things in iron and steel, from gates and railings to bedsteads, hospital equipment, grilles, fencing, and other practical manufactured goods. It was the sort of company that quietly shaped everyday life without most people ever noticing the name behind the object.

That is part of what makes these old firms so interesting. Their work turns up in places you do not expect. A gate here. A railing there. A piece of furniture. A bit of public infrastructure. Something in a catalogue. Something in an archive. Suddenly a name begins to appear more often than you would think. That is exactly what happened with Faulkners...

Timaru Girls High School Boarding House from Hassall Street. - TGHS Archives.

Did you know that the boarding story of Timaru Girls’ High School did not begin at The House on the school grounds, but a short distance away at 100 North Street?

The house still standing there today was once known as Croomlea, and before that it was known as Drumrankin.

It holds an important place in Timaru Girls’ High School history because it appears to have been the first known boarding accommodation used for TGHS girls, opening in 1916, several years before the on-site hostel tradition began in 1921. The school’s own later history is clear on that sequence: girls first boarded in rented North Street accommodation in 1916, and only later moved into the new on-site hostel, The House.

By Roselyn Fauth 

Wai-iti Rd Gate - Photo Roselyn Fauth

I was dropping a friend home the other day, Dr Andrew Paul Wood, and he pointed out an interesting gate. I know that sounds random, but he was right, the gate was interesting. After dropping him off I noticed an identical one on Grey Road leading to what was probably the entrance to the headmasters house of Main School. I thought to myself... there must be a story here... but I needed a lead, somewhere to start the history hunt, so I reached out to another friend Christopher Templeton who sent me a link to a Museum photo of the gate. The photo depicted a house, the gate and a couple in a car in the drive way. The photo caption gave me some clues of what was going on, and with a few google searches I was able to biuld some more leads and start a history hunt. Today's blog is quite random, a bit like the conversation about a gate. As random as it is, it has been an interesting history hunt... so here is my blog on a domestic gate and its links to stories of the past.

By Roselyn Fauth

By Roselyn Fauth

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD18710816.2.15.5?items_per_page=100&query=Wai-iti&snippet=true&sort_by=byDA&title=SCANT%2CTEML%2CTHD%2CWDA

I love hunting through the South Canterbury Museum's online photo archive. Sometimes I am on a mission, and then I get side tracked... and that happened this morning. I was looking for a photo of a gate, and a friend sent me a link to a photo not only of the gate, but of a couple in the drive sitting in a motor car. Turns out, this was not simply a couple in a car... this snap shot was a glimpse of a town on the edge of change. The citation gave me a few clues and so I stqarted pawing through PapersPast to find out what an Oldsmobile could be.

Now I am not going to pretend I know much about cars, so to understand why this photo of a couple in a car matters, I needed to go look out wider, and learn about the beginning of the Oldsmobile story itself. So here we go, today's blog about a Timaru Herald advertisement of a car.

By Roselyn Fauth

Joan Evans, posed with a pair of photographs, 28 April 1992. Evans is holding a photo frame with photographs showing Mayor Hanan standing next a tree and another of a plaque that reads: "75th Anniversary of Timaru this tree was planted by his Worship the mayor A E S Hanan JP 13 - 7 - 47". National Council of Women, South Canterbury Branch. South Canterbury Museum - Catalogue Number 2012/186.2887

I will be honest with you, I was not looking for Joan Evans... I was looking for history about Ashubury Park's gate. I was on the South Canterbury Museum's website and found a lot of photo's of her. I thought to myself, if there are this many photos of her in a regional museum collection, then she must have a great story. Suddenly the gate did not seem nearly as interesting as the woman holding the memory. And once I started following that thread, Joan Evans turned out to be far more than a name in a caption. So I embraced the side quest curiousity and went huting for Joan's story. It's facinating... so here is today's blog about Joan, daughter of a mayor who made important ripples of impact for women...

By Roselyn Fauth

Dental Nurse Janet Jones, with student Vanessa Robinson (aged 5) in the Dental Caravan at Main School, dated 1 March 1991. South Canterbury Museum Catalogue Number 2012/186.5103. On 4 April 1921, a two-year training programme for school dental nurses began in Wellington by the Department of Health's School Dental Service - a first in the world! Women trained in the new profession of "school dental nurse" after the first female dentist was registered in 1881.  Since 1991, dental nurses became known as dental therapists but the name 'dental nurse' lingers on for many people. From 2006, the school-based School Dental Service was transformed to a Community Oral Health Service (COHS) emphasising preventative care. Dental services currently available for young people from birth up to their 18th birthday are described by  Health New Zealand Te Whata Ora https://timdc.pastperfectonline.com/photo/F24A01C3-2BF9-4CB5-BFFE-649468541375

When we think about dental history, it is easy to picture an old high street practice, a brass plate on the wall, and a patient brave enough to sit in the chair. But I found out, that one of the most important dental story's in New Zealand was not only about dentists. It was about children.

In 1921, New Zealand did something pretty remarkable. It began training school dental nurses for a state funded School Dental Service, the first scheme of its kind in the world!

The idea grew out of a grim reality. Children’s teeth were widely described as being in appalling condition, and the government of the day was becoming increasingly interested in child health, hygiene, and prevention.

That national story is well known. What interests me just as much is what happened when that idea reached South Canterbury...

By Roselyn Fauth

Members of the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) in a group portrait published in the Auckland Weekly News on 21 April 1899. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, AWNS-18990421-08-01. The National Council of Women of New Zealand was established in 1896, three years after women in New Zealand won the right to the vote, as an umbrella organisation uniting a number of different women's societies that existed in New Zealand at that time. Its founding president was Kate Sheppard, who had led the campaign for women's suffrage. In 1993 it comprised 47 nationally organised societies and 36 branches throughout the country. No known copyright restrictions https://kura.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/digital/collection/photos/id/170133

Our $10 note celebrated a critical milestone in the womens history timeline sharing Kate Sheppard NZ Suffergette who helped champion womens right to vote. When Women gained the right to vote, a world first, in 1893. I assumed that was the peak of success and that it was plain sailing from there. But learning about the National Council of Women, particularly the South Canterbury Branch has made me realised that was not the case.

From a distance that achievement might look like the womens history's happy ending... but it was not. Yes, women could vote, but... there was still a long way to go. They still had less legal power, fewer opportunities, and far too little say over the institutions shaping daily life. That is why the National Council of Women of New Zealand was formed in Christchurch in 1896, to bring women’s organisations together and push for fairer laws, better education, better health, and a stronger public voice.

That national purpose helps explain why a South Canterbury branch mattered. The South Canterbury opened around 1929, going by a tree and plaque outside the Timaru Library marked the 60th jubilee of the National Council of Women, South Canterbury 1989. This tree marks a moment in the local womens history timeline. 

Pretty cool seeing my photo on the wall at the Ashburton Art Gallery on 22nd March 2026 with a red ribbon, apart from a social media competition, this is my first photography award. The photo was taken on my phone, and edited with a free app, Snapseed... just to show that you dont need fancy gear to be able to contribute to exhibitions like this. Everyone can help document and celebrate our built heritage.

Five years ago, I knew very little about built heritage. Last night, Chris and I drove home from Ashburton with a heritage photography award, and I found myself thinking about how much can grow from simple curiosity.

I’m still a little bit stunned, to be honest.

Chris and I went up to Ashburton last night for the opening of Documenting Our Heritage: Mid and South Canterbury at Rokowhiria Ashburton Art Gallery and Museum, and I was lucky enough to win the Mid and South Canterbury section of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga’s 2026 photography competition.

I entered because I wanted to help in a practical way. I liked the idea of contributing updated heritage images for Heritage New Zealand’s website while also celebrating the built heritage of our region. I honestly did not expect to win, so the whole evening felt very special...

By Roselyn Fauth

Some buildings don’t just sit in a town. They hold up part of its story.

The former Evans Atlas Flour Milling Company grain stores and mill on Turnbull Street is one of those buildings. It is big, yes, but it is more than big. It has presence. It rises beside the railway line like a reminder of the years when Timaru’s fortunes were tied to sacks of grain, the rhythm of freight, and the steady movement of goods between paddock, rail, and port.

When you look at it properly, you can see that it was built for work on a serious scale.

This was not a small local store with a few bags stacked by the door. It was part of the industrial backbone of Timaru. The heritage record places it among the line of major grain and milling buildings that once marked this edge of town, near the railway and not far from the port. Nearby were the Belford mill, the Timaru Milling Company mill, McRae’s grain store and the former CFCA stores. Together they tell a much bigger story about South Canterbury as a grain-growing and grain-processing district.

And that wider grain story matters...

By Roselyn Fauth

There are some buildings in Timaru that do more than fill a gap in the streetscape. They anchor a whole story... Bruce’s Mill is one of them.

Standing beside the railway line at 4 Mill Street, this great brick industrial building has watched more than a century of change roll past. It began life in 1881 to 1882 as Bruce’s “Royal Flouring Mills”, built for James Bruce, who was both owner and designer, with Thomas Machin as contractor. It was not just another flour mill. When it opened in 1882, it was the first mill in New Zealand to be fitted with roller milling plant, bringing a new technology that helped modernise the country’s milling industry.

That is a remarkable claim, and one I was inspired to learn about and write into this blogl.

We often admire old buildings for their brickwork, their scale, or the way they catch the light at different times of day. Bruce’s Mill certainly deserves that sort of attention. Its multi-level form, arched openings, brick pilasters and strong industrial character give it real presence. The heritage assessment notes that its principal elevations evoke the Romanesque Revival style seen in later nineteenth century American industrial buildings.

But what makes this place especially interesting is the ambition behind it...

By Roselyn Fauth

Belford Flour Mills and Timaru’s Oldest Surviving Mill

There are some buildings in Timaru that people drive past without really seeing... I wonder if the former Belford Flour Mills in North Street is one of them.

It is big, brick, practical, and a bit tucked into the industrial port edge of town. It does not show off in the way some of our heritage buildings do. It is not dressed up like a grand hotel or a church or an elegant old bank. But once you know what it is, you start to see it differently. This building is the oldest surviving mill in Timaru.

Now listed by Heritage New Zealand as Old Mill Cabaret Ltd (Former Belford Mill), the former Belford Flour Mills at 2–4 North Street were built in 1877–78. They are one of the clearest physical links we have to the years when flour milling was a serious part of South Canterbury’s economy, and when grain was helping shape Timaru’s working shoreline.

By Roselyn Fauth

Every year on 8 March the world marks International Women’s Day, a moment to celebrate women’s achievements and reflect on the long path toward equality.

When I started the WuHoo Timaru blog, I was not trying to write women’s history.

In fact, the blog began for a very practical reason. I was worried I might lose a decade of WuHoo history hunting that was scattered across Facebook posts, so I started turning them into blogs. At first it was simply a way to store the stories somewhere safe so they would not disappear and so I could find them again myself.

By the time I had written about one hundred posts, I realised something that surprised me. Hardly any of the stories included women. It was not intentional. It was simply what had happened. Women’s stories were often harder to find. They appeared briefly in records, sometimes mentioned only as “Mrs”, and then disappeared again. 

I never set out to write hundreds of blogs. I do this work voluntarily, with no budget and no research team. One grave led to another. A building led to a forgotten story. A newspaper clipping opened a side path I had never expected to follow. But something else unexpected happened along the way...

People began reaching out to help. Local genealogists, family historians, museum staff, council staff, descendants of the people I was writing about, and others who simply enjoy a good history hunt began sending information, photographs, newspaper clippings and family stories. Sometimes it was a missing date. Sometimes it was an entire new chapter of someone’s life.

I should also say that I do not come from an academic or institutional background. I am not a trained historian or archivist. Everything I have learned has come from curiosity, reading, asking questions and slowly following the clues. I do my best to research carefully and share what I find, but like anyone exploring history, I am always learning as I go.

Meanwhile, the interest in these stories began to grow. In January 2026 my Facebook statistics showed that WuHoo Timaru had reached half a million views in just 27 days. Clearly others were just as curious about these stories as I was.

And as I kept following the clues, something else kept appearing. Women.

They were everywhere in the story of this region. Settlers, nurses, teachers, artists, mothers, pioneers and survivors. Yet often they appeared only briefly in the records. Slowly, those fragments began to form a much bigger picture.

This is a collection of some of the women whose stories have appeared through WuHoo Timaru...

By Roselyn Fauth

One night in early Timaru, the newspaper nearly vanished... The Timaru Herald office caught fire.

Flames tore through the building where the town’s stories were written and printed. The presses, the ink, the type, the records of the town’s daily life were suddenly at risk of disappearing.

In the confusion and smoke one small tragedy was recorded. The editor’s dog died in the fire. The newspaper reported it. But while reading through the pages of the Timaru Herald on Papers Past, something else slowly became obvious.

Some lives appear everywhere in the newspaper. Others barely appear at all. The name Kerr appears repeatedly in the history of the Timaru Herald. But one person connected to the newspaper appears only briefly.

Her name was Elizabeth Kerr. So I went looking for her...

By Roselyn Fauth

Kerr grave at the Timaru Cemetery - Photo Roselyn Fauth

Recently I have started sharing some of the stories I have discovered while guiding tours through the Timaru Cemetery. As we walk through the older sections, people often pause beside the headstones and ask about the names carved into the stone. One grave that always catches my attention belongs to the Kerr family. When we stop there, I usually tell people that there is a much bigger story connected to this family that I am still uncovering.

Three generations of the Kerrs were involved in running the Timaru Herald. For decades they helped produce the newspaper that recorded the life of this district. In many ways they were the champions of Timaru’s stories. And for someone like me who spends a lot of time researching the lives of women whose stories were often overlooked, those newspapers are invaluable. Without them, many of these lives would have vanished from the record entirely.

Standing beside the Kerr graves made me curious. If the Kerr family were printing the stories, who started the newspaper in the first place? And where did those stories begin?

So I went back to the newspaper itself to find out...

The following is by Roselyn Fauth inspired by a blog written by Ben Curnow.

When reading about Betty Curnow, it is easy to begin in the 1940s, with Rita Angus’s famous portrait and the vibrant circle of modern artists gathering around Christchurch cafés and studios. But Betty’s story begins much earlier, and much closer to the sea.

To understand that portrait properly, we have to walk down to the shoreline of nineteenth century Timaru.

In the 1850s the town was little more than a rough landing place on an exposed coast. Ships could not come safely into harbour, so cargo and passengers had to be brought ashore in small surfboats through heavy breakers. It was dangerous work. Everything depended on timing, skill, and courage.

One of the men who helped make this landing place work was Henry Le Cren, Betty Curnow’s ancestor....

By Roselyn Fauth

Last year, I was being shown through Timaru Girls’ High School after putting my hand up to volunteer and offer support to the school archivist. The tour was led by the school’s Community Builder, Amanda Davies, who have me a tour around my old stomping ground. There is so much that is the same, and different. And one of the things that was the same was the artworks on the schools walls. Among them were several pieces by local artist Rosemary Campbell.

I have admired Rosemary’s work for a long time. One of her portraits hangs in my aunty and uncle’s home. Rosemary is also my aunty Margaret Cloake’s cousin.. that's Timaru hey, we are all connected. Seeing her work displayed proudly within the school setting was really special. The art in a school can be more than decoration.

After that visit, I gave Amanda a few ideas, offered support where I could, and stayed in touch. Driving home, I remember thinking how lucky she was to have such a role. A job built around people, place, stories, and connection. At the time, it was just a passing thought.

At the end of 2025, Amanda prepared to move to Christchurch. When the role was advertised, I couldn't believe my eyes and pulled an application together to be Amanda's replacement. Making it through to the interview stage felt like a gift. And I took time to prepare which also involved revisiting my own time at Timaru Girls’ High, not just as an academic student but what school meant to me emotionally and socially too. I realised how deeply the school had shaped the woman I am today. My confidence, my curiosity, my sense of service, and my love of community all trace back there. Just like the school crest says, Knowledge is Power.

I am incredibly excited to say that I was offered the role, and I start next week. It is part time, and I will continue working at Cloake Creative as I have for the past 20 years with my father, providing graphic and web design services alongside it. It feels like a balance that fits this season of my life perfectly, totally aligns with my personal views of public education, and I am genuinely really passionate about supporting the school past students, staff and volunteers, present and future.

Adding to this sense of alignment is the wonderful news that an exhibition is being planned at the Aigantighe Art Gallery to celebrate Rosemary Campbell’s career and her contribution to our community. The exhibition is coming up in April so supporting the archivist Pamela Gibson and the Aigantighe team is a top priority. so here is my blog about my learning about Rosemary so far... who has strong links to Timaru Girls’ High School as she taught art there for many years, shaping generations of young women through her teaching, discipline, and creativity. As I mentioned before, her work hangs within the school walls, as well as public galleries like in Timaru and Christchurch. She is nationally regarded as one of the countries artist treasures. I am looking forwardto learning more about her time at Timaru Girls' and her life after she left the classroom.

By Carmen Hayman

On a winter morning in Christchurch in 1930, a young school principal walked into hospital for a routine operation. By mid-afternoon she had died. She was 37 years old, and Craighead Girls’ School would never be the same again...

By Roselyn Fauth

I remember one night not long ago when I climbed into bed far later than I had intended... I had put my pyjamas on at a sensible hour. I was only going to finish one small piece of research. Just tidy up a loose end before switching off. The house was quiet. The glow from my phone and Netflix on the TV were the few lights in the room.

Then I clicked on one name... That name led to a court notice... The court notice mentioned a witness... The witness appeared again in another file... And before I knew it, it was 11pm.

As I finally turned off the light, I had that familiar internal conversation.

You’ve done it again.
You were meant to stay focused.
You’ve gone off on a tangent...

For a few years now, that voice told me wandering meant weakness. That real historians moved in straight lines. That discipline meant staying on track and being efficient.

By Roselyn Fauth

Allan McLean born 24 May 1822 Coll Island, Argyll and Bute, Scotland and later lived at Waikakahi, near Waimate, never married and had is said to not have children. He left his fortune to establish the McLean Institute for women. Christchurch locals know this as McLean’s Mansion. - Wikepedia. Allan gifted some of his wealth to his housekeeper Emily Phillips and she built Te Kiteroa Lodge in Waimate. Sadly this property burnt down in May 2021. At the time of writing this blog, a new Te KIteroa Ecolodge was emerging on the site. Alan died 12 Nov 1907 (aged 85) and rests in the Addington, Christchurch cemetery.

I was on a history hunt and stumbled across a fascinating newspaper article in the Aoraki Recollect collection. I gave myself a little leeway to read it properly — and I am so pleased I did... What a remarkable man Allan McLean was! This blog is inspired by the reporter William Vance, writing in The Timaru Herald on 6 April 1954. His storytelling opened a door, and once I stepped through it, I found myself travelling from the Hebrides to Waimate, from fencing wire to Jacobean towers.

By Roselyn Fauth

A wall on Beverly Road, Timaru. Photo Roselyn Fauth

The Man Who Changed Timaru’s Walls: Frank Palliser and the Hollow Block Revolution.

I spend a lot of time on Beverly Road waiting for my children after school. It is one of those in-between places where I wait for a few mintues. sometimes I check my emails, read the news etc... it was while waiting in the car that I began noticing Beverly Road's walls.

There are a surprising number of boundary and residential property walls along Beverly Road built from what looks like hand-cut bluestone. Timaru’s bluestone is basalt – volcanic rock formed by lava from the Waipouri / Mt Horrible volcanic complex that flowed toward what is now the coast 2 - 2.5 million years ago. This is the most recent volcanic activity in the South Isaland. A significant quarry operated at Centennial Park, and there were a few others dotted around town where basalt has been quarried. 

"The most noticeable occurrence during the quarrying was the discovery of moa bones in 1889. They were found when rock was being removed for the building of the North Mole by Palliser and Co." - https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/editors-picks/8611892/Scenic-park-full-of-beauty-and-history

So I assumed these walls were carved from local stone... but when you look closer, you'll notice the faces are uniform and the surface pattern repeats. These are not hand-carved bluestone blocks... they are early hollow concrete blocks, and Timaru was remarkably quick to adopt the technology.

By Roselyn Fauth - with support from the Timaru Girl's High School Archivists.

The Gates of Learning of Timaru Girls High School on the on the Hassall Street entrance are like a statement that Girls’ education was well established and endures. TGHS gates are part of a matched pair, their twin up the road on North Street at Timaru Boys' High. Timaru Girls' High archive. Photography By Roselyn Fauth 2026

Pamela Gibson who has given many voluntary years to Timaru Girls High has been showing me around the archive and pulled out this gem. A sweet wee photo albulm that included photos of the 'Gate of Learning'. I stood at the gates yesterday taking a better look. And I imagined all the students arriving on foot, on bikes... students being dropped off by parents... these gates for nearly a century have witnessed the rythumn and routine of the school.

On the Left the year 1880 is carved into the block. On the Right it reads 1930. A span of 50 years of history between them, no about to hit their own anniversary. These the gates were opened in June 1931 as commemorative structure that represent Alumni and Community Identity... They turn 100 years old on 16 June 2031.

By Roselyn Fauth

Timaru Girls High School - Papers Past news article and a photo by William Ferrier from 1915 of students in front of Timaru Girls' High School - South Canterbury Museum.

It began with a photograph. The South Canterbury Museum recently shared an early image of the Timaru High School building. Solid brick. Tall windows. A building that has watched generations pass through its doors. As I prepare to step into a new role at Timaru Girls’ High School as Community Builder, I found myself wanting to go back to the beginning. Not to memory, but to record. To see how the school’s first 50 years were described at the time. So I turned to Papers Past... and wrote about what I learned in this blog...

By Roselyn Fauth

A visit to Woodbury Library recently reminded me that Pamela Gibson, a volunteer archivist for Timaru Girls’ High School, had sent me an obituary of Beatrice Rae Wilson CNZM with a Timaru Girl's High School and Woodbury connection. I went back to the email with her bio and the amazing research compiled by the schools archivists, prompted this blog. Some lives dont make an impact through self-promotion, and instead are focused on what they can contribute to education and their community. Beatrice Rae Wilson was one of those people. She was one of the first women appointed to the permanent secondary staff to Timaru Girl's High School. She became the schools principal 1977. She retired to Woodbury in 1895 with the odd bit of relief teaching at the local high school in Geraldine. In the 1998 New Year’s Honours List, Beatrice Rae Wilson was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in recognition of her services to education and the community. Read on to learn more about this wonderful woman and what she gave...

By Roselyn Fauth

Orari Estate Homestead at 211 Orari-Rangitata Highway Orari, 2021 - South Canterbury Museum 2015020487. The Tripps were associated with Orari Gorge Station, Mount Peel and Mount Somers. The Macdonalds held land between the Orari and Rangitata Rivers, later centred on Orari Estate and lived in this house on the bend of the Timaru to Christchurch highway in Orari. Before the current Orari Estate homestead was built in 1911–12, there was an earlier homestead dating back to the 1850s on or near the same site. The Macdonald brothers William, Angus and Allan first took up land across this wider area. From 1879 until 1901, the property was run on behalf of William Macdonald’s widow, Annie Macdonald. When the estate was divided after Annie’s death in 1901, the homestead property passed to their youngest son, Guyon Macdonald, who later replaced the earlier house with the present 1911–12 homestead. Following his marriage in 1910, Guyon Macdonald established the present homestead at 211 Orari–Rangitata Highway as the family’s main residence. This became home to three generations of the Macdonald family.

When I was in primary school, my parents took our family to a party, it wasn't at this house, but it was really close by. I can’t remember much about that day, I think a duo who played violins were hosting... What I do remember is the swimming pool. I spent so long in it that my cream scrunchie turned green, and I remember meeting Sarah Morton.

She was fun. We hit it off straight away and, for a few years afterwards, we were pen pals. I actually found the letters last month, her words, a drawing of her horse, folded and in a envelope with a stamp. A small moment of our friendship preserved on paper. We sort of floated off on our own lives, and then as young adults drifted back into each others worlds, reconnecting via a mutual friend, Bridget Henshaw (nee Keenan). Bridget and Sarah boarded together at Craighead. I was a TGHS lass a year below. Years later, Bridget worked at ECan, and it was through her that I met my husband Chris, who also worked at ECan. Threads crossing, looping back, tightening... It was soo good to see Sarah after those childhood memories of playing together in the pool and later correspondence. We stood side by side as bridesmaids at Bridgets wedding.

Bridget was home visiting this Summer and I reconnected with Sarah and her family again. I was telling her about how I had joined the Civic Trust recently and if I could write about her family home which is a registered historic building. She gave me a brief run down on how the people of her home were connected to others in the area. And I realised before I visited I needed to do some homework and brush up on some history.

In the long weekend just passed, we visited the Eleanor Howard Tripp Memorial Library at Woodbury. That visit led to side quests, and those side quests led me deep into the story of the Tripp family and their home at Orari Gorge. A house tucked away at the end of a long driveway, private and significant, shaped by early pastoral ambition and family life.

Then, I remembered that this hime might be one of the ones that Sarah mentioned. So now I am back on the trail of her home to see if the two properties share a connection...

By Roselyn Fauth

Screen shot of the Timaru District Councils Heritage Report on Orari Gorge Station homestead, 991 Tripp Settlement Road, Orari Gorge. Built by Henry Burton (1865-66); and designed by architect William Marley (1873) in Domestic Gothic Revival. Two-storey dwelling with irregular rectangular footprint and gabled roof forms. Principal elevation faces east. Ogee shaped gabled dormers above veranda, flanked by faceted bay window on east elevation. Scalloped bargeboards, latticed veranda posts, finials. Double hung sash windows. Charles George Tripp (1826-97) emigrated to New Zealand from England in early 1855 and within the year had taken up the Mount Peel, Mt Possession, Mt Somers and Orari Gorge runs. Initially in partnership with JBA Acland, Tripp, who had trained as a lawyer, retained the Orari Gorge station when the partnership was dissolved in 1862. He had married Ellen Harper, a daughter of Bishop Harper, in 1858 and the couple had eight children.

I was looking for people. For family threads. For women’s names lined to a memorial library named in honour of Eleanor Tripp in Woodbury. Among my winding path of side quests that began with the Tripp family, I came across a heritage report published by the Timaru District Council. These heritage reports are gold. Not only do they have some much excellent information, I know I can trust was has been recorded which saves me a lot of work and gives me confidence to plow on history hunting with more breadcrumbs from the reports. With this building file in front of me, my question shifted from wondering who the Tripp's were, to wondering where they lived. 

A small thumbnail on the page gave me a glimpse of the historic home. A two-storey timber house with an irregular footprint and gabled roof forms, its principal elevation facing east. Ogee-shaped dormer windows above a verandah, flanked by a faceted bay window. Scalloped bargeboards, finials and latticed verandah posts. Double-hung sash windows.

Orari Gorge Station homestead sits well back from Tripp Settlement Road, you can reach it by a long drive that follows the western bank of the Orari River. You don’t stumble across this home, you have to mean to go there...

By Roselyn Fauth

Last time we went to Woodbury we spread a picnic by the St Thomas’s Anglican Church gate. Two tūī played above our heads in the trees, darting and calling, completely unbothered by us.
After our visit back yesterday, I found myself scrolling through my phone, digging out old photos of St Thomas’s.
Inside was a helpful write up of the history of the place, and so I thought I would share this in a blog for you.
The stillness. The light. It's lovely.

By Roselyn Fauth

I wasn’t looking for answers when I found this book. I was standing in the Eleanore Tripp Memorial Library in Woodbury, browsing slowly, the way libraries quietly invite you to do. Letting my eyes wander. Trusting that something might catch.

That’s when I pulled a thick, well-worn volume from the shelf. Its pages were yellowed and soft at the edges, clearly handled many times before but well cared for. Inside the cover, printed in confident capital letters, was a promise: ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING. To be honest with you, it sounded a bit cheeky to think that everything could be bound in one books spine. But as I soon discovered, this book meant it quite literally. Here is my blog... on what sort of book this was...

By Roselyn Fauth with the help of the book: Ellen Shephard Tripp. My Early Days. Christchurch, 1929. Digitised edition, Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand. paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/books/ALMA1929-9917502903502836-My-early-days 

This story didn’t begin in an archive or a lecture theatre. It began noticing a blue heritage plaque, doing a u-turn and exploring the Eleanor Tripp Memorial Library in Woodbury. I through I had it all reasonably well understood until I found another breadcrumb with a Google search. I followed the link to a digitised book on Papers Past with a simple, unassuming title: My Early Days. Written by Ellen Shephard Tripp. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure who she was.  Ipanicked that after all the research into Eleanor, that she had written a book after all, but then I realised this was a different generation. It took a bit of untangling to work out who was who, how they were connected, and where Ellen sat in relation to Eleanor... Then the penny dropped. Ellen Shephard Tripp was Eleanor Tripp’s grandmother! I felt like finding this book was like striking history gold, and suddenly, thanks to the book being fully digitised online I had a new side quest...

By Roselyn Fauth

(1867–1936)

Eleanor Howard Tripp was born in 1867 and died in January 1936, a life that spanned centuries, a period of enormous social, political, and cultural change in New Zealand and across the world.

Following on from my blog about a visit to the Eleanor Tripp Library in woodbury, I found myself wondering about the woman whose name is signwritten above its door. So I opened some old history books that smell like decaying animal glue and followed a breadcrumb trail through archives, newspapers, photographs, and legislation, trying to work out who she was by trying to better understand the world she lived in. Here is today’s blog. Who I think she might have been and what Eleanor Tripp was not...

By Roselyn Fauth 

We weren’t planning to stop in Woodbury... we had actually planned to go to a vehicle Museum, but when we arrived, the gate said, "closed, private function"... so we pulled out of the drive and headed up to Waihi Gorge for some sun and a paddle by the DOC camp.

We were on our way home... 4 peaceful kids and Chris and I, an empty picnic bag, damp towels in the back, and the assumption that the day had already given us what it was going to give. The plan was simple. Drive home. Drop friends off. Get changed. BBQ Dinner...

As we passed through the village, we pointed out the cafe to our left, then looked to the right... my husband pointed out a small building and said, “Oh look, one of those blue plaques.”... Then he looked at me and laughed.... “You’re going to want to turn around now, aren’t you?”

By Roselyn Fauth

I was on a hunt for William Williams in 2025, and after a Summer holiday there, and a trip to Brunner, I wanted to revisit my research on Kumara now with wider eyes. Wiiliam is noted in the history books as the first recorded birth of a European baby in Timaru, 1865 at the foot of George Street next door to where the Timaru Landing Service Building is today. Like so many young men of his generation, he was swept up into something much bigger. Because at just twenty years old, William arrived in Kumara on the hunt for gold.

And that is how Kumara entered my story.

I drive through it fairly often, usually on the way to see family on the West Coast. I really like Kumara. The restored buildings link back to the boom years, the heritage signage is excellent, and you can walk out to Londonderry Rock, and finish at the rennovated historic pub for a beer… (the best loaded fries I have ever had by the way).

Last year with our family and my in-laws we went to Kumara to look for history about William. In in that gold rush landscape, I imagined his footsteps there, folded into the terraces, the claims, and even the road names, like Larrikins Road.

I’d already shared in another blog that the name has a special connection, but curiosity has a way of multiplying. One question became five, and I found myself reaching out to the Hokitika Museum.

They kindly sent me a small but fascinating booklet published by the West Coast Historical Museum in 1998: Larrikins’ Lode: Episodes in the History of the Kumara Gold Rush. with a bit of time on my hands while the family watched cricket... I read back through the booklet and thought you might enjoy reading what I learned.

By Roselyn Fauth

I feel like I have about fifty tabs open in my brain at the moment... after a year of pushing a decade of Facebook posts into something more permanent, more thoughtful, more connected, I am realising just how many tabs I have had open at once. the problem is I dont think I can close them, because I need to find out something more, to make something else make sense. I have come to realised that maybe my blogs wont always feel finished, and that the learning might be a life long work in progress...  Lately, I have been thinking about Timaru’s relationship with the sea. Shipwrecks. Surfboats. The Landing Service. The evidence left behind in cemeteries. Names on headstones that seem, at first glance, to belong somewhere else.

It was standing in Timaru Cemetery with my father-in-law, Paul, who lives in Greymouth, that I noticed them properly. Graves with West Coast connections. Men whose lives began, or ended, far from where they were buried. Paul spotted the place names quickly because they were familiar to him. I had walked past them before without really taking much notice.

He had a valid question, why were Greymouth men buried in Timaru? The answer, once you begin to follow it, runs like a seam beneath the ground... and no, not always gold... this time.. Coal.

By Roselyn Fauth

Grave of Strong Work Morrison and his wife Lavinia. Photo Roselyn Fauth, July 2025.

I have found Timaru’s early beach stories super interesting, and I have to be honest, it has been a lot easier to learn about the port by learning about the men who worked there. While there is a bit of reading in a few places to thread things back together, they are easy to research. They rowed the surfboats, led rescues, held licences, ran hotels, appeared in court, and were written into newspapers and jubilee histories. Their working lives generated records, and those records have shaped how we remember the town.

The women however… I am finding them much harder.

At a grave in the Timaru Cemetery, in Block 22, Plot 13, rests one of Timaru’s earliest beach stories, though it is rarely told that way. Here lies Strongwork Morrison, Timaru’s first beachmaster, and his wife Lavinia Morrison. His name appears again and again in the historical record. Hers, well… she is far more difficult to trace.

So, to bring her story in from the margins, I have pulled together what can be found about Lavinia Morrison. There are many gaps, but what survives already tells us something important. Holding a household together, raising children, and providing long-term care were not side notes to Timaru’s early history. They were essential to it.

By Roselyn Fauth

Margaret Left and and Alexander Mills right. Oil painting of Captain Mills c.1880s. Image courtesy of the South Canterbury Museum, item P0071. 

When reading the newspapers of nineteenth century Timaru, she appears only as “Mrs Mills”.

No first name. No maiden name... just a title that assumes her identity through her husband. She was attached to a man whose work placed him constantly in the public eye. Yet when Captain Alexander Mills died in May 1882, one of the most public deaths in Timaru’s early history, I imagine the person who bore the greatest weight of that loss, and everything that followed, was his wife.

Her name was Margaret.

By Roselyn Fauth

I’ve been on a bit of a history hunt recently, trying to understand Timaru by looking beyond its streets and buildings into the ideas that shaped them. Sometimes you have to step further out to see your own place more clearly. On this trip, that place was Oamaru and Dunedin — and it taught me something about why Timaru became one of the earliest towns in New Zealand to provide secondary education for girls.

I went to see the First Church of Otago, designed by Robert Arthur Lawson, the same architect behind Timaru’s former Government Buildings that later became the Post Office. In Dunedin, Lawson’s church is his most ambitious and celebrated work. It opened on 23 November 1873, just 25 years after the first settlers arrived. Standing there and then learning about the church's story, I realised I wasn’t really looking at a church. I was looking at an idea. This history hunt taught me about who values education and who advocated to bring it to the public, equally.

By Roselyn Fauth

I'm on a to be on a history hunt to learn more about Timaru. It made sense to take a wider view and learn about the history in the wider area. I thought an approach could be to find things that were the same and different and then work out why. Today's history hunt was looking at a Church in Otago, designed by the hands and mind of Robert Arthur Lawson. He also designed Timaru's former Goverment Buildings that evolved into the post office. The church is facinating, and so is its story, so here is what I learned about the First Church of Otago, known as Lawsons most ambitious and celebrated work and the spiritual centre of the Otago Free Church settlement. It was built when the community believed faith, governance and daily life were inseparable, almost as a civic building as well as a religious one... it opened on 23 November 1873, just 25 years after the first settlers arrived in Dunedin and took six years to complete.

By Roselyn Fauth

There is a thinning that can happen to history where names can fade, context loosen, and the everyday knowledge of who lived where, and why, slips into the past. This is why I love buildings and cemeteries. They are what phuysical things that can endure when memories do not.

I began my Larnach history hunt at the gate, giving a tap of my credit card in exchange for two tickets and entery to the grounds. At that point, my understanding of the family and their castle was shallow. I knew the outline of the story, but not much more.

The view from the top of the drive takes your breath away. Almost as much as the climb up the steps to the front door. Arrival requires effort. Their epic entrance steps are steep. I am sure this was all part of the architect Robert Lawson's vision to get a reaction from guests when they arrived.

We were greeted and reccomended to start in their musuem, and then left to wander. Room by room into a life lived before we explored and looked at their fancy home. This was not just the place where a wealthy man comissioned his castle, but a home for the the women who moved through these spaces daily. I'm not gonna lie the place is quite the spectacle... and I have learned so much more about women throught this history hunt.

By Roselyn Fauth

While learning about William Larnach, of Dunedin's Larnach castle, I noticed it mentioned that he married three times after losing his first two wives, and that he was able to do so because of the law at the time. Able was and interesting word... Able suggests permission. so here is my history hunt to understand why made him able to marry his widows wife... It wasn't until a history tour around a Dunedin cemetery that the host Gregor explained to me the legal framework that allowed people to move forward. I wanted to understand what those laws were, and what they meant, particularly for women...

By Roselyn Fauth

Here is my blog on Timaru’s Grain Giants, Booms and Busts, and What the Buildings Still Tell Us.

By Roselyn Fauth

I love Oamaru. It's only an hour down the highway, and feels like a get away, but without breaking the bank. While Oamaru has plenty of attractions that you can reach into your wallet for, we also love the free fun and history hunts that the top of the Otago region offers.

Whitestone City has been our go to for a few years, when ever we visit, whether as a family of four, or with our wider family and friends, we love to see peoples faces when they wander round the corner and see the penny farthing carousel. The information center is a quirky museum that delivers the Oamaru story in a super fun and very Oamaru style way. 

There is a fantastic documentary and I thought I would create a series of blogs inspired by a "penny dropping" moment... where I realised the impact Timaru's port progress had on its Southern neighbour Oamaru.  

By Roselyn Fauth

A quick illustration of Shepherds corner by Roselyn Fauth. 

I did not set out to write about Shepherd’s Corner... This story began as a side quest into the history of suicide law and how the legal system once shaped not only punishment, but how death itself was recorded. For centuries under English law, to take one’s own life was considered a crime, not against oneself, but against the Crown. A person did not fully own their body. Suicide was treated as theft of royal property.

The consequences were severe. A person found to have taken their own life while “of sound mind” could be denied burial in consecrated ground and instead buried at a crossroads, sometimes with a stake driven through the body so the soul could not rest. Property and assets were forfeited to the Crown, punishing families already in grief. Over time, the law softened. If a person was deemed mentally unwell, compassion could be extended and, after an inquest, their estate could pass to family in the usual way.

These legal distinctions mattered. They shaped coronial language, newspaper reporting, and public memory.

It was while working through this context that I came across a short nineteenth-century newspaper report describing the suicide of a man named J. Shepherd in Timaru. The name stopped me. Shepherd’s Corner, at the southern end of Stafford Street where it meets North Street, is one of Timaru’s most recognisable historic sites. The brick building that stands there today is firmly associated with James Shepherd, a respected merchant, councillor, and churchwarden who died in 1912.

And yet this Shepherd had died very differently. What followed was a deep dive through newspaper archives, police gazettes, bankruptcy notices, advertisements, and fire reports. Slowly, a clearer picture began to emerge, and I realised that there were two men. Uncle and nephew. Both grocers. Both operating in the same place. Their lives intersected at Shepherd’s Corner, but their stories are very different.

By Roselyn Fauth

I was in Oamaru, wandering through the Victorian Precinct, looking closely. Admiring the front façades, then I then walked around the back.

It feels different back there. I realised behind the tidy fronts, the buildings show the working lives that they left behind.
I could see repeated scratches where heavy sliding doors once moved back and forth. It doesn’t look like damage, more like evidence... marks left by labour, repetition, over time.

Then I saw something else... a love heart. Two names. Declaring love, scratched into the surface...

By Roselyn Cloake

This is a blog about burial, belief, and how we remember those who died by their own hand, and how a history hunting holiday to Dunedin recently sent me down an unexpected series of side quests. It was two nights, with my friend visiting from the states. There was a lot to cram in. I have been learning about South Canterbury's past and decided I needed to look further out from South Canterbury to better understand our shared past.

We went on a few history tours together and as we learned about the lives of various historical figures, we noticed a pattern emerge. Quite a few of the people we were learning about had ended their own lives. I will elaborate on who in a few other blogs, but for now while it still a difficult subject to approach, I wanted to understand not so much what happened, but how society understood it at the time, and how that impacted our laws and culture. How you died could determine how you were buried, how families were treated, and how reputations were formed or fractured long after death.

I already knew that suicide was once referred to as “committing suicide”. This is a term I consciously avoid for more recent deaths. The word committing is rooted in criminal law. Until the early 1960s, taking your own life was illegal. What I did not fully appreciate until this history hunt was how deeply that legal framing reached into people’s lives, and deaths. This is today's blog on suicide, crime, and property...

by Roselyn Fauth

I am on a specific hunt for history... As I step into a new role as Community Builder at Timaru Girls’ High School, I am trying to understand not just dates and buildings, but the deeper story of how girls’ education emerged in this part of the world. What did it mean to be a girl with ambition in the late nineteenth century. Who came before. And how did Timaru sit within a wider national story of education, faith, work, and opportunity.

My recent reading has taken me north to Canterbury, through an Anglican colony lens. A thesis on family migration from Oxford to Christchurch offered a compelling insight into how belief systems, education, and settlement were deliberately intertwined. But to understand Timaru Girls’ High School fully, I realised I also needed to go south.

That decision took me to Dunedin. And from there, via a quiet trail of historical breadcrumbs, to a woman named Jane Runciman.

She served for many years as secretary of the Dunedin Tailoresses’ Union, one of the most influential women’s unions in New Zealand. The union played a key role in campaigns for shorter working hours, fair wages, and improved conditions for women employed in the clothing and manufacturing trades. Her leadership helped professionalise union administration and sustain long-term organising at a time when women’s labour was often dismissed or undervalued.

Jane Runciman was among the first women appointed as a Justice of the Peace in New Zealand. This appointment placed her in a formal legal and civic role at a time when women were still excluded from many areas of public authority. Her work as a JP reflected growing recognition of women’s judgement, leadership, and public service following women’s suffrage in 1893.

Here is a blog so far with information on a Timaru lass, and her story that represents a shift from women being seen solely as dependants or moral guardians to being recognised as civic decision-makers.

By Roselyn Fauth

William Larnach and Architectural Ambition

William James Mudie Larnach arrived in Otago at a moment when Dunedin was flush with gold wealth and confidence. Architecture became a way to assert legitimacy, permanence, and moral standing. Larnach Castle, begun in the 1870s, was never just a residence. It was a statement. It drew on European models, imported materials, and local labour to announce arrival.

Robert Lawson was the perfect architect for this ambition. His work combined Gothic authority with theatrical scale. First Church was his public masterpiece, but Larnach Castle and the Larnach family tomb reveal something more private and more fragile...

By Roselyn Fauth

I was on a Seacliff Lunatic Asylum history hunt when I realised Timaru had a few things in common with that story. Not the scale or the controversy, but something quieter and just as interesting. An architect. The same architect whose name keeps surfacing in Dunedin and Otago histories also turns up, almost discreetly, in Timaru’s streets. Today’s history hunt is about Robert Arthur Lawson, and the design legacy he left behind in Timaru.

Lawson’s most significant public buildings included the Dunedin Municipal Chambers (1878–1880), Otago Boys’ High School (1882–1884), and the Seacliff Lunatic Asylum complex (1879–1884), now demolished. At the time of its completion, Seacliff was the largest building in the colony. Structural problems emerged early, however, and in 1887 a major slip rendered part of the building unusable. A commission of inquiry the following year found both Lawson and the Public Works Department at fault, marking a turning point in his career and casting a long shadow over his reputation.

When we look closely at Timaru’s historic buildings, we often discover links between growing towns and cities. Robert Arthur Lawson is a good example of this interconnected world. Although his architectural practice was based in Dunedin from the early 1860s, his work extended across Otago and South Canterbury, leaving Timaru with a small but significant group of buildings that speak to the town’s confidence during its formative years...

By Roselyn Fauth

I got a txt message from my friend Jess with a business card. On it was the name of a woman working on an unmarked graves project linked to Seacliff. I wrote to her, thanked her for reaching out, and today we had a phone call. It was a really interesting conversation, we introduced ourselves, talked about what we were each working on, and very quickly realised we shared the same affliction. The addictive pull of the “yes but…” of history hunting. How one question or a single thread turns into side quests, and how those side quests somehow end up teaching you about yourself.

My own journey into unmarked graves research in Timaru has been deeply grounding. It has clarified my values in a way I did not see coming. It has stretched my idea of legacy too. Not legacy as fame, or achievement, or a tidy story. More like legacy as care. Who we choose to remember. Who we refuse to leave behind.

Increasingly, it has drawn me toward the stories of ordinary people. Not the first. Not the most successful. Not the most celebrated. Just people.

I wrote down a heap of notes for future side quest history hunting. And thought before we chat again, I'd better brush up on my knowledge of the mental facility.  Today’s “yes but…” led me to Seacliff.

By Roselyn Fauth

If you are new to Timaru, it can feel surprising at first how present remembrance is here... We once had an English family come to visit. They were curious, asking questions about the place. At one point, a reliative asked, quite genuinely, why we marked the war here. It was not confrontational. Just puzzled. I was a little puzzled myself, I assumed it was obvious and coming from the UK, they would know our kiwi contribution to the World Wars. It was in that moment, I realised how little New Zealand’s wartime story is sometimes understood beyond our shores. From the other side of the world, our contribution can feel distant. Small. Easy to overlook. But the wars were not distant here.

New Zealand sent more than 100,000 people overseas during the First World War alone, from a population barely over a million. The scale of loss was enormous. Small towns emptied. Schools lost teachers. Farms lost sons. Names left and did not return. The impact was not felt on battlefields, but in kitchens, classrooms, and streets.

That is why we mark the war here...

By Roselyn Fauth

Someone mentioned to me that if you look closely at the entrance to Caroline Bay from Virtue Avenue, under the railway bridge, you can still see the hinges that once held anti-tank gates. I went down to have a look and, sure enough, there they were. Iron fittings set in the concrete. Not obvious, and easy to walk past for years without noticing. I stood there longer than I expected to, trying to picture how it would have worked. Gates swinging shut across the road. The Bay no longer open. I could not quite make it line up in my head, but that did not stop the shiver that came with it. The War at one point was very close to home.

This week I was loaned a book produced for the Caroline Bay centennial of the carnivals, A Century of Carnivals. It filled in the gap I had been missing. Reading it, it taught me that there was a period when our Bay was not really about play at all. It was about defence.

After Japan entered the Second World War, Caroline Bay was treated as a potential landing site. Great concrete cylinders were laid on their sides and set into the sand, stretching from the Benvenue cliffs right across the Bay to the port. The sand was no longer just sand. It was something to be blocked, shaped, defended...

By Roselyn Fauth

I have memories of my parents holding my little hand while I balanced walking along the concrete wall at Caroline Bay. The balls were the tricky part. Stepping over them without wobbling felt like a real achievement. Making it from one end to the other was something to be proud of. the goal was not to touch the ground, and my dad used to carry me across the breaks in the walls to help fullfill the challenge.

Years later, our girls did the same thing. Arms stretched out, concentrating tounge position, stepping carefully over those same concrete spheres. I love relieving my memories with our children.

I was an 80s kid, so by the time I was playing here the sea was already a long way off. Before the construction of the Port, this was a stony shore where the sea could reach the cliffs. The port development enabled sand to be trapped at the bay. Over the years the sand filled in the bay and pushed the mean tide line out. The wall felt like part of the park, not the edge of the ocean. It’s only when you start looking at old photographs that you realise this really was the sea wall. A proper boundary. Sand on one side, paths and lawns on the other. If you are in the area, look out for the mean tide markers overs the years.

By Roselyn Fauth

There are some things in a town that you do not notice until they stop... for Timaru, unfortunately that has been the case for our town clock.

Long before wristwatches were common and decades before phones took over the task of telling us the time, the town clock was how Timaru moved through its day and gave everyone a standard to set their time hands to. It marked the hour for shopkeepers opening their doors, for workers heading home, for children being called in from the street. The mechanism helped set the rhythm of the locals day.

I had not realised until recently that the clock itself was built in Wellington in 1912 as a smaller scale replica of Big Ben in Westminster, London! In 1913 it was gifted to the town by Mayor James Craigie and installed across the road in the former Post Office. At the time, it made perfect sense. Timekeeping, communication and public service all sat together. When the chimes were first set in motion on 21 June 1913, it was treated as an event. Time mattered, and so did marking it together. There was a bit of controversy at the time, as the chimes were larger than the tower could accommodate so there was some extra thinking and funds needed to accomodate them and set in motion.

By Roselyn Fauth

There is a great history hunt that tells the time, and links us to stories of people and place across time. Chances are you’ve walked past more history than you realise. I know I have. so this trail is a gentle nudge to slow down, wander a bit, and really look at what’s around us. Timaru might be small, but it punches well above its weight when it comes to sundials. They’re not tucked away in museums. They’re out in the open. On walls. In school grounds. In parks. Just sitting there, waiting for someone to notice.

You can make each sundial hunt a separate adventure, or make a big afternoon of it and visit them all. The last stop takes you out into the countryside. This isn’t about keeping perfect time, or even knowing how to use one, I think it’s more about noticing how time has been read, remembered, and memorialised.

I think it is amazing to ponder that every culture that worked with the sun added something to it. Geometry. Mathematics. Craft. Belief. Place. By the time a sundial appears at Caroline Bay in 1929, it carries thousands of years of human observation with it. A simple shadow, doing ancient work.

Let's go on a sundrial history hunt. 

By Roselyn Fauth

I have been cleaning out the attic. No small feat. But slowly we are getting there. There have been a few trips to the crows nest and the dump... and in the midst of trying to be ruthless and reasonable to sort through a mess... I found my old stereo. Beside it, tucked away in boxes with a few forgotten things, we also found our CD collection. A flood of memories came rushing back. I can remember where I was when I bought some of them. Going into stores, putting on headphones and working out who I liked and who to buy.

This silver Sony stereo had 4 speakers, a CD at the top and a duo tape deck at the bottom. This became my treasure as a late 80s and 90s kid. I can't remember if this was my first one or if I bought an earlier one that was just a tape deck... either way music mattered to me deeply. With limited pocket money and no streaming services, this machine was my gateway to the world. Sundays were my favourite day. I would sit in my bedroom, ready with blank tapes loaded, finger hovering, waiting to record Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 off the radio. He talked through the start of songs far too often, which drove me mad, and if I got distracted I sometimes forgot to stop recording at the end of each track. But this was free fun, and I loved it...

By Roselyn Fauth

Williams, William, 1858-1949. The SS Fifeshire and other ships berthed at Port Chalmers. Williams, Edgar Richard, 1891-1983: Photographs and papers. Ref: 1/1-025516-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22433460

I have been emptying out my phones photos and found a few pages I had photographed for later reading on Timaru's frozen and meaty past. Coming across them again inspired this blog about a champagne party that was thrown for frozen meat. Yep, I know it sounds absurd. But it wasn’t...

By Roselyn Fauth

Long before grain filled sacks on Timaru’s shoreline, the foundations were laid far inland. This was Timaru, South Canterbury and the making of a food bowl.

By Guest Blogger Keely Kroening

Standing on the banks of the Pareora River at Evan’s Crossing, about to start a fossil hunt we are suddenly surrounded by small black insects are flying everywhere. They settle on our skin but fly away when brushed off.

Later, on a warm summers morning in the Timaru Cemetery, near a bank of hebes and harakeke the small black insects are again flying around, settling on the arms and legs of the gathered crowd, attracted to the flowers some of them hold.

I do. Although if I am honest, the building has changed so much over the years that I cannot quite picture exactly where the shop was. But I remember going there with my Dad. I remember standing at the counter. I remember staff taking the time to demonstrate a stereo and help me choose one to buy and take home. I definitely remember the volume knob being turned up. At the time, it was just a shop. A place you went to buy something you had saved for. A stereo. A washing machine... Something electrical that was not cheap but you expected it to last. I had no idea then that the name on the shops facade sign carried more than a century of South Canterbury history behind it. I only learned that later...

By Roselyn Fauth

A lovely WuHoo follower flicked me a message today to share an image currently on display at the Pleasant Point Railway Museum. Alongside it was their own photo, taken while trying to find the same viewpoint today. They were happy for me to share the story, but wished to remain anonymous. Here are two scenes same spot, then and now of the rail at the bay. Thank you for sparking this afternoon’s curiosity-filled history hunt...

By Roselyn Fauth

Probably like you, I am frustrated I don’t own a private jet that can whisk me off to cocktails in the Maldives, or croquettes and galleries in Amsterdam. To be honest, anything that requires accommodation for our family feels a bit out of reach at the moment. So I’ve been thinking closer to home, about how we find rest, joy and adventure without packing a suitcase or checking our bank balance.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realised that one of the easiest ways to find free fun is simply to go for a wander, slow down and take notice.

Timaru District has always rewarded people who walk. Long before roads and rail, this place was known and used by Māori as a landscape of movement... along rivers, across plains, between coast and hills. Later came whalers, boatmen, farmers, rail workers and holidaymakers. All of them arrived on foot before they arrived any other way.

So let’s start where many journeys here begin... 

By Roselyn Fauth

We had a nice wee look around the Ashburton Museum recently, and I was interested to come across a small section about the Hall family. It was enough to spark curiosity as I knew the family name for totally different and more sinister reasons! After a quick Google, I confirmed that these were the ancestors of Thomas Hall, the man later accused of the murder of Captain Henry Cain. That deeply dark story only came to light when Hall’s wife, Kate (Kitty), became ill and a doctor realised she was being poisoned. It is a grim chapter in South Canterbury’s history, and one I have written about elsewhere.

But standing in front of the museum panels, I found myself wanting to step back from that later scandal and learn more about the wider family. Who were the Halls before the name became shadowed by suspicion and tragedy? Why was it once a name that carried respect? And how did a family with strong Ashburton roots also have such clear links to Timaru, including places we still know today, like Elloughton Grange, now part of a retirement village?

The Hall story begins in England, in the port city of Kingston upon Hull in Yorkshire. The brothers’ father, George Hall, was a mariner and shipowner who rose to become an Elder Brother of Trinity House, the maritime authority responsible for navigation, pilotage and lighthouse services. This was a family familiar with administration, responsibility and the wider world...

By Roselyn Fauth

It was raining. but I was keen to have a quick look around at the Rosewill hall. I was super excited to see one of the community information signs at the gate, which gave me a good understanding of the history of the place. I tried to imagine all the kids and adults who passed through the gates, thinking about the area when the trees were younger, and the area had its own rural school. I haven't grown up out of town, so I don't know what life was like back then, but I can imagine schools like this were an important community hub. Its a shame that they were not able to exist, and now the kids have to spend more time on a bus... but at least the property is still there and now used as a local meeting place and a hall. I peeked through the glass to spy the insides. I bet there are a few people that really appreciate this wee spot. So here is my blog on what I learned from the history sign and a bit of a history hunt... 

Examples of natives on Bassett Road, Rosewill planted by one man over 10 years to rejuvenate a wee corner by a stream and to bring back the birds. - Photography By Roselyn Fauth 2025

How many natives can you name? I'll be honest, we were out shopping for drawers... and I couldn't face the traffic, so we drove back to Timaru through Rosewill for something to do on a bleak, drizzly day... and this is how we ended up on a spontaneous Sunday drive to Bassetts road... even in grey weather, it is so beautiful out that way. It was a fun side quest.

Janet Street and her Hawthorn Tree - Janet E R Street, was the former secretary of the Friends of the Timaru Botanic Gardens, 1991-2009.

I walked past this tree countless times before I really saw it... It is a modest hawthorn growing in the Timaru Botanic Gardens. Not especially tall. Not showy. Just well placed, well cared for, and quietly doing its thing. by its trunk are two plaques. One names the tree. Crataegus laevigata ‘Coccinea Plena’. English Hawthorn. A European species, part of the rose family, known for its deep red flowers in spring.

The other plaque names a person...

By Roselyn Fauth

Sister M. A. Hall was born in Timaru, arriving into the world in a private nursing home at a time when hospital maternity facilities were still limited and often reserved only for women deemed “necessitous”. Her life would come full circle when she later became one of the most influential figures in the development of modern maternity care in South Canterbury.

Miss Hall trained as a nurse at Napier Hospital, where she was awarded the Florence Nightingale Prize, recognising her as the student nurse with the most outstanding nursing qualities. This early acknowledgement marked the beginning of a career defined by professionalism, leadership, and deep commitment to women’s health.

By Roselyn Fauth

A Corner of the Hospital Grounds, Timaru, 1900-1910, Timaru, by Alfred Hardy. Gift of Patricia M. Mitchell, 1989. Te Papa (PS.000598)

I didn’t really notice it until my Dutch family came to visit. We were halfway back from the medicinal garden at the Timaru Botanic Gardens to our car, when two of them, both young doctors, stopped and looked around. “You have a botanic garden right next to your hospital?” To them, it was unusual. Almost surprising. To me, it had always just been there.

That was a wee WuHoo moment.. where I realised how easily we stop seeing the things closest to us. And it sparked a question... Why are hospital and the gardens neighbours? Was it coincidence, convenience, or something more deliberate? As another year turns, I find myself thinking less about what needs to be added, and more about what deserves attention and care. The hospital and the gardens remind me that progress does not always mean replacing what came before. Sometimes it means remembering why it was put there in the first place. We now have a legacy legacy that began as a practical response to a problem, not a grand vision. While I hit publish on New Years Eve, I thank all those who have worked through the holiday season, especially our health care workers. I hope you get a chance to take a break and enjoy your neighbourhood as you prepare for the next phase of your shift. Here is my history hunt from a spark of curiosity...

By Roselyn Fauth

It’s not every day that a fisherman, truck driver, and freezing worker ends up presiding over Parliament as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives — let alone one who also carries a baronetcy bestowed by Queen Victoria. Yet that was Sir Basil Malcolm Arthur of Timaru: the working man who became Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, a Labour stalwart who preferred boots and fairness over pomp and privilege. From Waimataitai School to the Beehive, this is a story of working hard, advocating and making an impact with leadership and service to community...

I had procrastinated about sharing this story on Facebook as I wasn't totally sure I had written a post deserving of the man Basil was. then I bumped into his daughter at Ballantynes - Cheryl Blanchard. I sent her a link, and was relieved to hear back from her that she thought what I had written would do the trick. She told me there are endless stories that could probably fill a book about her father. That he was a real character, and such a fantastic father. She said she would be strumming and singing and he’d be blowing his harmonica. He and then Mayor Durham Dowell, sang a duet on the soundshell…during one of the carnivals, and she recalled how they both had great voices, acknowledging that it was not often you would get the mayor and MP doing that. So with Chery's blessing, here is a story about the man who preferred to be known simply as Basil...

By Roselyn Fauth

Photo from Doctor Kelly Sweerus office in 2025 overlooking the carpark, the rata tree and the Timaru botanic Gardens. 

The forecast is bleak. Again. But when there’s a break in the weather, even a short one, here’s a free idea that costs nothing and gives a lot back. Pull on a jacket. Step outside. Go on a rātā hunt... Start at Timaru’s Botanic Gardens. See if you can find two. The Timaru Botanic Gardens were established in 1864, making them one of the oldest botanic gardens in New Zealand. They cover 19 hectares and have been growing with the town for more than 150 years. 

On the east hospital boundrary is a tree is called southern rātā, Metrosideros umbellata. It’s a native New Zealand forest tree and part of the myrtle family. In the wild, southern rātā grows in cooler places with higher rainfall, which is why it’s common on the West Coast of the South Island and in damp, bushy environments. It can live for hundreds of years.

When it flowers, usually between January and February, it’s canopy fills with deep red, brush-like blooms made up of fine stamens rather than petals. Its stunning up close and from a distance.

If you walk South to the Alpine plants section you'll spy another rātā too.

By Roselyn Fauth

We joined our friends yesterday to hear their parents sing in the St Mary’s Choir. Gosh, they were good. At times, I felt their music was incredibly moving. It’s clear they put in many hours of practice, and you could really feel their passion. There’s something very special about singing together. I also really love singing carols at this time of year.

The choir sings every Sunday morning throughout the year except in January, and also offers concerts and other special events. They also lead the Choral Evensong held the first Sunday of the month at 5pm. There is a junior choir as well, taught by Catherine Anderson. They meet once a week and join the congregation for one service per month as well as performing for any other events that the church holds. They welcome new members to the choir with no auditions to join, just a willingness to learn and have fun.

My mind drifted off, wondering about the history of Timaru’s St Mary’s Anglican Church, imagining all the people who designed, supported, built, and maintained the building over the years.

By Roselyn Fauth

The tradition began in the mid-1970s, spearheaded by Tony Sleigh, then the City Electrical Engineer for the Timaru District Council. During a 1975 sabbatical in the UK, Sleigh was inspired by London's Regent Street Christmas lights. Upon returning, he proposed that Timaru develop its own high-quality street decorations—a novel idea in New Zealand at the time. Despite initial debates over costs and logistics, the Municipal Electricity Department (MED) supported the initiative by purchasing and gifting the lights to the city. Sleigh, alongside lighting expert Allan Shaw, oversaw the design and installation of the original star-themed displays, with moulds crafted in a Dunedin factory

I have a vivid memory of being in the car on Stafford Street and spying the dazzling glow of Stafford Street’s Christmas lights. It was magic, even half-asleep, because it needs to be reasonably late in Summer for the full effects of darkness and illumination to be just right. That glowing blur of the christmas whimsy colour was magical. It made the festive season feel like Christmas. And now I drive our two children down the street and get to enjoy their oohs and aahs as they experience the joy of the lights just like I used to. I love the hit of nostelga and I love sharing that moment together.

I actually wrote this blog last year. But a lot has happened in 12 months, so it needed an update. Join me on the history of our Christmas lights, how they came about, who paid for them and why they are appreicated today.

The south end of Stafford Street in Timaru, circa 1990. Taken in the evening, lit up by street and Christmas lights. Taken from the intersection with George Street. South Canterbury Museum L2012/007.007 

By Roselyn Cloake

A sweeping driveway will lead you to a Neo-Gothic style mansion. Castle Claremont was reported to be one of the closest home Timaru has to a royal estate. Set on 11 hectares in a picturesque park-like setting, Castle Claremont is fitted out with 10 bedrooms, five bathrooms, a formal dining room, a library/billiard room, reception facilities and a chapel. Castle Claremont was built in 1884 for early settler George Hampton Rhodes and his wife Henrietta. In the past, it also operated as a Marist Brothers' training centre and as a rehabilitation facility before being transformed back into the grand home. The castle is the work of leading Christchurch architects, JJ Collins (1855-1933) and RSD Harman (1859-1927). Collins and Harman, who were the successors to the practice established by William Armson in 1870, designed St Mary's Anglican Church in Timaru as well as a number of houses for members of Canterbury's rural elite in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including, for GH Rhodes’ brothers, ‘Blue Cliffs’ for RH Rhodes in 1889 and AEG Rhodes’ Christchurch town house ‘Te Koraha’ (1883-1903). The firm also designed ‘Meadowbank’ at Irwell for a cousin, GE Rhodes (1891).

One of the loveliest things about Christmas is the way it draws people together. At the end of the year, conversations slow down, tables fill up, and stories have room to surface.

My husband and I were invited to the Aoraki Foundation’s donors’ afternoon tea for a Giving Tuesday event at Castle Claremont recently. at Castle Claremont, which included a facinating presentation by Eleanor Cater, CEO of Community Foundations of Aotearoa New Zealand. Eleanor has completed a Masters in Philanthropic Studies, and her work explores how generosity, legacy, and place intersect. We have since stayed in touch, and she has generously shared material that stayed with me long after the afternoon ended, such a facinating read! communityfoundations/women-reshaping-philanthropy

It was a special setting for those conversations. Castle Claremont is a grand house, layered with history and stories, and we were fortunate to be shown through it by the current owner. Walking through its rooms,
I was ycurious about the many people who have lived, worked, gathered, learned, and reflected over the floorboards over the years. That visit sent me on a small history hunt, to learn more about the castle and its story...

By Roselyn Fauth

Invitation, 1901, New Zealand, by Benoni William Lytton White, A.D. Willis Ltd. Purchased 2001. Te Papa (GH009568)

Did you know we have a square named in honour of a queen? In Timaru’s Alexandra Square, it is easy to overlook the impact of the empire back in the early European settler days, they do feel like a long time ago... but in the center of some  gnarly wych elm trees used to be a band rotunda which was replaced by a fountain monument to a grain mill. The square was a beautifying project for the town, named after Queen Alexandra of Denmark.

By Roselyn Fauth

Books on maritime history often reflect the man’s world... one of sailors, captains, shipwrecks, and rescue crews. I often wonder as a mother who were the women in these stories? Who were the wives waiting at windows. The mourners in black. Where they were advocates, fundraisers, and workers in the waves, maybe survivors? What were the stories of women on Timaru’s coast?

In May 1882, the port town of Timaru was gripped by grief and outrage. On Sunday 14 May, two ships the Benvenue and the City of Perth were wrecked near the Timaru harbour. The disaster became one of the most infamous maritime tragedies in the region’s history. Both vessels had attempted to anchor off the port, but heavy seas drove them ashore. In the chaos, a lifeboat was launched to rush to the rescue.

This image from the collections at Te Papa and Illustrated Australian News - Melbourne Vic -1876-1889 Saturday 10 June 1882, shows the wreck of the Benvenue Ship and the City of Perth which was later refloated.

By Roselyn Fauth

Before the breakwater. Before the port cranes. Before Timaru’s skyline included anything but masts and smoke, there were men who waited for cannon fire.

Not the kind fired in war, but the signal gun that told them someone was in trouble at sea. They were bakers and blacksmiths, farmers and clerks. But when the Harbourmaster’s signal sounded, they became something more. They were the Rocket Brigade.

Timaru in the 1870s and 1880s was not the safe harbour we know today. The coastline was treacherous. With no protective wall, ships had to anchor in open water, exposed to unpredictable swells. These huge waves often came without warning, sent from storms far out at sea. In calmer weather, they could arrive silently. In a gale, they were unstoppable.

By Roselyn Fauth

Over the next 25 years, around NZ$1.2 trillion in assets will shift from baby boomers to the next generation, and most of that wealth will be managed by women. It is a tidal wave of generosity waiting to happen. The question is not whether the money will move, but how we catch it. How do we make sure this extraordinary transfer of wealth becomes leverage for good rather than something that quietly disappears into private accounts or offshore investments?

If we do not have the nets in place, the opportunity will scatter. But if we build the right structures now, this could become one of the most transformative chapters in South Canterbury’s history. The decisions we make today will determine where this wealth lands, who it lifts, and what kind of future it helps us build.

Philanthropy is no longer just about giving. It is about shaping the world we want to live in.

By Roselyn Fauth

Every so often I bump into someone at Caroline Bay who has come all the way from Europe or the United States just to see our roses. They arrive with maps and cameras and that excited look gardeners get when they know they have found something special. It is funny really. We walk past these gardens so often that we almost forget how special they are. Meanwhile, people from the other side of the world tel lme how they plan their holidays around them. It makes me wonder how many locals realise just how much work sits behind these places... and how lucky we are!

By Roselyn Fauth with Raine & Horne.

Behind a hedge on 36 Alexandra Street in Temuka stands a survivor from the 1880s. Hope Cottage, once known as the Lynch Cottage, was built around 1886 by George Henry Lynch, a bricklayer from Berkshire in England who came to New Zealand with his wife Emma and their young family in 1874. It is larger than typical cottages of the era and the three bedroom home with a primary living room, separate dining room and kitchen, has strong heritage character that has evolved over time with thoughtful updates. It went back on the market with Raine and Horne in 2025, for another household to continue a story that began 139 years ago. Photo Supplied by Raine & Horne 2025.

I recently had a look at a special bluestone historic house on 10 Claremont Road that was owned by the Fyfes. My friend Leanne Penderville who is an agent for Raine and Horne told me about it. I asked if they had any other older buildings on the market currently and Renée Hayward invited me to have a look at Hope Cottage in Temuka and kindly shared their marketing photos for a WuHoo Blog about the people and place. To make things even easier the Timaru District Council has prepared a heritage report on the property too. So this is the result... thank you Raine and Horne for sharing the story and images of this property with me. 

By Roselyn Fauth

People in the yard of The Pines on College Road in Timaru, home of the Bowker Family. Charles Bowker who owned The Pines, was a land agent in Timaru. - collection of Christchurch City Libraries. https://www.canterburystories.nz/collections/photohunt/2013/ccl-cs-14754 Charles Bowker died on 30 August 1915. He was buried at the Timaru Cemetery on 1 September 1915, recorded in the General Section (plot reference from the cemetery register).

This beauty of a home is no longer there. But a arch over the entrance to the Centennial Park does. A link to the Bowkers of Timaru. It was a while ago that I learned about them, so I thought I had better refresh my memory...  The story starts with Charles Bowker, who arrived in Timaru in 1865 after a wandering early life through England, South Africa and Dunedin. His first work here was anything but easy. In one of his own recollections he described buying a bullock team to cart timber through bush tracks and along rough shingle roads. At one point the dray slid off near Aiken’s store and he needed several men to haul it back. 

By Roselyn Fauth 

By Roselyn Fauth

From a Scrapbook includes newspaper clippings and photographs featuring AMP branches and events in Australia and New Zealand. openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au

If you stand on Stafford Street today at the site of Aoraki Legal, was the AMP building that used to be opposite the BNZ corner. This area of Timaru held what I think was one of the city’s most handsome Victorian commercial buildings. Then, it was gone. the only reason I knew it was there, was the law firm who is in the bulding that is there today, proudly displays a illustration of it in their foyer. This is the story of what happened to it...

By Roselyn Fauth

If you’ve ever walked past the council buildings, or glanced up at the Theatre Royal façade, or flicked through an old council minute book, you’ve probably seen Timaru’s coat of arms without really noticing it. Most of us do. It’s just… there. Sitting quietly. But once you start looking, it becomes a bit of a history hunt, and the clues start falling into place.

I didn’t set out to become interested in heraldry, yet here we are. Every time I dip back into the life of architect Percy Watts Rule, I end up wandering off down a side track, and this has been one of the most surprising. Coats of arms seem old-fashioned and distant until you realise ours isn’t distant at all. It was shaped by people who lived here, long before the official paperwork arrived from London...

By Roselyn Fauth
Thank you to Grant Jenkins for showing me around. Grant Jenkins Contracting Ltd

Clyde Carr Memorial Hall Opens Today: Timaru Trades Hall Society Represents Labour Groups Formed 24 Years Ago (14 June 1969). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 02/11/2025: https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/681

52 North Street will turn 57 years old in June 2026. You’ve probably driven past it many times without realising it holds a century of Timaru’s working-class story in its walls...

This modern façade hides an interesting past. And today's blog is inspired by a digitised Timaru Herald clipping in the Aoraki Heritage Collection that shared its history — the 1969 opening of the Clyde Carr Memorial Hall, formerly Timaru Trades Hall.

I found it while on a deep dive, trying to learn about women’s marriage bars and Clyde Carr when the headline caught my eye. "Clyde Carr Memorial Hall Opens Today: Timaru Trades Hall Society Represents Labour Groups Formed 24 Years Ago". If the Timaru District Libraries hadn’t digitised it, I might never have found it...

You might recognise this building today as Grant Jenkins Contracting. But did you know it was once Timaru Trades Hall? Join me on my history hunt into what was once the heart of Timaru’s labour movement...

This Hall was built for the trade unions and the Labour Party, a new home for working people whose collective action had shaped much of 20th-century Timaru. The First Trades Hall established: 1945–46, then they relocated to the Clyde Carr Memorial Hall, which opened in: 1969 Oh, to have been a fly on the wall here! 

By Roselyn Fauth

New Zealand National candidate Maurice McTigue pictured on top of the Government Life Building, dated 1985. In the background, the Centennial Memorial Building can be seen as well as a view of the surrounding area. South Canterbury Museum 2012/186.7042

I've been on a deep dive into the history of the Oxford Building. When the building owner died, the property was purchased by the Government Life Insurance, and the building lost its Oxford name and connections to the sites history until a restaurant revived it in 2013. Today's blog is sparked by the question, why did the Oxford Building become known as the Government Life Building?  It turns out that tha question takes us back to 1869...

By Roselyn Fauth

Possibly about 1896 to 1899 "The town of Timaru is about 100 miles from Christchurch, and 128 from Dunedin, and is the principal town of South Canterbury. Among its fine buildings and institutions, there is not one of which the citizens are more proud than its Hospital, the subject of our illustration, and for convenience and good management, it can hold its own with any in the colony. It speaks well for a young colony, when the alleviation of the physical sufferings of its inhabitants is one of the first things to be provided.”

Christchurch City Libraries - The imperial album of New Zealand scenery, page 238 https://www.canterburystories.nz/collections/publications/imperialalbum/ccl-cs-39434 No known copyright

I have been on a deep dive into the Gabites corner. It used to be where the Oxford Building is today. and on that site generations of Gabites sold fabrics and clothes to the locals.I have been learning about a father and a son, both literly woven into the fabric of early Timaru.

Dr George Edward Gabites was born in Christchurch in 1867, but his roots were very much Timaru ones. He went to Timaru Boys’ High School. He headed to Edinburgh and earned his B.Sc in 1889, followed by his medical degree in 1893, and held several posts in the Royal Infirmary and the Royal Maternity and Simpson Memorial Hospital. By 1896 he was medical superintendent of the Edinburgh Provident Dispensary. Not bad for a local lad aye?

By Roselyn Fauth

In 2013 The Oxford Restaurant moved into the Oxford Building. This listed 1925 Historic gem, in the old heart of Timaru. A beautiful corner building, it has embossed 15 foot ceilings on all four floors which was the inspiration behind the restaurants branding. timaru.govt.nz/Historic-Heritage-Assessment-Report-HHI61-Oxford-Buildings-Category-B.pdf

Well, I didn’t expect to end up here — standing looking up at one of my favourite buildings in Timaru, celebrating its 100th year — all because of a lockdown walk through the cemetery.

Like many, we spent those quiet Covid days exploring close to home. I found myself drawn to the cemetery gates, reading names and wondering about the people behind them. One day, I noticed a tall monument right in the centre. It wasn’t a grave, but a memorial to Richard Turnbull, one of Timaru’s founding citizens. I went home to find out who he was, and that search turned into years of research, side quests, and discoveries about the Turnbull family and their part in shaping our town.

Which is how I’ve ended up here tonight, celebrating the Oxford Building — one of their finest legacies...

“Richard Turnbull and David Clarkson first developed this site in 1864. The Oxford is the third building on the site to be built by the Turnbull family, and was designed by architects Turnbull & Rule for D.C. Turnbull & Co. and opened in 1925.” - Historic Places Aotearoa Blue Plaque

By Roselyn Fauth - based on obituary from the Aoraki Heritage Archive.

I’ve spent the past few years tracing the Turnbull family — their buildings, their lives, their part in shaping Timaru’s early skyline. I’ve followed their story through streets, plaques, and the city’s old newspapers, building a picture of how one family left such an enduring architectural mark.

But one day, while scrolling through the Aoraki Heritage Archive at the Timaru Library, I came across an obituary clipped from a 1953 newspaper. The headline simply read: “Timaru Community Was Well Served by Mr P. W. Rule.”

Until then, Percy Watts Rule had been just a second name in the partnership of Turnbull & Rule — in my mind, a presence beside the Turnbull legacy I’d come to know so well. But this obituary was something else entirely. It wasn’t just a list of buildings and titles. It was a portrait of a man who was deeply cultured, endlessly curious, and loved by his community.

The more I read, the more I realised how much of Timaru still bears his touch — and how much of his story has quietly slipped through the cracks of time. So this is my attempt to learn about him, and help share his story and impact...

By Roselyn Fauth with property owners Kelly and Forest

This arts and crafts home at 32 Sefton Street Timaru was built in 1919 and designed by local architects Turnbull & Rule.

I’ve been on a deep dive into the Turnbull family’s history lately — tracing roots back to the 1860s — and somewhere along the way, I stumbled into a whole new fascination with architect James S. Turnbull and, later, his architectural practice partner Percy Watts Rule. Their commercial and domestic buildings are still shaping Timaru today, quietly anchoring our streets and neighbourhoods.

This is the first story in a new series called Show Us Your Turnbull, where we explore the homes people live in, love, and care for — and the architectural legacy that holds them together.

We begin with Kelly and Forest, custodians of a beautifully intact early 1900s home designed by Turnbull during his solo practice years. Several years before partnering with Percy Watts Rule, Turnbull designed this home for Mrs Florence Marriott, wife of local draper Herbert Marriott. It’s a house built with confidence, craft, and that particular Timaru sense of steady optimism.

Thank you, Kelly and Forrest, for letting us step inside...

By Roselyn Fauth

Here you can see the passenger landing service sheds with signal station on the cliff above at Timaru - Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1691-114

I will be honest. It has sometimes been a mission to get my head around the early European beginnings of Timaru. The stories overlap, the sources do not always agree, and for every clear fact there seems to be a gremlin hiding in the footnotes. But this is my best attempt at making sense of how our port began, and to explain the tangled, ingenious logistics that shaped Timaru long before we had a breakwater or a harbour.

Along the way I have met a fascinating cast of characters. Some are well-known names in our settler histories. Others – like the Deal boatmen, Strongwork Morrison, and former whaler Samuel “Yankie Sam” Williams and his wife Ann – rarely appear in the polished summaries, but were absolutely essential to the life of the shore. They, along with Māori boatmen from Arowhenua who worked the coastline before the Deal men arrived, helped turn an exposed beach into a working landing place.

This is not just a story about the white, wealthy men whose names ended up on company headings. It is a story about everyone who raised families, laboured, navigated, hauled, traded, cooked, repaired, waited, hoped and persisted here. A story of layered community effort. Sam and Ann Williams raising the first permanent European family on the beach. Strongwork Morrison becoming the first beachmaster. The Deal boatmen pulling heavy surfboats through dangerous seas. Local women running accommodation houses and businesses. Merchants, wagon drivers, labourers, flax workers, shearers, shepherds, carpenters and cooks all contributing to a fragile but determined outpost...

By Roselyn Fauth

Stafford Street, Timaru, circa 1905, Dunedin, by Muir & Moodie. Te Papa (C.014426) - No Known Copyright Restrictions 

https://www.timaru.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/673872/Historic-Heritage-Assessment-Report-HHI49-Coronation-Buildings-Category-A.pdf

I was doom-scrolling on Facebook when I saw a Timaru Herald article about the Farmers building going on the market. I love this beautiful old Farmers building and the store itself, so after a quick panic, I read on through the article and was relieved to see Farmers had signed a new five-year lease. That’s pretty exciting — and it made me wonder who will be next to care for one of my favourite CBD buildings.

I’d learned about this place before, but it had been a while, so I decided to refresh my memory with a few side quests along the way. The result? Drapers, coronations, murders, fires… and a whole lot of Timaru history wrapped up inside one iconic building...

By Roselyn Fauth

According to the Pleasant Point District Schools Archives, coordinated by Pleasant Point Primary School, local volunteers have been creating and unveiling history boards for the district’s former schools, including Hazelburn. https://pointprimary.school.nz/a/34PpqMN. The small rural primary schools around the area – Cave, Sutherlands, Opihi, Totara Valley, Hazelwood, Taiko, Upper Waitohi, Kakahu Bush and Rockwood – gradually closed and their pupils travelled by bus into Pleasant Point. In 1970 the District High School was separated into Pleasant Point Primary School and Pleasant Point High School, but the closure of the High School in 2004 means that PPPS is now the only state school in the Pleasant Point area.

I love history hunting. Sometimes it means poring over archives or following whispers through cemeteries, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, the history has already been beautifully hunted out for you. That was the case with Hazelburn School, a place I only knew existed because of a sign we happened to drive past one golden afternoon. We pulled over, curious, and found ourselves standing on the edge of a paddock, reading a story that someone else had already taken great care to preserve...

By Roselyn Fauth

Church Street, Timaru

It started, as these things often do, with paint... I was walking down Church Street when the colours caught my eye — soft mossy-green plaster, crisp white window frames, black metalwork gleaming in the sun, and those golden lions looking rather pleased with themselves. The whole building seemed to have woken up after a long nap. That’s when I noticed the name: Empire Hotel Extension. But an extension? To what?

And so began another little history hunt... aprked by questions, and before you know it, you’ve gone from admiring a paint job to diving headfirst into 150 years of local history with some side quests along the way!

Guest Blog by Ben Curnow 2025-11-07

Betty Curnow (1911–2005) was a close friend of artist Rita Angus (1908–1970). Their friendship spanned more than thirty years, from 1936 to 1970. Betty kept hundreds of pages of handwritten notes about Angus, drawn from her diaries, recording the people she met, events she attended, and her reflections on Angus’s life and work. Among these are detailed insights into Portrait of Betty Curnow (1942), now held by the Auckland Art Gallery.

It is a real pleasure to share this guest blog by Ben Curnow, a descendant of Elizabeth Jamaux “Betty” Curnow (née Le Cren), one of South Canterbury’s remarkable artistic daughters. Born in Timaru in 1911 and descended from pioneer Henry Le Cren, Betty’s story reaches from the early days of our town to the heart of New Zealand’s modern art movement. She grew up in a home alive with creativity, guided by her mother Daisy Le Cren, whose encouragement helped shape a young Colin McCahon. Betty carried that same spirit forward, first as a painter and later as one of the country’s leading printmakers, her work reflecting the light and rhythm of the South Canterbury landscape.

A heartfelt thank you to Ben Curnow for sharing his family’s story and for shining new light on a Timaru artist whose influence reached far beyond our district. His words help reconnect Betty Curnow to the place where her journey began and to all of us who continue to celebrate the creativity that grows from this landscape.

Read on to discover Betty’s story through Ben’s eyes.

By Roselyn Fauth

"Mrs Major Hornbrook of Arowhenua Station. Photo from the Burnett Collection. A portrait identified as "The first white woman to enter South Canterbury, Mrs Major Hornbrook of Arowhenua Station". Bears the title on the mount below the print and the label of Havelock Williams Art Studio on the verso. Note that Margaret Hornbroiok has been recorded as the first white woman to enter South Canterbury, but she was married to William Hornbrook, not his brother, Major Alfred Hornbrook."

I wonder if you can drive slowly along Station Road near Arowhenua, and see the weathered woolshed beside the Opihi River. It’s one of the oldest surviving farm buildings in New Zealand, built nearly 170 years ago. But this humble timber building holds more than rural charm; it holds the story of a remarkable woman — Margaret Hornbrook, the first European woman known to settle permanently in South Canterbury. Who was the young woman who left Scotland for a faraway colony?

By Roselyn Fauth, WuHoo Timaru History Hunt

This is the scrapbook of New Zealands first female librarian! Evelyn Culverwell, Miss Culverwell's scrapbook (1928-1929). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 02/11/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/8585 She was appointed in 1913 and served until her death in 1936.The Timaru Public Library had opened on 4 June 1909. Between 1909 and 1913, the first librarian (likely male, name not recorded in local coverage) oversaw the early years. When that position was vacated in 1913, the Timaru Borough Council appointed Evelyn Culverwell as Chief Librarian — the first woman in New Zealand to hold that title. In 1928 Evelyn set out alone on a seven-month study tour of England and Scotland, visiting leading public and university libraries. Her scrapbook — still preserved in the Aoraki Heritage Collection — is full of tickets, pamphlets, and handwritten notes.

Who was New Zealand’s first female Chief Librarian? Sometimes a story begins with a name carved in stone, and sometimes it begins in a scrapbook. Mine began with both. I had been reading the Heritage New Zealand report about the Timaru Council Offices and Former Public Library façade when one name kept standing out: Miss Evelyn Culverwell. It described her as New Zealand’s first female Chief Librarian, appointed right here in Timaru in 1913.

The more I learned, the more I admired her. She was not just a librarian. She was a quiet reformer who helped build the foundations of modern public libraries in New Zealand...

“Despite a full rebuild behind it, the façade looks almost exactly as it did in 1912 — complete with clocktower, carved stone, and a lamp that never goes out.” — Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, 2023.  Town Hall, Timaru. N.Z. 5961. A souvenir photographic print entitled "Town Hall, Timaru. N.Z. 5961", circa 1950.

What makes this one of Timaru’s most-loved buildings? Some buildings simply feel solid. The Council Offices and former Public Library at 2 King George Place has that effect — standing proud above the heart of Timaru with its classical façade, clocktower, and ever-glowing Lamp of Remembrance.

By local standards, it’s old. But internationally, it sits perfectly within the architectural language of its time — an Edwardian civic landmark designed to express confidence, learning, and pride in public service...

 By Roselyn Fauth

Discovering Timaru : past & present. Published by the Timaru City Council in 1984 by Win Parkes. 

Before Google Maps and heritage signs, there was Win Parkes — walking, listening, and piecing together the stories of Timaru by hand. In the early 1980s, she gathered her information from physical archives, old history books, and conversations with locals, creating a remarkable record of our town long before the internet made research easy.

Her 1984 book Discovering Timaru: Past and Present captured the spirit of the place she called home... its land, its people, and its stories. Forty years later, her Timaru Scenic Drive still helps locals and visitors see why this is such a wonderful place to live, work, play, and raise a family.

Discover the book that inspired WuHoo Timaru — and how one woman’s love for the place she lived continues to guide a new generation of explorers to take notice, look closer, make their time meaningful, and fall in love with Timaru all over again...

By Roselyn Fauth

The Marriage Bar: A Law That Shaped Women’s Lives “Conditional authority to terminate employment of married women as teachers” Finance Act 1931 (No 4), Section 39. New Zealand legislation passed during the Great Depression that allowed education authorities, with ministerial approval, to terminate the employment of women teachers who married. The clause remained in law until repealed by the Education Act 1964, effective 15 October 1965.  Part 3 Education amendment repealed 15 Oct 1965 by section 204-1 of the Education Act 1964 No 135. Section 38: repealed, on 15 October 1965, by section 204(1) of the Education Act 1964 (1964 No 135). https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1931/44/en/latest/#DLM4676843

Why did so many extraordinary women in our history remain unmarried and without children?
As I’ve dug through Timaru’s archives, I’ve noticed a pattern... teachers, nurses, writers, inventors... women who shaped our communities in remarkable ways — and yet so many of them never married or had children. Why?

In the 1891 census, New Zealand had 2,617 female teachers compared with 1,644 male teachers. In many ways, I think our Governments education system depended on a revolving door of single women teachers... Women trained, taught for a few years, then left when they married. A Marrage Bar could end their careers, so I wonder if women delayed marriage or if this is why some never married at all to pursue a long career... rise to senior roles, or remain financially independent?

Was it by choice? Circumstance? Or by law?

It turns out there really was a law. In 1931, during the Great Depression, the New Zealand Government passed the Finance Act 1931 (No 4). Hidden in its education provisions was section 39, which gave authorities the power, with ministerial approval, to terminate the employment of women teachers who married. In the public service, related resign-on-marriage rules also kept many married women out of permanent work. Together, these policies forced many women to weigh marriage against career, and they reflected not only economic anxiety but also deep assumptions about women’s place in the home.

When I first read the clause, my stomach dropped. But then another thought followed: were people, in their time, trying to solve a different problem — spreading scarce work during a crisis — and not seeing what it would cost women?

Here is a blog of my history hunt that took me from William Downie Stewart Jr’s Depression-era pragmatism to Arthur Kinsella’s post-war modernisation... and taught me that it wasn't just social norms that shaped the way women lived, but lawes have had a profound impact on women. My reflection on economic depression policies to “free up jobs for men”) and moral expectations (to keep married women at home...

By Roselyn Fauth

Tanner Brothers Limited, Stafford St looking North, Timaru, N.Z. (c.1911-1914). Hocken Digital Collections, accessed 31/10/2025, https://hocken.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/52750

It started, as many good stories do, with a walk through the cemetery... During the lockdowns I often wandered among the old headstones, noticing names I’d never really stopped to read before. One in particular stood out — Richard Turnbull. His monument was tall and confident, and as I would later discover, so were the buildings that carried his name. That quiet walk sparked a history hunt that led from the cemetery gates into the heart of Timaru, where generations of merchants, architects, and families helped shape one of the town’s most familiar corners.

As I followed Turnbull’s story through the archives, another name kept appearing — Gabites. Sometimes written Gabities or Gabitites, the name was once part of Timaru’s daily language. Before the Oxford Buildings rose on that corner in 1924, locals knew the busy junction of Stafford and George Streets simply as Gabites Corner...

 By Roselyn Fauth

Mary Hepzibah Turnbull (Book Richard Turnbull a Timaru Pioneer) Richard Turnbulls Chair  South Canterbury Museum-CN-6108. 

Right Clarkson and Turnbulls wooden store on the Corner of what is now Stafford Street and George Street. The Turnbulls Home was next door.

Sometimes, connecting to history begins with an object. For me it was a monument at a cemetery and then it was a chair.

While browsing the South Canterbury Museum’s online archive and searching for “Turnbull,” I came across a photograph of a chair labelled as Richard Turnbull’s. I included this in a pull up banner for D.C Turnbull & Co when they celebrated their 130 year milestone of business. The timeline absorbed a lot of time, but I really enjoyed the deep dive and side quests over the last five years.

Recently, I have been taking Harvard University’s free course Tangible Things, which encourages looking at objects not just for what they are but for what they can represent. For a unit module I decided to revisit the chair, and pull Mary into the story so we can learn about the woman behind Richard Turnbull. Today's blog is not about the chair, it is about what the chair might have meant to Mary Hepzibah Turnbull, and using the object to connect to her story in the chapters of Timaru's past.

A quiet lockdown walk through Timaru Cemetery led to the discovery of a striking monument and the story of a remarkable man — Richard Turnbull. From his arrival in a fledgling settlement to shaping Timaru’s business, politics and port, his legacy spans over 160 years and still echoes in the buildings we stand in today. Discover how one family helped build a community.

By Roselyn Fauth

I first noticed the poster pinned to a community board — an invitation to mark the 70th anniversary of the Seafarers’ Service and March. It welcomed the community to gather, remember, and honour those who have served at sea. So, on Sunday morning, my husband Chris and I took our two girls down to the Benvenue Monument, opposite St Mary’s Church, to watch the ceremony.

I must confess, I didn’t know much about it. For years, I’d thought our local seafaring story was marked by our Deal Boatmen of the 1860s, those who rushed to the rescue at our Port, and the 1882 Benvenue disaster, the tragic shipwreck that took brave rescuers’ lives at Caroline Bay. But recently, while helping create the new history panels at the Benvenue Monument, I discovered that this annual service in Timaru connects not only to our own coastline but to a defining moment in world history: the Battle of Trafalgar and those who served.

A special thank you goes to Shirley Ashton, who kindly saved me a placemat from the Seafearing event, which included information about both the Seafarers’ Service and the Battle of Trafalgar. Reading it later over a cup of tea, I realised just how far back this story of duty, courage, and service at sea really goes.

Long before European sailors and settlers arrived, Māori navigators from nearby Arowhenua and coastal hapū were already skilled mariners, travelling and trading along these same shores in waka and whaleboats. Their connection with the ocean remains an enduring part of Timaru’s maritime story and reminds me that this coastline has always been shaped by those who read and respected the sea.

That realisation changed the way I saw the wreaths, the uniforms, and the flags fluttering in the morning breeze. What I once thought was simply a local memorial now feels like part of a much larger, 220-year story of courage, duty, and devotion to the sea...

By Roselyn Fauth 

The Bidwill Story Book and Canterbury Maps screen shot 2025

I met a staff member from Bidwill Hospital recently, and we had one of those conversations that lights a spark. She mentioned a lady whose story had almost disappeared from view, a woman who built something remarkable, whose work changed private healthcare in Timaru, yet whose name is rarely spoken today...

Beautifying project: Fine fountain (14 Jul 1979). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 19/10/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/7593

A friend, Liz Shae, sent me an interesting email today. It simply said, “This could be a good project for WuHoo.” Attached were a couple of newspaper clippings from Aoraki Heritage and some photos from the South Canterbury Museum. Liz had noticed something odd.

The beautiful fountain that once stood proudly at the entrance to Timaru Hospital has completely disappeared. There is no sign of it today. No plaque, no trace, no explanation. So where did it go?...

By Guest writer: Graeme Gunn 2025
Formerly employed by Opus International Consultants, which later became WSP

Graeme helped lead the massive project to digitise the nation’s historic aerial survey films for Land Information New Zealand, safeguarding nearly 650,000 fragile images originally captured by New Zealand Aerial Mapping. Joining the project around 2016

A screen shot from the Retrolens website, which is "your gateway to historical aerial imagery". The platform provides access to a vast collection of historical aerial photographs. Retrolens is made up of a treasure trove of aerial photographs that have been taken since the 1936 through to 2005. It is a New Zealand Crown archive and contains 500,000 images. Historical Image Resource came about as the result of a scanning project that was started in 2015 by partnerships between the Local Government Geospatial Alliance (LGGA) and Land Information New Zealand (LINZ). 

One of the best ways to connect to history is to look back at old aerial photos — and thanks to the incredible Retrolens archive, we can do that from our screens, in astonishing detail. I often find myself zooming in on Timaru and the District’s past, tracing the shape of long-lost streets, and even peering into the vege gardens of early settlers to get an idea of how people lived back then.

So when I discovered that the images I love to explore were made possible through years of dedicated scanning and preservation, I reached out to Graeme Gunn, a former employee of Opus International Consultants (now WSP). Graeme spent the later part of his career working on the monumental project to digitise New Zealand’s historic aerial survey films — the very archive that now lets us fly back through time.

Here’s Graeme’s story — one that soars through decades of aviation, photography, and quiet dedication, capturing how our country was mapped from above and lovingly preserved for generations to come...

By Roselyn Fauth

Timaru, circa 1883, Dunedin, by Burton Brothers. Purchased 1999 with New Zealand Lottery Grants Board funds. Te Papa (O.034093).

The Dominion Hotel – A Cornerstone of Timaru

Up by the Loop Road, where Bay Hill meets Stafford Street and the sea light hits the stone, stands one of Timaru’s most enduring landmarks.

Long before Stafford Street took shape, this land by the Bay was part of the coastal routes of Ngāi Tahu. The Dominion’s story is one layer among many — a place where people have always paused, gathered, and looked toward the sea...

Help Us Choose the Memorial Rock to Honour Those Who Rest in Unmarked Graves

Did you know more than 700 people, including stillborn babies, immigrants, and early settlers, are buried in unmarked and pauper graves at the Timaru Cemetery?

By Roselyn Fauth

Government Report "Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1875" - AJHR 1875 I H 12a 7. The great thing about this document is that it contains authentic voices from government correspondence — especially Marine Engineer John Blackett’s 1874–75 memoranda — which give you factual grounding and period tone. Below are the key elements we can weave into the blog (either as direct quotes, reworded extracts, or background context).

When you first open the .pdf Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1875 — H–12A: Further Papers Relative to the Introduction of Immigrants, it doesn’t look like much after a quick scroll through the pages. A set of tables. A handful of letters. The kind of bureaucratic paperwork that would have once sat in a file room. But when you slow down and look closely, this unassuming government report helps to reveal part of Timaru's port story  in context with the country, an insight into progress, power, politics, and persistence. I see a young colony deciding who gets infrastructure, who gets ignored, and how small coastal towns like Timaru had to fight to be seen...

By Roselyn Fauth

At first glance the cemetery looks like neat rows of stones. Look closer and you notice the gaps, not because there are no graves, but because some people never received a marker at all. I never noticed that before. Once you’ve seen it, though, you can’t unsee it.

I’ve been looking for Ann. She died 165 years ago. She was the mother of the first recorded European baby born in Timaru. We know when she died, but no one knows where she is. I can’t find her.
And that not knowing has pulled me deeper than I expected, into maps, minutes, and memories of people I’ve never met.

The Timaru Cemetery, first established in the 1860s, is one of the earliest public memorial landscapes in the region. Its monuments, from early settler graves to ornate family plots, show how the community chose to remember the people who shaped early Timaru....

By Roselyn Fauth

I had a fantastic conversation with a friend today who taught me a new word: presentism. 

I’ve always known the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but I’d never thought about what it means to be careful about judging a person by their time.

It made me think about how we see the past, how every generation looks back through its own lens, deciding what to keep, what to question, and what to learn from.

Sometimes, when I’m walking through the Timaru Districs Cemeteries or read about people who helped shape our city, I catch myself wondering... were they good, or just good for their time? Would they recognise our values today, or find us strange for holding them?

Those kinds of questions don’t have easy answers, but I do think they are worth asking. Because when we look back, we are learning about ourselves as well as studying history....

By Roselyn Fauth

Two portraits of two Timaru Mayors, here is my reflective heritage essay exploring leadership and tall poppy culture through the lives of James Craigie, Mayor of Timaru Borough Council: 1902–1913, and Muriel Hilton, Mayor of Timaru Borough Council: 1959–1962. They were two Timaru mayors who led in very different eras but shared the same courage to serve, stand tall, and lift others. Images: James Craigie South Canterbury Museum 2016011031. Mrs M E Hilton South Canterbury Museum 2016011041.

They never knew each other, yet I bet both carried the weight of a growing Timaru city on their shoulders.

James Craigie and Muriel Hilton led Timaru in different era's, in different ways. Decades later, their stories ask us the same question: how do we lead with courage, care, and kindness in a world that doesn’t always reward it?

Every community has its own microculture of service and vision, and these two mayors are an interesting example of this. One an Edwardian visionary who built for progress and beauty, the other an Elizabethan mid-century trailblazer who led with care.

I have done my best to learn more about them, though it is tricky — without experiencing or truly understanding the eras they lived in, I can only reflect as thoughtfully as I can through the lived experience I have. We can understand people within their time while also reflecting on what their choices mean to us today. Their stories are more than politics; they invite us to think about what it means to belong, to serve, and to keep believing in a community. I wonder if they ever felt lonely or frustrated, or if they sometimes felt that people didn’t always believe in them.

Here is my blog about the two mayors, and my attempt to make sense of New Zealand’s “tall poppy syndrome,” a social phenomenon where people who achieve success, stand out, or show confiden...

By Roselyn Fauth

So, I came across a digital booklet in the Aoraki Heritage Collection... a 1969 publication titled Trinity Presbyterian Church Timaru, N.Z. 1865–1969: A Historical Record of the First 104 Years. Written for the church’s centennial, it carried the measured tone of mid-century reflection — when history was often told through institutions rather than through personal voices. I was interested because I had been on a deep dive into a impressive looking church that used to stand on Barnard Street that is no longer there. While on the hunt for Trinity, I learned about Rev. George Barclay (1835–1908).

Interestingly, the booklet called him “the father of education in South Canterbury.” I was curious, what did he do to earn a title like that in the 1860s? And what could his story reveal to us now, more than 160 years later, as education once again stands at the edge of evolution?

Join me on my latest history hunt, a side quest from looking for Trinity, and learning about a young minister in a new British Colony...

By Roselyn Fauth – with information from the Fraser Park Development Trust Facebook series (Parts 1–3)

Resting here are Charlton Simon Fraser (1852–1939), founder of organised rugby in South Canterbury; his wife Mary Ann (Minnie) Fraser (née Wright); and two of their children, Eric John Freeland Fraser and Eva Beryl Fraser. The headstone also bears the names of their sons Captain Douglas Playfair Fraser and Corporal Geoffrey Erle Fraser, who died exactly one year apart — 20 September 1915 and 1916 — serving with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the First World War. Together, this family’s story bridges Timaru’s civic beginnings, its sporting pride, and its sacrifices for New Zealand. SCRFU meeting of 3 May 1926, motion by Father Kerley, seconded by Mr C. Clarkson, renaming the grounds to Fraser Park

Let's start paying our respects to the family beneath the headstone

Resting together in the Timaru Cemetery are Charlton Simon Fraser (1852–1939), founder of organised rugby in South Canterbury; his wife Mary Ann (Minnie) Fraser (née Wright); and two of their children, Eric John Freeland Fraser and Eva Beryl Fraser. Their headstone also bears the names of their sons Captain Douglas Playfair Fraser and Corporal Geoffrey Erle Fraser — brothers who died exactly one year apart, on 20 September 1915 and 1916, serving with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the First World War.

I have noticed this grave many times, it is in a prominant location, near the cemeteries original entrance, on the edge of the drive through. The Frasers story is a really interesting one, that weaves the beginnings of Timaru’s civic life, its sporting pride, and our countries sacrifices for New Zealand in war... and is remembered today in the naming of our redeveloped Fraser Park...

By Roselyn Fauth

The old blue stone Gleniti School and Library. Designed by Maurice de Harven Duval, a French or Belgian architect who worked in South Canterbury between 1877 and 1895.  After the new Gleniti School opened in 1975, the old stone building was leased to the South Canterbury Arts Society, who continue to use it today. The building is a Category A heritage item, recognised for its history, architecture, craftsmanship, and cultural significance. The school opened in July 1879 with more than 60 pupils. Mr Walker was the first headmaster. - Photography By Roselyn Fauth

Most country schools of the 1870s were put up in timber. That made sense at the time. Timber was quick, cheap and practical. The trouble is that wooden buildings do not always last. Many of those early classrooms have been lost to fire, weather or redevelopment. Gleniti is different. In January 1879 the Waiiti School committee gathered at the home of T W Fyfe. They asked for their new school to be built in stone. Fyfe was a local quarryman, and it is easy to imagine his influence. That simple decision gave the school a future. Instead of vanishing like so many others, the Gleniti School is still with us almost 150 years later...

By Roselyn Fauth based on my great aunts account.

Imagine this. It is 1913. You are a young mother in England. Women cannot yet vote in the UK. The first World War looms on the horizon... and you decide to board a ship to New Zealand with your eight-month-old baby in your arms to join your husband on the otherside of the world, (18,500 kilometres) with a £26 fare.

That mother was Sarah Cloake (nee Couling), and her baby was Mary, my grandfather Harry’s big sister. In September 1913 Sarah left Devon with Mary in a cabin shared with six women on the S.S. Corinthic. She was seasick for the entire six-week journey, and strangers took turns caring for Sarah's baby. They were sailing to a country they had never seen, to join Bertie Cloake who had already gone ahead to chase his dream of farming in Canterbury and make a head start.

I often wonder what went through Sarah’s mind on that voyage. The Titanic had sunk only the year before. Did she worry her ship would make it? Did she stare through the porthole trying to picture what lay ahead? Did she dream of the farm life Bertie had promised her, or ache for the streets of Devon and the family she had left behind? What did it feel like to carry a baby across oceans, sick and exhausted, needing strangers to keep her child alive? And what must it have been like, after all that waiting, to finally step off the ship in Wellington, to see Bertie again, and take her first breath of New Zealand air?

My dad Geoff Cloake, has a precious letter written by his aunty, Mary Cloake, my grandfather Harry’s sister. It is the only piece of writing we have from a relative who set down their story in their own words. In Mary’s voice we hear more than just facts. She described what she saw and how it felt. This blog is built from her account, her words in quotes, woven with what Mary's has taught me about her. By reflecting on Mary I have learned so much more about myself.

So here we go, enjoy this story about Mary, the baby once cared for by strangers at sea, who grew up to care for others strangers babies. It's a story that belongs to our family, and to Timaru and New Zealand history too.

“I was born in Newton Abbott near Torquay, Devon England on 18 June 1912. Dad’s lifelong ambition was to emigrate to New Zealand and buy a farm. Dad sailed for New Zealand on the S.S. Corinthic. My mother and I followed on 13 September 1913.” — Mary Cloake

The journey began with a dream...

By Roselyn Fauth

From left to right, Jack Clarke, George Graham, and Tom Fyfe, The Plumber Who First Climbed Aoraki, the day after their successful climb of Aoraki/Mt Cook on Christmas Day 1894 - George Mannering via Teara.govt.nz / The-Dominion-Post

On Christmas Day 1894, while families across New Zealand gathered for roast dinners and hymns, a young plumber from Timaru stood on the summit of Aoraki/Mt Cook.

Tom Fyfe wasn’t born into privilege, nor did he chase fame. From a bluestone schoolhouse in Gleniti to the roof of New Zealand, he carved a path that would inspire generations of climbers — including Sir Edmund Hillary....

By Roselyn Fauth

Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns,[a] was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns

At the gates of Timaru’s Botanic Gardens you can wave to a marble poet. He’s there to greet you, though he never once set foot in New Zealand. For years I thought our Robbie Burns statue was something uniquely Timaru — until a Facebook post from Ballarat popped up in my feed, and there he was again! I soon learned that Robbie stands in many corners of the world. So why did our town choose to honour Robert “Rabbie” Burns — the ploughman poet of Scotland — with pride of place in the park? The answer stretches from the heart of Ayrshire to the clay soils of South Canterbury, weaving together heritage, identity, and community memory, a bit like the threads of a tartan kilt....

Andrew Fyfe, NZ centenary: Invaluable community service by St John Ambulance (23 Mar 1985). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 03/10/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/7275.

Did you know Timaru helped shape the Red Cross in New Zealand, or that our St John volunteers carried more than 400 influenza patients during the 1918 epidemic? My latest history hunt began with Andrew Fyfe and ended up in Jerusalem, Malta, and right back at Caroline Bay, uncovering the women of St John whose stories are too often left in the margins.

Sometimes a story takes you places you never expect. I was digging into the Fyfe family recently, a family whose name threads through Timaru’s history in surprising ways. The Fyfes were connected to the blue stone quarries that built our landmarks, involved in schools where they gave back to education, and known for their passion for the outdoors. Andrew Fyfe himself was a mountaineer. Their story is one of work, grit, and community service.

Somewhere in the muddle of dates and details, I stumbled across a newspaper article by Andrew Fyfe, published in 1985, marking the centenary of St John in New Zealand. Here was another Fyfe, this time recording the story of St John Ambulance in South Canterbury.

That article included som interesting detail about Timaru’s St John story... the cycle stretchers, the bitter disputes over who controlled the Citizens Ambulance Hall, and the haunting days of the 1918 influenza epidemic. And it sent me on a history hunting journey: one that began with Fyfe, and has now carried me all the way back to Jerusalem, forward through Malta and Britain, and back again to Timaru’s streets. Along the way, I found myself looking for the people in the margins of history, especially the women to learn more about who we are today, by reflecting on our past...

By Roselyn Fauth 

Map of Fyfe's quarry and a photo of the stone being shifted out of the quarry.

I was on my way into the Timaru Botanic Gardens through the Gloucester Gates, heading for the Robbie Burns statue to photograph links to our Scottish past, when I bumped into my friend Leanne Penderville. We first met as volunteers on the CPlay Caroline Bay Playground project, and now she works as a real estate agent with Raine & Horne. Leanne told me about a house that had just come on the market – a bluestone home dating back to the 1860s. She kindly emailed me through the details, and I was astonished to realise it was the Fyfe family’s house. 

A few years earlier I had dug into the history of the Fyfes while researching Gleniti and Centennial Park. To discover that their family home is still standing today, and now looking for new owners, I was keen to revisit my research and add in the information collected by the real estate agents.

And that brings us to David Fyfe — a young Scot whose fascinating journey took him from a shipwreck in the icy seas off Newfoundland to the sweet waters of Otipua Creek, and the bluestone quarries that helped shape Timaru.

While I have done my best, you will see that this turned into a few side quests, and then I got in a bit of tangle, so if there are any Fyfe's out there who can help, I would be most greatful. I am not sure I have this correct.

By Roselyn Fauth

Photographic albulm, Cultural facilities, Industrial facilities, Commercial facilities, Government facilities, Mountains, Lakes & ponds, Beaches, Churches, Cities & towns and Harbour. Timaru, New Zealand, circa 1910, Timaru, by William Ferrier, F.W. Hutton & Co. Gift of Lord Kitchener, 1960. Te Papa (AL.000566) Te Papa 

I grew up waiting for the light. That will sound familiar to anyone who had a photographer in the family. We would pile into the Ford Falcon, six of us crammed in, and head off on day trips to explore and capture the light in photographs. Often we found ourselves in some random roadside spot while Dad (Geoff Cloake) stood there with his Olympus film camera, waiting for the perfect light to shine. My mum was a patient woman, often keeping four restless kids entertained while the sun dipped or the clouds shifted to where the light was just right.

Dad used slide film. It was expensive, and so unlike me and my click-happy phone, he had to be careful, deliberate, making sure each frame counted. There was no instant gratification either. Every shot had to be processed by Langwoods Studios before he could see what he had captured. I think that patience rubbed off on us. It taught me the value of looking, hunting, and of waiting, of noticing.

I wonder if waiting for the light links me to William Ferrier's kids. While my dad stood with slide film loaded carefully into his camera, William was probably out with heavy wooden cameras, lugging fragile glass plates coated in gelatin emulsion. Each one was expensive and delicate, each exposure a commitment. Like Dad, he could not afford to be careless. Both of them had to look first, to really see, and then decide if the moment was worthy of a frame. That thread of patience and restraint connects their generations to mine, even if my click-happy phone feels a world apart.

I also wonder if William Ferrier’s family had the same experience...

Francis John Wilson is a local legend, yet for some reason not many people know his name or his contribution he made to Timaru’s built heritage. I have been on a deep dive lately and found it fascinating to uncover the history, the impact, and the influence he had on our town in the 1870s. What makes the story even more interesting is how his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have carried that legacy forward. Today the Wilson family still make the news for their architectural achievements. This is what I discovered...

I have grown up bicultural, half Dutch and half Kiwi, with six generations of family roots in Timaru. When my sister took a DNA ancestry test we discovered something new. While half Dutch, we are also a quarter Scottish. That surprised us. We had never identified with Scotland, but suddenly I wanted to know more. Where in our city could I see that part of my past reflected?

So I started a history hunt. I made a list of Scottish people, places, and monuments in Timaru, and one name kept coming up. Alice Shand, one of the four sisters who founded Craighead School for Girls in 1911....

Trinity Church on Barnard Street, Timaru New Zealand by Muir and Moodie Te Papa C014369. The first Presbyterian church in Timaru, built of bluestone, opened on 7 July 1867. It stood in Barnard Street and was replaced, on an adjacent site. The first Trinity church (bluestone, 1867) was built on land gifted by the Rhodes Brothers (Robert Heaton Rhodes and George Rhodes).

Imagine walking down Barnard Street in the late 1800s. Ahead of you rises a neoclassical temple. Tall white columns, a triangular pediment, heavy masonry that looked more like Athens or Rome than a colonial port town. This was Trinity Presbyterian Church, one of Timaru’s most ambitious landmarks, and the mother church of Presbyterianism in South Canterbury.

Today, nothing remains of the building, but Scottish Hall with links to its founders, a car park and a used furniture store. The building that once echoed with congregations, baptisms, weddings, funerals, and generations of Sunday worship has vanished. My hunt for its story has become a side quest into its memory. Who were the people who built it, what faith did they carry with them from Scotland, and what choices led to its demolition?

By Roselyn Fauth

Grave of William and Mary Ann Fitzgerald. - Timaru Cemetery - Right Grosvenor Hotel. - Photos Roselyn Fauth

When you stand at the corner of Cains Terrace and Beswick Street today, the Grosvenor Hotel still looks every inch the grand old lady of Timaru. Her curved corner peers out to the port, oriel windows lean forward like watchful eyes, and almost forty metres of brick and plaster frontage anchors the block. She has been a landmark here for more than a century, hosting premiers and princes, rugby men and housie nights, art openings and union raffles. The façade has had its coats of paint, and the interiors their refurbishments, but the bones of James Turnbull’s Edwardian Baroque design remain much as they were in 1915.

I went digging into her story, expecting to find architects and publicans, queens and rugby clubs. I found all of that, but I also found a woman called Mary...

By Roselyn Fauth

The Grosvenor Hotel standing today, you’re looking at a building that has been a Timaru landmark for 110 years (and a site of hospitality for nearly 150). This is a view of the exterior in 1916, photographed by Frederick George Radcliffe. Timaru. F.G.R. 5553 - National Library 1/2-006876-G & hocken.recollect.co.nz/52786 No known copyright. 

People still say the Queen stayed at the Grosvenor Hotel. It is sort of ish true... what actually happened in 1954 I think tells us a lot about the people of Timaru District, the care, the pride, and the work of many people who pulled their resources together to make Elizabeth's visit to the Grosvenor one fit for a Queen. 

When you stand at the corner of Cains Terrace and Beswick Street today and look up, you too might think she's a beauty. The Grosvenor Hotel still lifts her rounded chin to the sea, oriel windows leaning out looking to the port. There's an impressive almost forty metres of frontage on each street. The Grosvenor is grand and familiar to everyone. Over a century the walls have hosted premiers and princes, rugby men and housie nights, union raffles and art openings. While the facade and interior bones have been remodelled, repainted, the building is very close to the original design that was intended. 

Learning about the Grosvenor has taught me about our people of the past... here is a blog about what I have learned so far...

By Roselyn Fauth

It is hard to imagine Timaru without the Landing Service Building. Today it stands as a familiar landmark, the last of its kind in Australasia, yet forty years ago its future was anything but certain. What we now treasure as part of our identity almost became a carpark.

Reading the 1984 article about the Landing Service Building feels like eavesdropping on the very moment Timaru began to shift its attitude to heritage. It was published a year after I was born, and I remember hearing my family and parents friends discussing the plight of the building as a child. I don't remember it being anything else than what it is today, and am grateful to the work that was done by many volunteers to save it and repurpose for us all to enjoy today. The Libraries online archive has a fantastic newspaper record online, and reading through one in particular explained the tension.

On one side was the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, giving the building a B classification for its architectural and historical value. On the other was the Timaru City Council, which owned the site, eyeing development and even demolition... To save our heritage or build new... a debate that seems to always be relevant... so here is my blog, sparked by that article from 40 odd years ago, and how what was written still relevant to us today...

Here you can see the passenger landing service sheds with signal station on the cliff above at Timaru - Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1691-114

Looking at our coastline today, it is easy to forget that Timaru did not begin with a breakwater, silos and cranes... and to remember  that it began on a shingle beach where every barrel, bale and bundle had to be dragged across the waves from Ship to shore through the surf on small surf boats. Before the harbour was tamed, people risked their lives in these small open boats to connect this place to the rest of the country and the world. Māori from Arowhenua were the first boatmen, followed by Deal boatmen from England, working alongside European settlers like the Rhodes brothers, Captain Henry Cain and Henry Le Cren. Out of danger and determination grew Timaru’s first landing service... at the time it was a fragile lifeline but it helped turn a scattered village into a town.

Read on to uncover how this early surf-beaten service shaped Timaru’s identity, what it cost, and what it still teaches us today....

By Roselyn Fauth

The first St Mary's School Room on Bank Street (about where the red cross hall is), was completed in MArch 1879, wooden and plaster building was designed by architect Francis Wilson, From Post Office Tower looking south Timaru circa 1904 Dunedin by Muir and Moodie Te Papa C014394. Its replacement was built beside the church and opened 7 September 1929.

Some many not realise that St Mary’s Parish Hall on Church Street has a story all its own... Opened in 1929, it carries a foundation stone proudly dated 25 November 1928 — something interestingly that the neighbouring church can't be found. With its Gothic battlements, oriel window, and carved cross, the hall is a beauty in its own right, even if it can be overshadowed by its big sister, St Mary’s Church.

I was surprised to come across a newspaper article explaining that St Mary's Hall as we know it, wasn’t actually the first hall. Half a century earlier, a vast wooden building on Bank Street could seat 470 people, serving as both temporary church and Sunday School. This “forgotten sister” once held the heart of parish life for nearly a century... Again, another wonderful example of community legacy, where the the people of St Mary’s parish themselves paid for the hall. Although not everyone takes part in the religious side of the Church, countless children and adults have benefited from the hall as a community venue for almost a hundred years.

So, here's my blog to help you learn its story and the history of the hall we know of today...

By Roselyn Fauth

The Timaru District Councils Hall of Fame recognised 80 people as of September 2025. Established in 1986 to honour people of national or international significance with strong ties to South Canterbury. Today it recognises 80 inspiring individuals, with their stories displayed at the Timaru District Council chambers, online, and on the Bay Hill sign maintained by the Lions Club. timaru.govt.nz/hall-of-fame  - Graphic Design by Roselyn Fauth

Whose stories matter? Does our Hall of Fame help us connect to inspiring people from our district’s past? Do we need to add more names to the list, people who meet the nomination criteria but have not yet been recognised? And for those who do not fit the rules, do we need another way of honouring them?

These questions have been sitting with me ever since I looked closely at the Timaru District Council’s Hall of Fame. As of September 2025, there are eighty people recognised. Only seven of them are women.

The list is impressive. Leaders, politicians, scientists, inventors, athletes, artists, volunteers, advocates, war service... They deserve their place. Reading through the profiles has been fascinating. Each person achieved something remarkable in their field, whether in public service, professional life, sport, voluntary service, or the arts. Every one of them is deserving of their place. But the imbalance made me pause. Is it because women did not achieve? Or is it because their stories were not recorded, valued, or remembered?

A cemetery wander turned into a hunt for hidden voices has changed my view... I never expected a walk through the cemetery in lockdown to change the way I see myself, my community, and even the history of Timaru. But that is exactly what happened...

By Roselyn Fauth

The grave of Janet Meikle (Wright) (1865 - 1906), Timaru Cemetery - Photo By Roselyn Fauth 2025

Did you know New Zealand’s very first car fatality happened right here in Timaru? A farmer’s wife, a brand-new motorcar, a steep farm track... and a tragedy that marked the beginning of our country’s road safety story.

If you’ve been following my blogs, you’ll know I’ve been on a deep dive into Timaru’s whaling history. What started with the early 1830s whalers has led me through many unexpected pathways. Long story short, this journey introduced me to Ann and Sam Williams. Sam was a whaler in Timaru in the late 1830s and returned around 1856, where he and Ann lived in the Rhodes 1851 cottage at the foot of George Street.

When Ann died in 1860, Sam remarried Mary Ann Gardner. And it was while I was on the trail of Mary Ann’s father’s grave at the Timaru Cemetery that I stumbled across an unexpected cemetery neighbour: Janet Meikle. Her name rang a bell, and then I realised how I had heard about her. While I hadn't set out to learn Janet’s story. Her grave happened to be near the one I was looking for, and curiosity (as often happens) and my love for history hunting side quests, led me to learn that Janet was the first person in New Zealand known to have died in a motor accident caused directly by a car. Now I found myself transported from the stories of the 1830s whalers, to the early 1900s world of motorcars, when a new and dangerous technology was just arriving in South Canterbury...

Guest Blog by By Julie James, Senior Heritage Librarian ​​​​

LEFT: Ivy Preston's 21st Novel of Romance (24 Aug 1973). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 09/09/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/3759 RIGHT: One of Ivy's books at the Timaru District Library. Ivy Preston authored more than forty romance novels published internationally from the 1960s through the 1990s, she is one of very few South Canterbury authors who have enjoyed such consistent international success.

From a Timaru farmhouse to the bookshelves of the world… Ivy Preston wrote more than forty romance novels that swept readers from Stewart Island to South Canterbury’s high-country stations — and on to nine different languages. She turned Dashing Rocks into a place for proposals, Caroline Bay Carnival into a stage for first kisses, and Timaru Hospital into the setting for nurse romances. Gentle, heartfelt, and proudly “moonlight and roses,” Ivy’s stories made her an international literary heroine... and one of Timaru’s own. Thank you to our guest writer Julie James for preparing the following blog to help you learn about the life and legacy of Ivy Preston... read on to learn about Ivy's legacy and pop to the Timaru Library to borrow a few of her books...

1907-10-17 The first motor wedding in New Zealand: the cars and gathering outside the church at Timaru, August 30 (actually 28), 1907. 1907-10-17. No known copyright restrictions

When I typed “Timaru” into the Auckland Libraries collection, I wasn’t expecting to uncover a national first. Yet up popped two photographs from 1907, proudly labelled as “the first motor wedding in New Zealand.” Both are captioned: “First motor wedding in New Zealand: the cars and gathering outside the church at Timaru, August 30, 1907.” Can you help hunt for history and uncover the mystery: who was the bride?

Original promotion poster for Bob's fight - courtesy of Dave Jack. Photograph Roselyn Fauth. This poster inspired the WuHoo Timaru Colourful Facts sheet.

In the heart of Timaru, on the very corner where he once lived and worked, a bronze boxer stands with fists raised. The statue honours Robert ‘Bob’ Fitzsimmons — the red-haired blacksmith’s apprentice who immigrated with his family to Timaru, grew up here and went on to become the first man in history to win three world boxing titles. Most of us know his sport legacy, but I think his story is more than victories in the ring... Find out how a shipwreck changed the course of his life forever, how the forges of Stafford Street gave him his fighting edge, and why Bob Fitzsimmons remains a lasting symbol of grit, ambition, and local pride.

Timaru's famous fighting blacksmith who won three world champtionships. Download: Bob Fitzsimmons Colourful Fact sheet and History Hunt.pdf

Follow Bob Fitzsimmons’ Story in Timaru

1. Grey Road & Church Street – Family Home (Tin Town). Look for the plaque where Bob grew up, the youngest of eleven children. His mother wanted him to be a minister, but he had other plans.

2. Timaru Main School (near Heaton Street. Bob went here briefly before leaving at age 12. He was bullied, broke his nose, and preferred playing football, wrestling, and boxing.

3. Strathallan Street – Isabella Ridley Shipwreck (1877). Bob planned to run away to sea, but the Isabella Ridley wrecked here. Ten men were saved by the rocket brigade as a thousand townsfolk watched. The wreck kept Bob in Timaru — a turning point in his life.

4. Stafford Street – The Blacksmith Forges (No. 295 and 257). Bob worked with his father and brother Jarrett, hammering iron and shoeing horses. This tough work built his strength and power for boxing.

5. Beswick Street (opposite the Grosvenor Hotel). Here Bob trained with his first mentor, Dan Lea, a respected local champion. Lea taught him how to fight with skill as well as strength.

6. Theatre Royal, Timaru. In 1880, at just 18, Bob won four fights in two nights here. He became New Zealand’s amateur champion — his first big title.

7. Corner of Stafford & Strathallan Streets – Bob’s Statue. Bronze statue by Margriet Windhausen (1987). Stands close to where he lived and worked, a reminder of Timaru’s world champion.

8. South Canterbury Museum See Bob’s anvil, letters, photos and memorabilia. The anvil he worked on helped forge his famous punching power.

9. Timaru Cemetery Bob is buried in Chicago, but his parents James and Jane are here. A place to reflect on where the family’s story began.

Beyond Timaru

10. Carson City, Nevada (USA) Where Bob beat Gentleman Jim Corbett in 1897 to win the heavyweight title. The entire contest was filmed and shown in cinemas around the world — making it the first feature-length sports movie and proving that boxing could help launch cinema as a global entertainment industry. For the first time, people from all walks of life — including women who were barred from live matches — could watch boxing on the silver screen.

11. Helston, Cornwall (England) Bob’s birthplace before his family emigrated to Timaru. Home to the Cornish roots of Tin Town. 

From Tin Town to Timaru’s streets — how a restless boy grew up in a shared Māori and settler place

Go to the corner of Gray Road and Church Street and see if you can spot a plaque commemorating the site where Bob grew up. He was born in Helston, Cornwall, in 1863 and arrived in Timaru aged ten, the youngest of eleven children. His family settled in what locals called Tin Town, around Church Street and Grey Road, where a small cluster of Cornish families put down roots.

His mother hoped he would become a minister. The restless boy had other ideas. He went to Timaru Main School, but left at twelve after rough treatment from other pupils, a smack on the nose to be precise. He preferred being outside, playing football, wrestling and sparring. Those early scraps gave him confidence. They also gave him a crooked nose and a taste for self defense and competition...

Sue Rine stands with the headstone of her great, great, great grandfathers grave at the Timaru Cemetery. Samuel Williams was born in 1818  and laid to rest in 1883. With Ann, they were the parents of William Williams the first recorded birth of a European baby born in Timaru.

In Search of Ann Williams (1823–1860)

It began with whales. I thought I was simply following Timaru’s short whaling era, two brief seasons in the late 1830s. But the deeper I went, the more rabbit holes I uncovered. And then I noticed something missing: not a single woman’s name appeared in the record. That void of information then sent me searching... and that’s how I eneded up on a journey to find the grave of Ann Williams (nee Mahoney). 

After hunting for whales, then hunting for gold, Sam eventually found Ann. Now I am trying to find her grave.

Samuel “Yankie Sam” Williams first came to Timaru as a whaler, working for the Weller Brothers. When their whaling business collapsed, Sam moved to Akaroa to work for the Rhodes brothers, and later crossed the Tasman to try his luck at Ballarat’s goldfields. I think that this is where he met Ann. Her maiden name was Mahoney (although was recorded as Manry at times). She was born 1823 in Cork, Ireland. 

Ann's father was Patrick Mahoney was born in 1801 to Ellen Casey and Danl Mahony.
Ann's mother was Catherine Rourke, her parents at this stage are unknown.

Ann ad two children with a guy nicknamed Yankie Sam. Samuel Williams was born on 21 June 1818 in Taunton, Massachusetts, USA, to Lucy Stowell, age 26, and Thomas Williams, age 27. The family research suggests he may have come off an American Whaling ship in 1840 aged 17. But I think it might have been in New Zealand a bit earlier becuase of other information showing when he was in Timaru. His daughter Rebecca was born in 1854 in Ballarat, Victoria to Ann. His son William was born on 22 September 1856 in Timaru, Canterbury to Ann.

With their daughter Rebecca, they left Ballarat, and moved to Timaru, New Zealand. By then the Rhodes family had moved inland to huge sheep station 'The Levels' the original house still stands close to Pleasant Point. The Rhodes left the basic 1851 beachside cottage at the foot of George Street, Timaru. It was built to as accomodation to link to the supply ships mooring just off shore. Where whales were onced pulled in, wool was later exported and this was the early trade that got Timaru and the region's colonial chapter started. Sam and Ann moved in, and in that simple home Ann gave birth to William Williams – the first recorded European baby born in Timaru.

I wonder if they were madly in love. Or if it was a partnership that gave them both opportunity..

Rebecca Hobbs (nee Williams) geni.com/Rebecca-Hobbs  Rebecca Williams Hobbs, Born 1854. Died 12 Feb 1896 (aged 42) Christchurch City, Canterbury, New Zealand. Burial Linwood Cemetery, Linwood, Christchurch. Plot, Block 27. Plot 115

Rebecca Williams was only six years old when her mother, Ann, collapsed and died in the doorway of the Timaru Hotel. Left with her little brother William and their restless whaler-turned-publican father, she grew up in the rough beginnings of a coastal town still finding its place between Māori history and European settlement. Hers was a life shaped by loss, movement, and resilience — from a childhood in a cottage by the sea, to marriage with a blacksmith, to raising eight children across the South Island and Wairarapa. She lived long enough to see New Zealand women win the right to vote, but like her mother before her, she was buried in an unmarked grave...

When I trace my family line back, the path runs through my grandmother Doreen Stocker, to my great-grandmother Ellen Jane Clarke, and further still to my great-great-grandmother Ellen Gardner — the woman who sailed from Ireland to New Zealand in 1864. Because of her leap of faith, I stand today as the fifth generation born in New Zealand and the 6th generation countring dow from Ellen.

She boarded a sailing ship alone in 1864, leaving her small Irish village behind. Her name was Ellen Gardner — my great-great-grandmother, and the beginning of my fifth-generation connection to New Zealand.

Ellen was born in 1838 in Ballyeaston, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, the daughter of James Gardner, a farmer at Ballyalbanagh, and Mary Jackson. She grew up in a Presbyterian farming family at a time when life in rural Ulster was tough and opportunities were few. Like many young women of her time, she faced a choice: stay, or risk everything for a chance at something new.

At twenty-six, she chose the latter...

What would you do if ten years of your life’s work disappeared overnight?

That’s what happened to my friend Lucy. Her Facebook page.... years of memories, gone. Just like that. And it made me worry, what if the WuHoo Timaru Facebook page disappeared too. Ten years of discoveries, fun facts, and free fun ideas for families... all gone.

So, I decided I’d better save it somewhere else. I started copying, pasting, and rewriting our posts into blogs on our website wuhootimaru.co.nz/blogs. I got about 50 blogs deep, when I realised something. Very few included stories of women.

Join me while I reflect on why that was, and what I have learned so far. Over these past months I have discovered that many women’s stories risk being lost, because they were never written down or passed on. Some were pioneers, inventors and trail blazers. Others lived more quietier lives and focused on their families and communities. South Canterbury itself was once one of the wealthiest regions in the country, known as the nation’s food bowl, with a port that linked us to global markets. In many ways our region has always punched above its weight.

What I now understand is that it is not only the exceptional who make ripples. It is all of us — even through ordinary, everyday tasks — shaping the world around us...

Back when the Theatre Royal and Museum were being planned as a combined hub, I had the privilege of helping the South Canterbury Museum gather stories about the history of the site... its built heritage, its social fabric, its place in Timaru’s story. I absolutely loved it. The work built on research I’d already been doing into the Turnbull family, and it opened up so many windows into how Timaru’s colonial chapter began and evolved.

Sadly, at the eleventh hour, the project was shelved, and with it my involvement. At the time, it felt like those stories had been tucked away in boxes, waiting. But a few years on, I’ve found myself returning to them — the things I learned, the surprises I uncovered, and the reflections they stirred in me.

So here it is: a blog about the neighbourhood around the Stafford Street block, the place where the Theatre Royal still stands, and what its layers of history have taught me... not only about Timaru, but about myself...

By Roselyn Fauth

The CriterionHotel was built in 1872-73, utilising Timaru bluestone, the local volcanic rock. And Right a map showing the neigbourhood in 1874. The Criterion was designed by local architect Francis Wilson, who held the lease for the hotel until 1877. There followed several ownership changes and the addition of a brick extension at the rear. It was one of the first blue stone buildings to be registered in Timaru. A contemporary of the Timaru Landing Services Building with tails of the days linking to sailors, whalers and traders.

A fire almost wiped three quarters of Timaru's wooden shops, offices, and homes off the map in 1868. Out of the ashes rose the Criterion Hotel, which quietly turned 150 last year. The Criterion was designed by local architect Francis Wilson, who held the lease for the hotel until 1877. There followed several ownership changes and the addition of a brick extension at the rear. Following a 1906 renovation by new owner Ralph Porter, it was renamed the Excelsior Tavern, which it remained through nearly all of the 20th century, ending its days as The Factory nightclub and bar and closing in 2021. In its hay day, it was at the center of the towns commercial area, pretty much on the edge of the harbour and a stones throw from the sailors reaching the shore. It had a very colourful reputation, known as a crack den, and the site of a double shooting. The hospitality trade is a different scene these days, impacted by legislation to curb binge drinking and drink driving. Today this Victorian aged buildings future now hangs in the balance...

Whenever I go past the Theatre Royal, I feel sad, looking at the closed doors with the signwritten promise, the show will go on... They’ve been shut since 2019, and while you'd think safety was the official reason, the story is a little more complicated. The government’s “shovel-ready” funding programme during COVID handed out money for projects that could spark jobs and renewal. The Theatre Royal was a lucky recipient. Yet, frustratingly for many, the doors have stayed closed as the property owner, the Timaru District Council, has spent years working out what to do next.

It makes me think about how heritage is never simple. Money might be available, but deciding how to balance history, community needs, and future vision can take longer than anyone hopes. And so, the building waits...

The story of this properties site begins with disaster. In 1868 the “Great Fire” destroyed 39 wooden buildings, wiping out three quarters of Timaru’s CBD. Locals were forced to start again, this time stronger, with stone and brick. 

A year later, in 1869, Richard Turnbull built a bluestone warehouse for his merchant grain and wool business and for others to rent space in his store. The foundation were built on the ruins of the Byrne family home that had been lost to the flames. What was a warehouse became known as Turnbull’s Hall after it was used for a civic meeting in 1873 to host around six hundred locals who crowded in to discuss harbour works and a proposed breakwater. That meeting led directly to the appointment of Timaru’s first Harbour Board. A very significant milestone in our Timaru timeline...

By Roselyn Fauth 

Timaru Yacht and Power Club at the end of Marine Parade, Timaru. Its run by volunteers, non-profit club, with the aim to support and inspire people to get onto and into the water by providing coaching and slipway access. Season October-May each year. - Photography By Roselyn Fauth

If you stand on Marine Parade in Timaru today and look across Caroline Bay, you’ll see a sweep of sand stretching further out than our grandparents ever saw. The shoreline has been on the move for more than a century... rapidly changing, steadily, carried forward by the impacts of the harbour sticking out of the coastline and interrupting the way the sediment moves up the coast. What was a stony shore in 1860s has pushed out into a shallow sandy bay that still inches out, year by year.

Back in the 1990s, coastal scientists explained that the beach was filling out ahead at six metres a year. They predicted it would reach its farthest point by the year 2000, only a stone’s throw from the Timaru Yacht and Power Boat Club’s clubhouse at the North Mole. They were right in one sense — the sand kept coming. And it hasn’t stopped. Today the beach has reshaping the way people use the bay, our Port Resort reminds us that civic works and nature, play a hand in our communities stories...

The bay has been my back yard playground growing up in Timaru. I know pretty much every inch of it, from the smell of our huts in the macrocarpa hedges, the taste of the sea after a paddle with my siblings and friends, the sound of swing chains, and I can still remember the fear and pride when I first managed the scale and descend on what was at the time and enormous playground slide. Some of my early dates with my husband Chris included souvlakis on the marine parade rocks, and a late night dip unknowingly shared with some very small penguins. Over a decade ago, Chris and I hired the Yacht Club for our engagement party. From the window you can just make out the tip of a 2023 lighthouse slide tower that  is part of the playground that Chris, and I, with a small committee, contractors and 100s of supporters worked together to create. Today we bring our children, two of many generations to play at the bay.

For all of us locals, I bet we have similar memories how the sand and sea is part of who we are. For example I have really enjoyed the memories that the older generation have shared, of recalling the ribs of a shipwreck below the Benvenue Cliffs. The 1883 disaster was dismantled for re-use and ripped apart by surging sea storms. The Benvenue Shipwreck, well what is left of it, now rests buried in its sandy grave below where we stroll with our dogs and paddle with our children.

While I reminicse, I remeber the beacon on the other side of the bay. A stunning white building, home to clubs and sea sailing enthusiasts. Its a wonderful venue. Over the last few months I have been helping to organise a fundraising event in October there on the ports side for the Aoraki Foundations, Womens Fund. I can't wait, its a stunning space.

While we were standing in the club rooms the other day, counting tables and devising the space set up for the event, I noticed trophies and flags accumulated over the years. It made me wonder about the history of the space and the people, past and present who have enjoyed its wooden bones. So here is a little blog (that seems to always end up being a short novel! Sorry... not sorry...) about the history and the stories that I have learned so far... I would love to learn more, if people would like to share flick me an email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it....

By Roselyn Fauth

About seven years ago, I got curious about the buildings in Timaru’s CBD. I had no background in architecture, and my research and history skills were, well, pretty slim. Then a family friend, Phil Brownie, handed me his Timaru heritage reports from the 1980s. I flicked through them and that was it – I was hooked. I got pretty far through my hunt. I made a list of international, national and local events, plotted them on a timeline and popped the buildings conception dates into the list. Then I looked for stories on people from all walks of life, the business owners, residents, politicians, sporting icons, sex workers, opium den workers, chinese grocers, public servants, fire starters, constable murderers, even tales of ghosts. What I have ended up with is a dense document that if taken for a mornings wander round town might leave you feeling proud of local people and places of the past too. Or in need of a beverage and carbs to refuel the brain and body.

I then found out that the council had someone reviewing the files that Phil had given me, and so I parked the project for a bit until the work of Dr Anne McCully was published and I could check my information was correct and in line with the official Timaru District Council Heritage Reports. If I am also honest... I also procrastinated on printing the big hunt, in the worry that it might overwhelm people, but I think it is time to revisit the file, tweak it and fire it off to the printers. Because I think this information even though it's dense, I think it is really interesting and relevant. If not a bit of entertainment, it tells us more about our past, and invites us think critically about who we are because of our past, with today's lens. 

For me, the bricks and mortar in our town are more than just structures. They’re like monuments of our past, bookmarks in our history that remind us who we were and where we’ve come from.

I’ll be honest – hunting for history hasn’t been easy. There have been plenty of gremlins along the way: missing records, contradictions, photos that didn’t quite match the stories. But I’ve been lucky too. Lots of people have shown me where and how to look, and without their guidance, I’d probably still be scratching my head.

Somewhere along the way, I realised I was learning just as much about myself as I was about the buildings and the people behind them...

By Carmen Haymen

Born in 1874, Maud grew up in the small railway settlements of South Canterbury, where her father worked as a stationmaster. Her childhood was marked by both promise and tragedy: gifted with a sharp mind that quickly outpaced her peers, yet surrounded by the losses of siblings taken too soon. From Pleasant Point to Timaru High School and finally Canterbury College, Maud’s educational journey was defined by resilience and brilliance. The Timaru Herald proudly reported on her string of scholarships, exhibitions, and university prizes, culminating in her Master of Arts with Honours in Greek and French in 1897.

But behind the headlines lay a fuller story: of a determined young woman navigating personal loss, danger, and the shifting expectations of colonial society, all while refusing to let her gender limit her path. While her academic excellence is super impressive, I think her story is about courage, community, and the pursuit of knowledge in an era of change. While she had no children of her own, Maud’s legacy lives on in the students she taught, opening doors for women by proving what was possible....

Around 1856 in Timaru, Ann Williams with her husband, the American whaler turned publican Samuel “Yankie Sam” Williams, and their two kids, were the first European family to permanently settle in the area. Ann helped open the town’s first hotel, welcomed new settlers, and raised eldest child Rebecca, and William “Flash Billy” Williams, who was was the first recorded birth of a European child in Timaru.

Ann collapsed and died in doorway of the Timaru Hotel on George Street in 1860 at the age of 35, leaving behind two young children and her husband. She was the mother of Timaru's first recorded European birth, and welcomed many new immigrants and early European settlers who visted and moved to Timaru. Today, her grave is not only unmarked, it is unknown. After hunting and hunting, we don't think we will ever find our where she rests. Her story, nearly lost, I believe deserves to be remembered with a small monument by her husbands headstone and grave.

Through the journey of looking for Ann, I have also learned that over 700 people rest in Timaru's cemetery in unmarked graves assigned to row 0. When people couldn't afford a burial, the government stepped in on the condition that a headstone would not be raised. I learned that this was very difficult for some families to accept and often brought shame. Some burials were held at night, some without ceremony. So with your help I would like to also remember those who rest in unmarked graves in front of a large area of lawn where many "pauper graves" as they were known are.

The Timaru District Council has approved the plan. The Civic Trust is supporting the project by enabling us to fundraise through their registered charity account. Mason Les Jones from Aorangi and Harding Memorials has generously donated his time, so we just have to raise funds to:

• Install a memorial rock with a plaque for Ann Williams, using a rock brought from her son’s Larrikin goldmining site in Kumara to be placed with her husbands grave at the Timaru Cemetery. Ann's metal casted plaque  $900 + GST $135 Total: $1,035

• Erect a second memorial boulder and plaque to honour 700+ people buried in pauper graves + those in unmarked graves in Timaru Cemetery metal casted plaque
  Option A – Medium (300x200mm plaque) $1,300 + GST $195 Total: $1,495
  Option B – X Large (400x300mm plaque) $2,600 + GST $390 Total: $2,990
  

As of 08/08/2025 we have raised $1595 of the goal $4,025... Still to Raise: $2,430

"By learning about people from our past, we better understand where we’ve come from and who we are today. Then we can make better choices for our future. These monuments will help ensure that those who rest in unmarked graves... people who shaped our city and region, are recognised and remembered with the dignity they deserve by the community." - Roselyn Fauth

Please contact me, Roselyn Fauth This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for the bank details to donate to. 

The Timaru Civic Trust is a registered New Zealand charity, so donors can file a Donation Tax Credit (Rebate) with the IRD to request 33% of their donation back. Once your donation is received, a Donation Receipt for this purpose can be provided upon request by the Trust.

Thank you so much
Roselyn Fauth

Roselyn Fauth with Les Jones from Aorangi and Harding Memorials (a long-standing member of the New Zealand Master Monumental Masons’ Association NZMMMA) planning the monuments and hunting for rocks.

By Dianne Stewart

When Edna Mabel Grant took to the skies in 1939, she became the first woman in South Canterbury to earn a pilot’s licence. While her journey was about flying – it was ultimately about defying expectations in a world for women. From knitting socks for soldiers during the First World War, to working in a Dunedin salon to pay for flying lessons, to becoming the only female air traffic controller at her RNZAF base during WWII, Edna’s life is a story of determination, courage, and inspiration. Big thank you to our guest writer Dianne for sharing his research into this phenomenal woman... 

By Roselyn Fauth

What began as a single painted mushroom fairy house grew into a 5,000-member creative movement in just one month... connecting strangers, getting people outdoors, and breaking down barriers to public art. Along the way, I learned that creativity is more powerful when the focus is on the process, not perfection, and that even the simplest ideas can transform a community and make a difference to peoples lives...

By Roselyn Fauth

The Public Library, Timaru, circa 1909, Timaru, by William Ferrier. Te Papa (O.051443)

I first read these words when I was learning about Timaru's early public library. If you look today, you can still see the words "Public Library" on the facade that is part of the Timaru District Council's building. These words belong to Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born steel magnate turned philanthropist, who spent much of his life giving away the fortune he had amassed in America. It would be easy to dismiss him as “just another rich man telling us what to do with money,” but the more I’ve learned about Carnegie, the more I’ve realised his words aren’t really about money at all. They’re about responsibility...

By Roselyn Fauth

I never set out to win awards for volunteering. In fact, most of the time I wasn’t sure I knew what I was doing. But what I’ve learned is that giving your time to the arts is about far more than murals, plaques, or galleries — it’s about building belonging.

I’ve often wondered: what really makes a place feel like home? It’s not just the houses or the roads... it is the people that make a home. Strip away the murals, the libraries, the galleries, the plaques, and the playgrounds, and you’d be left with roads, pipes, and buildings — but not a community.

People sometimes ask me why I give so much of my time to the arts. On the surface, it might look like a “nice-to-have” — exhibitions, concerts, murals, heritage plaques, or even playground designs that carry creative storytelling. But the truth is, the arts are not a luxury. They are essential.

I know this because I’ve seen it firsthand, again and again, as a volunteer. And being part of that story has taught me a lot about myself.

So here is a blog about what I have learned through volunteering, why I am so passionate about the arts, and how I hope the recent awards that I have recieved could inpsire others...

By Roselyn Fauth

I never expected a lockdown walk through the cemetery to change the way I see myself, my community, and even the history of Timaru. But that’s exactly what happened.

Over lockdown, our family spent quite a bit of time at the cemetery. We’d find interesting graves, and I’d go home and start digging into their stories. That was the beginning of a rather random hunt for history — largely self-guided at first, with books that smelt of decaying animal glue and had been printed more than a hundred years ago.

As time went on, I reached out and learned more from others. And when I panicked that Facebook might one day delete my old posts, I began rewriting them as blogs. That’s when I realised something: most of the stories I’d been telling were about men. So my recent side quest has been to pull the women from the margins and bring them onto the page. To give them voice, visibility, and space. And by doing that, here’s what I have learned so far...

By Roselyn Fauth

Airini Elizabeth Woodhouse (1896–1989), only child of Robert Heaton Rhodes and Jessie Bidwell of Blue Cliffs Station, was a Timaru farmer, community leader, historian, and author. Granddaughter of early settler George Rhodes, she contributed to numerous voluntary organisations and left a lasting legacy through her writings, copies of which are held in the Aoraki Heritage Collection.

Some people leave their mark in ways you only notice years later. For me, that’s how it was with Airini Woodhouse. Her name kept slipping into my research... a mention in a centennial programme, a credit in a local history book, a decision made in a committee decades ago. At first I didn’t think much of it. But after a chat with my former Art History teacher I realised there was more to Airini, and that I would enjoy learning about her.

The more I looked, the more I realised her life has touched almost every corner of South Canterbury... from the way we protect Māori rock art to the histories we read, the wool we class, and even the names on our maps. What started out as a hunt for her history to learn more about the women from our past has ended up as something closer to a fan-girl blog. I think she was phenomenal, and I suspect that if you didn’t know about her before, you will by the time you finish reading.

 By Roselyn Fauth

Demolished 1990s of the old CFCA Canterbury Farmers Co-operative Association building fronting on Beswick St. Timaru, New Zealand, by Muir & Moodie. Te Papa (C.014369)

On the afternoon of 5 February 1908, Timaru’s largest store went up in flames. I picture myself standing on Strathallan Street as the biggest fire since 1868 tore through the Canterbury Farmers’ Co-operative Association’s flagship building. Flames roared through the drapery windows, smoke billowed down the block, and the heat was so fierce it would have singed my face from across the road. Within hours, the pride of the main street was reduced to scorched brick and twisted iron.

It was not just a fire. It was the sudden loss of a building that had been created out of collective determination. The CFCA was built by and for the farming community and stood as a physical expression of confidence in the future. Its destruction was a shock that rippled far beyond the charred remains. Looking back now, this moment offers more than a story from the past. It shows us where we have come from, speaks to who we are as a community, and asks us to consider how the choices we make about our built environment will be felt by those who walk these streets long after us...

By Roselyn Fauth A Painting That Stops You in Your Tracks.
Inspired by a Facebook post by the Aigantighe Art Gallery, you an also see her painting here: pressreader/the-timaru-herald (I haven't included her painting as I was unsure about the copyright).

Sometimes you stand in front of a painting and realise it carries more than just the scene on the canvas. It holds layers of story. Place. People. Memory. That’s what happened when I stopped in front of Mt Sefton by Esther Hope at the Aigantighe Art Gallery. It’s part of Aoraki Tangata Whenua, an exhibition of Southern Alps landscapes from the gallery’s collection, now in its final days. The brushwork is delicate, yet the mountain feels powerful. Freezing. Alive.

When I read about Esther Hope, I feel a thread of connection to my own life. She grew up with art at the heart of her home, guided by a parent who understood the world through images. Her mother held a paintbrush and her grandfather held a camera. My father holds a camera and my mother creates with her hands through cross stitch. I think both Esther and I learned early how to notice the way light falls across a landscape, or how a story or a message can be shared through art. That shared inheritance of creativity feels like a link that crosses generations.

To me, Esther’s life and art show that the landscapes we inherit are shaped by both nature and people, and that when you truly know a place, it changes how you see and represent it. Her story invites us to look beyond the paint… to see a woman shaped by the high country and her family’s place in its history. Someone who used the opportunities of wealth and education to travel, study, serve, and paint. What we’re left with is not just a mountain in watercolour, but a record of a moment in time, framed by the social and economic world that made it possible.

Read on to learn more about this painter’s story.

By Roselyn Fauth

I was invited to be a guest speaker at the Bridge Club venue on Wilson Street. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I discovered it is home to one of the oldest surviving women’s clubs in New Zealand!

Founded in 1904 by women who travelled into Timaru from their country farms, the South Canterbury Women’s Club became the group to belong to. Hats and gloves were the order of the day, and membership offered more than just tea and chatter - it was and still is a lifeline of connection, support, and community.

As they shared their history with me... a story that stretches from a George Street tearoom to more than a century of friendship, connection, and social change, I realised the importance of their group and many like them. It is part of a long tradition of women creating their own spaces for connection, support, and leadership.

Created by seven friends in a Timaru tearoom, it has adapted through wars, social change, and shifting fashions, yet its purpose remains the same. Its story is a reminder that such spaces only survive if new generations join and carry their legacy forward. What I learned is that for one woman, a club like this can be a lifeline... a place of friendship, encouragement, and belonging, where the wisdom and stories of others become part of your own journey.” My heartfelt thanks to the South Canterbury Women’s Club for inviting me to share my story and for so generously sharing theirs with me..

“This journey into the history of the South Canterbury Women’s Club has taught me that connection is timeless. The details may change, the fashions, the meeting places, the world outside, but the heart remains the same. When women come together to share, support, and inspire one another, they create something that lasts far beyond their own lifetimes.” – Roselyn Fauth

Here is there story:

By Roselyn Fauth

Illustration from the book: Mary R. S. Creese and Thomas M. Creese, Ladies in the Laboratory III: South African, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Women in Science: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Scarecrow Press, 2010), p. 113. Read on line here

Have you ever looked at harakeke flax and wondered what stories it might hold? As well as cloaks and ropes, there’s a fascinating scientific yarn of cells and salt and structure, of a young woman, notebook in hand, curiously studying a wetland. I hadn’t, not until I read about Bella Dytes MacIntosh MacCallum, the first woman in New Zealand to earn a Doctor of Science. Born in Timaru in 1886, she attended Timaru Girls’ High School, then Canterbury College, earning a BA in 1908 and an MA in 1909 with First Class Honours in botany, focusing on halophyte plant adaptations to salty soil. She went on to become a British botanist and mycologist, breaking new ground for women in science.

Harakeke (Flax) Photography By Geoff Cloake

She was awarded a National Research Scholarship and used it to continue her wetland plant studies. After teaching at high schools, she completed her doctorate from the University of New Zealand in 1917 with a thesis on Phormium (New Zealand flax), titled Phormium with Regard to Its Economic Importance — a work she began in 1909 with guidance from Dr Leonard Cockayne. Her research was one of the first major scientific studies to link the biology of flax to its economic and industrial uses, helping to bridge traditional knowledge and modern science.

Why hadn’t I heard of her? She sounds amazing... she is a reminder that when education is accessible to everyone, talent and curiosity can take someone anywhere, no matter where they start. I think she is so outstanding, that we should nominate her for Timaru's Hall of Fame!

By Roselyn Fauth

Imagine a woman riding a bicycle across Waimate’s gravel roads with a satchel full of syringes, aspirin, quinine, and opium-based cough mixtures. She must have felt exhausted. As a doctor during the 1918 influenza, also known as the Spanish Flu, she might have been the only person to visit the sick that day. You can almost picture her, Dr Margaret Cruickshank, riding on to her next house call. I think she is one of the most remarkable people in our region’s history. And her twin sister was pretty awesome too.

During the Covid pandemic, we spent a fair bit of time at the cemetery with our children. It became our way of getting out of the house so my husband Chris could have some peace to work from home and concentrate on his Zoom meetings. Our girls would dress up in costumes, and together we would wander past the headstones. I would pick out interesting ones, and go home and learn about the people who rested there.

To be honest, I hadn't spent much time in cemeteries before. I never felt quite comfortable there, never truly welcome. But now, looking back, I realise it was not that the space felt unwelcoming. It was my feelings and fear of death. My mortality, and knowing one day I will lose the people I love, and that I too will be faced with grief. Visiting the graves has made me face these internal dialogues and come to terms with the inevitable, and think of bigger concepts, like why we are here, what can be our purpose and our legacy.

Timaru’s cemetery holds many stories of people and their legacy. There are graves of people who died during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and those who survived and made it through, off the back of World War One. Reading those stories gave me hope while I was trying to make sense of our own lockdown experience. By learning about the people, their struggles and resilience from the past, I learned a lot more about myself. Today’s story is about the grave of the Cruickshank twins, who rest in Waimate.

Twin sisters Margaret and Christina Cruickshank shaped the course of education, medicine and women’s leadership in South Canterbury, North Otago and across the nation. From Margaret’s heroic role in the 1918 influenza pandemic to Christina’s groundbreaking work as a science educator and principal, their legacy is powerful. A cemetery headstone, a statue in Waimate, and a motto at Timaru Girls’ High School reveal a story of courage, sacrifice and trailblazing spirit to empower women...

By Roselyn Fauth

What if I told you that a Timaru girl, born in 1866, to Scotsman, Physician and Surgeon Dr Duncan and Ann McLean from the Channel Islands, went on to shape the future of more than 8,000 young women across New Zealand, and was later honoured by the King at Buckingham Palace? Her name was Mary McLean appointed in 1898 after the fire that split Timaru High School, was the first principal of the newly established Timaru Girls’ High School. She was 32 years old when she was hired in 1898. 

She modernised curricula, introduced science, arts, music, physical education, and pushed for equal access for less academic pupils. These reforms reflected and accelerated New Zealand’s wider secondary school transformation. Her career was capped by a personal investiture at Buckingham Palace, where King George V awarded her the CBE in 1928. This honour recognised her as one of New Zealand’s foremost educators. In retirement she founded the Women’s Social Progress Movement (1929), which campaigned on temperance, censorship, women’s representation, and relief during the Depression.

She began in Timaru, a provincial town, and rose to national prominence. Mary Jane McLean never married and did not have children. Like many women teachers of her era, marriage would have meant having to resign from her profession, so she devoted her life entirely to education and public service. Her story shows how women from regional New Zealand shaped the nation. For Timaru, she is a reminder of how local schools produced leaders who influenced far beyond South Canterbury.

When I was a student at Timaru Girls’ High School, I knew the classrooms, the uniforms, the friendships... but I didn’t know the story of the woman who had stood at the very beginning of it all. Her name was Mary Jane McLean, and she was our first principal. Born here in Timaru, she went on to become one of New Zealand’s most important education leaders. She even travelled to Buckingham Palace to be honoured by King George V himself...

By Roselyn Fauth and father Geoff Cloake

Family portrait of the Clarke sisters, including Louie Johnson (née Clarke) seated on the left. Taken in Timaru by photographer P. Cuthbert. She was a respected local whose clear eyewitness account of Pearse’s 1903 powered flight became crucial to his aviation legacy, helping lift it from hearsay to credible history.

We went for a Sunday drive with our young kids and my parents. One of the stops was the Richard Pearse monument on Main Waitohi Road. The kids tried out the brass rubbing plaque there, and as we were standing beside the memorial, Dad casually told me something I had never heard before.

He had once been interviewed by the BBC. They were working on a programme about the race to be the first to fly in the world, and were searching for credible witnesses to help find the truth. That’s when he told me his great aunty was one of those witnesses.

Pearse’s story is not a simple one. For over 100 years people have argued over the dates, distances, and whether his brief hops really counted as “flights” before the Wright brothers’ famous moment at Kitty Hawk. This is not one of those arguments. This is about a woman who lived in the community, who gave her own clear account of what she saw, and who had a life full of experiences before and after that day in 1903...

 By Roselyn Fauth

"What if one of New Zealand’s most celebrated artists owed her international success not just to her own brilliance, but to a mother whose name barely appears in the record books?".  Taken at Cranmore Lodge, on the hills above Dunedin, in February 1892. Shows Isabel Hodgkins (holding Japanese sunshade), William Mathew and Rachael Hodgkins (seated), William Field (on ground). Photograph taken by Cower.http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23052643, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29682064 Public Domain

What if one of New Zealand’s most celebrated artists owed her international success not just to her own brilliance, but to a mother whose name barely appears in the record books? While Frances Hodgkins dazzled the European art world, her mother Rachel held the family together back in Dunedin... through bankruptcy, widowhood, and raising creative, capable daughters and sons in a society that I suspect didn’t expect women to become professional artists.

In a world where so many women’s contributions are overlooked or forgotten, I found myself asking: what legacy does a mother leave behind? And how might Frances Hodgkins’s path have been different without her mother Rachel?

I love the Aigantighe. In my early 20s, I joined the Friends of Aigantighe and have been a gallery supporter and volunteer for over 20 years. The collection is seriously impressive, and there are so many artworks that I could say were my favourite. From a lens as a female artist myself, Frances Hodgkins’s modernist paintings in the copllection have always caught my eye, although I need to confess I didn’t really know that much about her until a YouTube video was shared to Facebook by a friend. The story prompted me to reflect on a recent visit to the Dunedin Art Gallery. Our girls proudly brought home a free poster of Frances’s watercolour artwork Summer c1912, which is now pride of place by daughter’s bunks. I hope that the artwork on the wall that features a woman and two children, will inspire our kids to love art and create their own legacy, just like Frances Hodgkins.

I was curious: who was she, why is she celebrated, and what environment nurtured her and inspired her to create? I was also curious if she had ties or connections to Timaru. And, perhaps most of all, I wondered about the women who raised her... the mother who often lingers in the margins of Frances’s story. This is what I have learned so far... with a few side quests...

Guest Writer 04/08/2025
By: Carmen Hayman, Great GreatGreat Grandaughter

Ann Grigson. From intensions to marry project.

Strange things happen in cemeteries. I was doing a live Facebook video to invite people to help me research and write blogs when Carmen just happened to be on the other side of the cemetery walking her dog. After getting a ping in her pocket from the live notification, she popped over to introduce herself.

She shared her story of learning to research and hunting for history, and told me about her ancestor. I asked if I could share her story, and thankfully she said yes! So here we are… WuHoo Timaru’s very first guest writer on our blog: Carmen’s story of her great-great-great-grandmother, Ann Grigson. Thank you Carmen. 

Ann and her family arrived in Lyttelton in February 1860, then travelled south through Timaru before reaching Waimate on 20 February 1860. Her father, William Grigson, is noted as a “timber carter residing at Waimate”, though he died near Saltwater Creek (north of Timaru) and was buried in Timaru Cemetery. Ann married Richard Champion in Waimate in 1861 and lived there until her death in 1878.

(A note from Roselyn Fauth - WuHoo Timaru... Please note: this blog includes some difficult content, but we both feel it is important – though challenging – to share the truth so people today can reflect on it. Her story reminds me that our town’s history isn’t just names on headstones or dates in a book. It’s real people, especially women like Ann Grigson, who helped build this place through lives that were often tough and unrecognised. Sharing her story connects us not just to the past, but to the land and community we’re part of now. It’s a reminder that Timaru’s history isn’t somewhere far away – it’s right here under our feet, in our streets, and in the stories we choose to remember and tell.)

By Roselyn Fauth

Monument to Jeanie Collier. Located in a paddock on the south side of Horseshoe Bend road, Otaio. Jeanie was the first recorded woman runholder in New Zealand. She took up land in Otaio to provide her orphaned nephews with occupations. Aoraki Heritage Collection. https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/3880

My dad sent me a link the other day and asked if I had heard of Jeanie Collier. Her name rang a bell, but I had to admit it had been a while since I had thought about her. I knew she was an early farmer, one of those names that lingers in the background of South Canterbury’s story, but gosh, what a fascinating woman she was. You can even find her monument tucked away in a reserve of gum trees. She was a pioneering runholder, recognised as New Zealand’s first recorded woman to be granted her own pastoral land. And she was born around 1791!

So this is what I have learned about Jeanie. A woman ahead of her time...

By Roselyn Fauth

IN MEMORY OF ELIZABETH, THE BELOVED WIFE OF BENJAMIN GIBSON, WHO DIED AFTER A LINGERING ILLNESS ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22ND, 1875. 

Have you ever seen a headstone that makes you want to know the story behind the name? On one of my cemetery wanders I came across one for Elizabeth Gibson, who died on 22 November 1875. Her inscription calls her an affectionate wife, a devoted Christian and an earnest Sunday School teacher. It also mentions her part in the formation of the Primitive Methodist Church on Barnard Street in Timaru. That really caught my attention because the church was formally established around 1885, so her headstone suggests she was involved from the very beginning when services were likely held in borrowed halls or private homes.

The Primitive Methodist Church became an important part of local life and later evolved into the Centenary Memorial Church before joining the wider Methodist union in 1913. Women like Elizabeth were often at the heart of these early congregations, running Sunday Schools and shaping community life. I love how her headstone remembers not just her faith but also the difference she made to those around her.

I have found a few clues about her but there is still much I would like to know. Does anyone want to give me a hand hunting for her history?

By Rosleyn Fauth

When I think of inspiring women with ties to Timaru and South Canterbury, Jessie Mackay stands out. I visited Kakahu once and saw the plaque at the old school, but at the time I had no idea who she was. Like many, I walked past her name without knowing her story. Later I discovered she had once taught there and went on to become recognised as New Zealand’s first native-born poet, a fearless journalist and a suffragist who worked alongside Kate Sheppard.

It made me wonder how many other names we see but do not stop to ask about. How many local places hold stories of women who shaped New Zealand’s history? And what did she write about?

"Arica Tsunami 1868: Wood engraving by C. T. Winter from the Illustrated Melbourne Post, courtesy of the State Library of Victoria."

Well, that Civil Defence phone alert gave me quite a jump this afternoon. As of 4.11 pm, officials have issued a National Advisory for tsunami activity following an upgraded magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the east coast of Kamchatka, Russia.

The advice is clear: stay out of the water and away from beaches, harbours, rivers, estuaries and marinas. Strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges are expected that can be dangerous. Coastal inundation is not expected, but currents and surges can injure or drown people. The first activity may reach New Zealand from around 11.59 pm tonight and could continue for several hours. Civil Defence is urging people not to go to the coast to watch the waves and to follow instructions from local authorities.

Hearing that alert reminded me that this is not the first time Timaru has been connected to a tsunami. It also brought to mind one of the most dramatic years in our local history: 1868, when Timaru endured what I can only describe as a trifecta of disasters...

By Roselyn Fauth, adapted from W. Vance’s historical account

Section 1875 Map of Timaru - Strathallan Street Timaru used to be a creek and has been filled in using clay and spoil removed from the surrounding hillside.

Did you know there’s a street in central Timaru that appears on maps but has no name... and no sign? It runs from the top of LeCren Terrace, beside the South Canterbury Club, down to the waterfront behind the Miles Archer and Co / D. C. Turnbull store. Although parts of the hillside have been cut away, traces of the track remain.

This forgotten road borders one of Timaru’s most significant early commercial areas. Before it was developed, Strathallan Street itself was the bed of a creek that flowed from the old showgrounds near Elizabeth Street and Grey Road. The creek ran through the centre of Theodocia Street, crossed Canon Street near Ballantynes, continued along Stafford Street, met a smaller stream at Hay’s Buildings, and emptied into the sea near the railway crossing.

In front of the South Canterbury Museum and Perth Street, diagonally across from the Timaru Council Buildings, is the beautiful Kate Sheppard Memorial Garden. There is also a lovely camelia name for her in the garden. Photography By Roselyn Fauth 2021

Next time you walk through central Timaru, step off Perth Street and explore the peaceful space beside the South Canterbury Museum. You’ll find the Kate Sheppard Memorial Garden... a living tribute planted in white and purple in 1993 to celebrate 100 years since New Zealand women won the right to vote.

The people of Timaru created and gifted this garden to mark that historic milestone. Follow the paths and you’ll see purple and white flowers blooming in tribute to the suffrage movement’s colours. Look for the Kate Sheppard camellia, planted alongside white iceberg roses and lavender. A copper beech now rises near the centre, and curved Timaru bluestone walls frame the space...

By Roselyn Fauth 

Obituary: Joyce Guthrie- Adventurous spirit put great energy into looking after others (c 2001). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 05/08/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/7563

I was lucky enough to be shown around the Timaru Girls’ High School archives with volunteer archivist Pamela. She pulled out all kinds of gems, including a photocopy of a newspaper clipping... and obituary of an ‘old girl’ of the school: Mary Joyce Guthrie (née Macdonald). I snapped a photo, and later that evening, with a glass of wine in hand, I read it properly. What an interesting article about her life! One article turned into a search to learn more and piece together the world and time she lived in. Here’s what I learned about this remarkable Timaru woman...

The Blackett Lighthouse was originally on the Terrace, No. 7. It was later relocated to the corner of Te Weka Street and Benvenue Ave, and then again to the Benvenue Cliffs. It is a Category II structure and the Historic Places Trust.  LEFT: The Lighthouse at its current site in 2021. Courtesy of Roselyn Fauth. RIGHT: Timaru's lighthouse being relocated 1980.  Courtesy of South Canterbury Museum 2014/107.73

By Roselyn Fauth

My family home stood opposite Blackett’s Lighthouse in Timaru. For me, it was never just a landmark—it was part of my landscape, part of my childhood. When we walked past as kids, we’d sometimes knock on the door, full of hope that someone might answer. We’d wait and wait, pressing our ears to the wood, imagining footsteps. But no one ever came. Because the lighthouse was never a home.

It was a structure with one job: to give instructions to those at sea. But like many built heritage symbols, the Blacket Lighthouse's role has shifted over time. Today, it no longer performs a functional duty, it stands on its third relocation overlooking the bay above the Benvenue shipwreck burried below in the sand. At times, it has been a political icon, even a source of protest, once stirring such fury that effigies were burned in its name.

It is well documented now. A Google search will pull up technical reports, heritage listings, and newspaper articles. But like some of my recent blog posts, I am interested in what has been recorded, and curious about the people in the margins, those whose stories were moved aside to make space for infrastructure, for progress, for “official” history. People who also shaped the place all the same.

So here we go..
A story about light and darkness, Politics and protest, Architecture and argument, And the stories we find in the shadows cast by the lighthouse itself...

By Roselyn Fauth

Catherine Emily Hall (née Elspie, later Cain, known as Kate or Kitty) was the daughter of Jane (née Ellis) Cain, her step father was Captain Henry Cain, half-sister of Jane Ellis (Espie) Collins, married Thomas Hall in Timaru on 26 May 1885, she was the mother of Nigel Cuthbert Hall born 1886; she would be forever linked to the story of the Timaru poisonings, with her husband convicted of one crime and suspected of another. Details from Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 24/07/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/773

Report of the Trial of Thomas Hall Charged with the Wilful Murder of Captain Cain. Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 23/07/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/43

If you Google Timaru's Thomas Hall, you’ll find plenty of blogs and articles on one of the most heinous crimes of the colonial era. But if you want to learn about Catherine (or Kate, or Kitty, as she was also known) you’ll find very little. And yet, she was the survivor at the centre of it all: a grieving daughter who lost her stepfather Captain Henry Cain in Timaru under suspicious circumstances. She was a wife nearly murdered by the man she had just married, and a mother left to raise her infant son alone while her husband went behind bars and the community talked about the sensational story around the nation. The guilty were remembered in the chapters, and the story of Catherine the survior was shifted into the margins of the page.

So here is a blog to do justice to her. A survivor. A woman I want to pull from the margins of the page and place front and centre. So here is my blog to retell her story with the information I have hunted out so far...

By Roselyn Fauth

A page from  the Jubilee History of South Canterbury, published in 1916, shows a photo of Strongwork Morrison. Right the grave where he rests at Timaru's Cemetery. - Photo Roselyn Fauth

He took his will out of the box... He cursed Ross, threw his will in the fire, and died soon after. A tangled tale of Strong Work Morrison — Timaru’s first beachmaster, his two wives, a forgotten court case, and the neighbours of Samuel Williams

I was on a history hunt, researching someone buried just a few steps from Timaru’s first hotel keeper, Samuel Williams, when I stumbled into Strong Work / Strongwork Morrison’s story. It turns out Strong Work was not just a great name (how ever it is spelt, but a great tale... one woven through Timaru’s early maritime history, Deal boatmen, a scandalous divorce, and a tangled estate that was still being fought over years after his death.

That vivid detail from a 1900 court proceeding was the spark that sent me down the research rabbit hole to learn more about Strongwork Morrison... I had no idea that Morrison had once helped build the bones of Timaru’s port, that he had been our first beachmaster, and that his tangled legacy would include drowning tragedies, divorce petitions, lifeboat rescues, corruption scandals, and a scorched will.

By Roselyn Fauth

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/THD19140611.2.64.40

I had one of those moments recently. The kind where the Wi-Fi drops out mid-message, or the groceries feel like they cost more than they should, and I feel the frustration bubble up. Then, while doing some browsing on Papers Past, I came across an old article from the Timaru Herald, dated 11 June 1914. It was titled Roughing It.

The story was shared by an older man named George Levens, who had come to South Canterbury in 1859 with a pioneering farming family named Neal. His memories painted a vivid picture of early settler life near Temuka. He described hauling supplies, chipping sea-damaged flour out of barrels with a tomahawk, and the challenges of building a farm from nothing. This one line made me pause... “Mr and Mrs Neal and three children slept in a dray with a tilt over it.”

For three years, that was their home. A wooden cart, with a canvas covering, parked on the edge of a rough paddock. No walls. No kitchen. No insulation. Just a mother and father, doing their best to raise a young family while breaking in the land.

The article didn’t name her. Just “Mrs Neal.” But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Who was this woman sleeping in a dray with her children night after night? What brought her here? And why didn’t we know more about her? So I went looking.

By Roselyn Fauth

Here's a screenshot from the passenger list of the Indiana, 1858, showing 13-year-old Mary Ann Gardner and her family, recently arrived from Surrey. Notice how she and her sister Sarah were recorded as "transferred to single women." It's a little detail, but it opens up larger questions about her path into domestic service. The SS Indiana was a steel barquentine of 852 tons, captained by James McKirdy, which made many trips over 30 years until 1894, when it hit uncharted rocks in the Furneaux Group of Islands off Tasmania. Look closely at the passenger list, and see what details you can spy... beautifully hand writing hey. The passenger list is where she is first named, yet already separated as a single woman instead of a child. christchurchcitylibraries.com/Indiana-1858.pdf

A few days ago, I was chatting with my friend Sarah Best about a name I’d spotted on a ship register. I’d been wondering for ages about Mary Ann Gardner—the teenager who worked as a governess for Sam Williams in Timaru around 1860. After his first wife Ann died, Mary Ann married Sam and had his third child. I’d been so focused on learning about Ann Williams, the mother of the first recorded European baby born in Timaru, that I hadn’t paid much attention to Mary Ann. But stumbling across some immigration records sparked my interest. Who was she? Did she travel here with her family or on her own? What was her life like, and how did it unfold?

After I posted a snippet of the shipping record and asked some questions, Sarah responded with some great insights. Teamed with her help, the meticulous family research of Nola Towgood, and information from the New Zealand Suffrage website, we pieced together more of Mary Ann’s story. Like many colonial women, we’re still left with questions, and I’ve learned just how easy it is to make assumptions, or get things wrong, when details are missing. In this blog, I trace her journey as a teenager navigating colonial life... governess, stepmother, mother, partner, and survivor, and reflect on what’s recorded, what’s left out, and how we listen for the voices missing in the archives.

If you love unravelling the layers of women’s history, or just a good old-fashioned history hunt, this story is for you...

What started as a hunt for whaling history has led to a hunt for Timaru's first European perminant families mother - Ann Williams grave. She had a short but significant life in Timaru, arriving around 1856. Her and Samuel Williams who was a former Timaru whaler moved from the Rhodes 1851 cottage on the George Street shore, to the Timaru Hotel behind the cottage and opposite where the Oxford building is today. Sam was the first licencesd publican in the area, and had been running his accomodation house and pub with Ann for "some time" before they were granted official permission. It was this hotel where Ann collapsed in the door way on November 16th, 1860, Timaru, aged 35, and died of apoplexy (cerebral haemorrhage or stroke). Ann Williams, (nee Mahoney, also recorded as Anne Manry) was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1823, lived in Ballarat, Australia and the Timaru, New Zealand.

I ordered a print out of Ann's death record that was noted down by Belfield Woollcombe, the towns magistrate. And interestingly I assumed Sam would have been by her side, and they might have run the hotel together, but infact Richard Smith Cole (Barman, Timaru) was noted in the record as the informant. So here is the next side quest... who was he?

Could this be his grave?

 The grave of Robert Cole 1892 died aged 52. His wife rests here too Margaret S Cole.She died Jan 22na 1921. "Not lost but gone before" - At the Timaru Cemetery.

Reserve No. 165 – the original, public cemetery where early settlers (including Ann Williams, d. 1860) were buried. Reserve No. 166 – the new “Timaru North Cemetery” created in 1879 for ongoing use. This shift formalised the separation between the old, undenominational burial ground and the newly managed cemetery, where later Anglican consecration and denominational divisions were applied. Because Ann died nineteen years before 1879, her burial would have been in Reserve 165, not the newer cemetery.

I'll start off this blog today with a fund fact I learned... graveyards are burials by churches, cemeteries are burals by government. It's a fun fact, but it also helps us unravel the history of how we laid our past people to rest in Timaru in the 1850s onward.

Originally Timaru had two cemetery reserved marked out by the town surveyors. The reserves were established in 1859, a month before the Strathallan arrived. One was the current cemetery location at the south end of town. it was originally on the town belt with the Timaru Botanic Gardens on the other side of the road. This cemetery was designated for the Anglicans. The second reserve was further North.  

While hunting for the grave of Ann, I've been on all kinds of side quests, including trying to understand the history and the evolution of the Timaru Cemetery. On the block of Wai-iti Road & Selwyn Street corner to the Beverley Estate — divided into Wesleyan, Presbyterian, and Catholic sections by the Levels Roads Board. This is where the Aigantighe Art Gallery is today. I asked the council, and they confirmed this was never used for burials. By 1881, the northern cemetery site was proposed for sale by the Timaru Cemetery Commissioners. From this point, the Southern Timaru Cemetery became undenominational.

Two cemetery reserves that were once in the towns survey. Left the reserve on the corner of Wai-iti Road and Selwyn Streets, and Right, the Cemetery reserve opposite the Timaru Botanic Gardens

Well, Ann record of death has arrived, and it confirms a few deatils, and but no grave location. (Why is the quality of the scan sooooo bad? gah) I wrote back and asked if they could explain the fields on this register image... they noted that in 1861 the place of burial was not asked for. So the government does not hold that information, unfortunately.

10 May 2025

Ann Williams, (nee Mahoney, also recorded as Anne Manry) was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1823, lived in Australia, and collapsed and died in the doorway of the Timaru Hotel, after only 4 or 6 years raising her young family in Timaru, New Zealand 1860.

She was an Irish immigrant living in Ballarat, Australia when she met Samuel Williams. (I haven't found any marrage records, so I am careful not to assume they were married). They moved to Timaru around 1856 with their daughter Rebecca, and had their second child Williams Williams in Timaru 1856. He was the first recorded birth of a European child in the area. The Rhodes had a child a year earlier at the Levels Station Home near Pleasant Point, and the Hoornbrooks had a child in 1854 at Arowhenua Station.

Ann and Sam raised their family in the Rhodes cottage which was built by the shore on what is now George Street in 1851. With the help of the Rhodes, they built the Timaru Hotel in 1860, where Ann collapsed and died in the hotels doorway in November 1860, leaving Sam to raise his 3 and 6 year old children before he remarried and had a third child.

I found Sam's grave easily enough at the Timaru cemetery, but so far... it is a complete mystery where Ann was buried. With the help of the Timaru District Council and the South Canterbury Musuem, we have found her death records, but no information on her plot, let alone her burial.

I wonder if we will ever find her, and if we should errect a memorial to her and her family, maybe to all the mothers who so oftern get missed in the history books, who had the key task of raising their families.

By Roselyn Fauth

I have walked past this place more times than I can count. It sits on George Street, just across from Barnard Street. The property came up at a Timaru Civic Trust meeting the other night, and I realised I did not know anything about it. I did not know it had been a community centre, or that this building was Timaru’s official Centennial Memorial, opened in 1940 to mark one hundred years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It was built specifically for women. I found a newspaper article, and that has inspired today’s blog.

On 2 April 1940, the Mayor of Timaru stood outside this very building and said he was dedicating it to the memory of the women pioneers of New Zealand. He acknowledged the women who had endured hardship, stood alongside their husbands, raised families in rough conditions, and helped shape the region from the ground up. He said they had gone wherever their men went, and more often than not, with even less recognition. The words he used were solemn: “Whither thou goest, I will go.”

By Roselyn Fauth

Digitised publications from Christchurch Art Gallery. South Canterbury Artists: a retrospective view on South Canterbury Artists, published by the Aigantighe Art Gallery in association with the South Canterbury Arts Society in 1990. https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/media/uploads/2017_12/SouthCanterburyArtists.pdf The catalogue was published to accompany an exhibition of the same name in 1990, showcasing works held in the Aigantighe Art Gallery’s collection by artists from or connected to South Canterbury. It was a way to look back at the legacy of the South Canterbury Arts Society, celebrate local creativity, and reflect on what had been built so far, both through the artworks and the community that supported them.

Sometimes when I’m on the hunt for something, I stumble into something else entirely, like this catalogue from an exhibition called South Canterbury Artists: A Retrospective View, held at the Aigantighe Art Gallery with the South Canterbury Arts Society. This is one of those side quests that gets my creative juices flowing...

At first glance, it looked like a record of artworks and biographies. But the more I read, I realised this also a carefully gathered story of our region. A civic memory. A group of people who saw beauty here, who tried to make sense of what they saw, had views, ideas, who wanted to share those with others through their art.

It made me reflect on how important it is to have a civic art collection. Something held in common. Something that reflects back who we are and how we’ve seen the world over time...

By Roselyn Fauth

Aerial view of Timaru Mill (Late 1960s). Hocken Digital Collections, accessed 17/04/2025, https://hocken.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/23577 

This is a tangible archive of built heritage, made of brick, stone, concrete and plaster.

In just three hours, driven by a hot nor’wester in 1868, fire destroyed three quarters of Timaru’s timber CBD. We rebuilt stronger, using materials that would last, drawing on architectural ideas from across centuries. Classical influence sits alongside Victorian confidence, Edwardian elegance and post-war modern function.

Some buildings were made to impress. Some were built to say you can trust us with your hard-earned coin. Others were simply made to do the job. All reflect the needs, values, aspirations and constraints of their makers, owners and users.

By Roselyn Fauth, nee Cloake

Roof tile from the Aigantighe Art Gallery. Photography By Roselyn Fauth. The Aigantighe Historic House that is part of the Aigantighe Art Gallery was designed by James S. Turnbull, a well-known Timaru architect. Built of brick and plaster it is crowned with Marseille tile roofing, which were likely imported from Guichard Carvin et Cie, Marseille St. Andre, known for the bee mark. Pressed tiles like this one were exported all over the world and were introduced to New Zealand in about 1901.

It’s weathered and some would say now useless. But when I held the roof tile from the Aigantighe Art Gallery in my hands, I felt more than clay. I felt the legacy of makers, builders, home owners, givers and art lovers. I feel a piece of someone's home, and what has felt like my home for art all my life.

If you look closely you can spy a bee stamped into the surface. This is a makers mark, and tells us the tile was made by Guichard Frères in Marseille, France. Someone made this tile shipped it all the way from France to Timaru where it was placed high on the roof to shelter a grand home in Timaru. That home was called Aigantighe and means "home of welcome” in Scottish Gaelic. Today it’s our region’s public art gallery that has national and international significance, but it used to be the Grant's family home.

The tile came down during the heritage house’s recent seismic strengthening and restoration, part of a major project following concerns raised in the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes. Unfortunately, the roof tiles could not go back up. They had been damaged by a significant hailstorm, rendering many of them cracked and brittle. Instead, they were replaced with replica tiles to preserve the roof’s historical aesthetic.

The original tiles now stacked in storage are waiting for a new use. Some, like the one in my hands, were set aside and were donated to the Friends of the Aigantighe for fundraising. Objects too broken for a rooftop can now find a new use and connect to that memory...

Honey Tins on display at Oamaru visitor center including Cloakes Honey. Below: Painting by Roselyn Cloake inspired by the Cloakes Honey Tin. I've really enjoyed rediscovering our family roots. If Annabelle was a boy we were going to call him Bertie. Above is a painting of the honey tin label. Cloakes Honey Limited (Fairview Road, Timaru) was incorporated on 12 December 1963, with Mervyn David Cloake serving as a long-time director

I can remember looking up to a shelf in our hallway as a child. My parents Marthy and Geoff, had all their special things up high, I guess out of reach from us kids, and in a dark spot to protect it from New Zealands damaging UV rays. On this shelf was a Cloake's Honey tin. I used to look at this like it was a badge of family honour. I loved Cloakes honey, I remember we would visit my aunty and uncle and come home with a plastic tub of creamed clover honey to spread on toast. Over time I have become more appreciative of what this tin represents: innovation, resilience, respect, and a deep connection to the land and our community...

By Roselyn Fauth

Elizabeth McCombs declared first woman MP, 1933 Returning Officer J.J. McGahey formally announces Elizabeth Reid McCombs as the winner of the 1933 Lyttelton by-election, making her New Zealand’s first woman elected to Parliament.

After writing about Muriel Hilton, Timaru’s own trailblazing mayor and the first woman to lead a city in Aotearoa, I found myself wondering. Who else? Who else put themselves forward for public service when most doors were still closed to women? Who stood up, not just as the first, but as someone who helped others believe they could belong there too?

That wondering led me to Elizabeth McCombs. While she never lived in Timaru, what she did rippled across the whole country, including our region. In 1933, she became the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament, representing Lyttelton for the Labour Party. She crossed a threshold that had never been opened to women before. And then she got to work.

The Member of Parliament representing the Timaru electorate during 1933 was Clyde Carr, a member of the Labour Party. He was first elected in 1928, when he defeated the previous MP Frank Rolleston, and served continuously until 1962. His long tenure meant that while Elizabeth McCombs was making national history for Lyttelton in 1933, Timaru had its own Labour representation under a long-serving Labour MP.

There is a photo of Elizabeth taken around the time she entered politics. She looks composed, focused and capable. Not defiant. Not radical. Just ready and smiling, head slightly bowed revealing her long braided hair. By then, she already had a record of community service and political advocacy behind her. She had spent years campaigning for women’s rights, public health, education and workers’ protections. Often in partnership with her husband, James McCombs.

James had been MP for Lyttelton from 1913 and was a founding member of the Labour Party. Their marriage was one of shared purpose. She helped write speeches, organised campaigns and kept up with the political debates of the day. He addressed her in letters as “my dear girl”, not as a dismissal, but with warmth and deep respect for her intellect and convictions. When he died suddenly in 1933, the Labour Party nominated Elizabeth to stand in the by-election. Some saw it as a sentimental gesture. She proved it was not...

Mrs M. E. Hilton, Mayor of Timaru 1952–1962
A formal portrait of Mrs M. E. Hilton, who served as mayor of the Timaru Borough Council from 1952 to 1962. Photographed by Langwood Studios, Timaru, this original print is mounted, glazed, and framed.
South Canterbury Museum collection, 2016/011.041

Looking Back as We Look Ahead
As our community gets ready to vote in a new council, I think it is an important time to reflect on the legacy of politics in our district.

Many of us remember Janie Annear, who was our mayor from 2001 to 2013. I always admired her for her steady presence, her genuine care for people, and the way she helped shape Timaru in the modern era. But did you know that Janie was not Timaru’s first female mayor? That title actually belongs to Muriel Hilton, and even more impressively, she was the first woman elected mayor of any city in New Zealand.

Muriel Ernesta Hilton (née Venn) was born in Dunedin in 1904 to Ernest and Ann Venn. She later moved to Timaru, the place that would become her lifelong home and the community she would go on to serve with dedication. In 1922 she married Frederick Alfred Hilton, and together they settled in Timaru. She was educated locally at South School and Timaru Technical College. Though there is no record of tertiary study, her lifelong commitment to adult education speaks volumes about her values. Her belief in learning, service and civic responsibility became the foundation of her leadership.

In 1950 she became the first woman elected to the Timaru City Council, serving through to 1962 and again from 1965 to 1968. She was Deputy Mayor from 1956 to 1959, and then in 1959 she was elected Mayor of Timaru, becoming the first woman to lead a New Zealand city...

By Roselyn Fauth

I think this building is a symbol of hope, courage, and the belief that every young person in Timaru, especially girls, deserves the chance to learn, grow, and lead. And knowing that someone lost their life helping to build it makes that symbol even more important.

I have been learning more about the history of my old high school, Timaru Girls’ High School. Probably like many of my classmates at the time, I didn’t think much about how it started or what it meant to have a secondary school for girls back in the 1990s, let alone a century earlier. I now realise how significant it was. Timaru High School opened in the early 1880s, just a few years after Otago Girls’ High School, which was the first state secondary school for girls in the southern hemisphere. So Timaru’s was one of the earliest too. It was a bold move to say that girls deserved the same chance to learn as boys, and the school took a few years of debate and politics to make it happen. I didn't realise that a school would've been so controversal to establish, and I also didn't realise someone lost their life helping to build it.

Looking at old photos of students and teachers posed in front of the original building, I was struck by how beautiful the façade was. The symmetry, the cornices, and the entablature all echoed the architectural language of ancient Greece and Rome, reinterpreted thousands of years later on the other side of the world for a school in Timaru. Timaru High School offered education to both young women and men, though they were taught in separate classes. Later, the boys moved up the road to North Street and formed Timaru Boys’ High School.

This building was designed to impress. It was something the community could be proud of. It was a statement that whoever taught and learned here would experience an education designed to set them up for life. On reflection today, we can see how quality education has empowered individuals, uplifted communities, and laid the foundation for a more informed, equitable, and adaptable society.

Yesterday I was walking through the Timaru Cemetery helping a friend look for a grave when I came across a well maintained headstone that caught my eye. It read: “Erected by friends in memory of Peter M. Pezet, who met his death through accident at the High School, 17 August 1879, aged 40 years.” I had never heard of him. But he died in connection with the school I went to, so I decided to find out more. Thanks to Papers Past, I found his story...

By Roselyn Fauth

Caroline Bay Tea Rooms with Phoenix Canariensis trees (Phoenix palms) on the right. Timaru. 2022. Source: Roselyn Fauth.

When I walk into the Caroline Bay Tea Rooms, I do not just see a building, I feel all the memories of all the fun I have had there over the years. We are so lucky to have this wonderful venue in Timaru. I don't know if you like to do the same, by I like to stand by the door and imagine all the people who have stood there too. Dressed up for weddings, ready for a guest speaker, waiting for a friend, holding a child’s hand, or simply popping in for a brew or cuppa. Built in 1905, back when the beach came almost right up to the lawn, the tea rooms were part of Timaru’s big vision to turn Caroline Bay into something special. You could hear the waves from the steps and wander straight from the sand inside.

As a woman and a mother, I often think about places like this. What they offered the women who came before us. Why they still matter now. In the early 1900s, there were not many public spaces where women could simply spend time. You could go to church or the shops, but cafes were not always considered appropriate and pubs were completely off limits. Respectable women were expected to have a purpose in public, to be going somewhere, not lingering. Tearooms like this gave women something rare. A place to sit, talk, share news, and feel part of civic life. Often, they were managed by women too. That is part of what makes this place special...

By Roselyn Fauth

Mrs E.M. Studholme and her family outside ‘The Cuddy’, Te Waimate, c.1890 built from a single totara tree, with a snowgrass thatch roof. Pictured in front of her first home in the district, this thatched-roof cottage (known as The Cuddy) was built in 1854 and is believed to be the earliest European house in Waimate. (I think E.M. Studholme, is Eleanor Caroline Studholme, not Effie (Effegenia)). Courtesy of South Canterbury Museum, 2974. The Cuddy is used by schools and heritage groups for learning, though it is on private land. I hope to one day visit and learn more firsthand) to show it remains a living educational object.

When I first saw The Cuddy it was in a sepia-toned photograph from the South Canterbury Museum. I had searched for the keyword "Mrs" to find images of women, hoping something might spark an idea for a blog. That’s how I came across Mrs E. M. Studholme standing with her family in front of the Cuddy at Te Waimate, taken around 1890. This modest thatched-roof cottage stood in contrast to their fine Victorian clothing. Cinched waists, tailored suits, and likely corsets beneath, the formality of their dress created a striking juxtaposition to the rustic earth and timber building behind them. My first question was: did these women ever live in this house?

By Roselyn Fauth

Information sign at the Timaru Landing Services Building. - Photo Roselyn Fauth

I was on a side quest learning about Ann Williams when I found a photo of Mr John Wilds and his family. It was mounted on a sign at the Timaru Landing Service Building, the very place where Ann once lived. The photo is sepia-toned, showing a weathered man, a seated woman, and three young children standing out front of a modest timber cottage. There seemed to be an age disparity between the adults, so I tried to work out who was who. The woman seated was his daughter, Mary Annie Davidson. The children were her own. But something struck me as strange: someone was missing.

By Roselyn Fauth

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about monuments. Maybe it’s the free online course I’ve been doing through Harvard called Tangible Things, which invites us to look closely at everyday objects and ask deeper questions. What do they tell us? What do they leave out? Whose stories are preserved, and whose are forgotten?

This thinking has made me look differently at some of our most visible public objects here in Timaru. Our statues, plaques, headstones, memorials. Especially the Captain Cain statue outside the Landing Services Building, which has been the focus of my latest historical rabbit hole. But now, something else has captured my focus. Not a monument that already exists, but one that doesn’t yet. One I want to help bring to life.

At the Timaru Cemetery lie unmarked and pauper graves. Dozens of them. People whose names may never have made the paper. People who built our town, raised families, died far from home, or slipped through the cracks. People who mattered, but whose final resting place is now just grass and silence. These are the lives that are so often missing from monuments. And that’s exactly why I believe they deserve one.

The Tangible Things course reminds us that history is not just what happened... it’s what we choose to remember. Objects can spark memory, but they can also reflect absence. The lack of a headstone, a plaque, a name, that too is a story. These unmarked graves invite us to ask, what does our community value? Who do we honour?

Creating a new monument in the cemetery is not just about righting a historical wrong. It’s about expanding our circle of care. I think it helps us telling a broader truth that every life holds value, whether it came with wealth and status or not. It’s about naming the unnamed, honouring the invisible, and restoring dignity to those long overlooked. 

I know there may be questions. Who will be listed? What will it look like? Will it be welcomed by the wider community? These are important things to consider. But more than that, I believe this is a chance to reshape how we do public memory, from something top-down and polished to something collective, inclusive, and real.

Because this isn’t just a monument. It is a tangible object that holds stories. Some remembered. Some forgotten. Some yet to be uncovered. And by choosing to build it, we are choosing to listen, to care, and to remember.

If Tangible Things has taught me anything, it is that looking again, truly looking, can change everything. It has changed how I see the statue of Captain Cain, the grave of Ann's husband Samuel Williams. And it has deepened my commitment to this project: to mark the graves of those who lie forgotten, and to ensure their stories, however small or quiet, are not lost.

This is the monument we choose to build. One of compassion, of community, of shared memory. One that invites others to join the hunt for our history and and to recognise and honour it.

By Roselyn Fauth

This statue commemorates Captain Henry Cain, who bought the landing service in 1870. Captain Cain to keep watch over city (17 Aug 1999). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 10/07/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/414. Right Photo of Captain Cain by Roselyn Fauth. Captain Henry Cain (1816 -1886) is now immortalised in as a life-like bronze statue by Christchurch's Donald Paterson, sits outside Timaru's Information Centre. A plaque reads: "Henry Cain was born in 1816 and went to sea at the age of 13. After 30yrs of seafaring, he settled in Timaru in March 1857, and opened a general store. The town grew and before long he was operating the first landing service at the foot of Strathallen St. Captain Cain became a prominent businessman and significant public figure, serving as mayor from 1870-1873. He died in 1886, having been poisoned by his son-in-law. For many, Henry Cain represents the pioneering spirit that made Timaru." In 1857, he was asked by Le Cren to relocate to Timaru to open up a landing service, which he did. This was mainly to service the Rhodes’ huge sheep station, the ‘Levels’, South Canterbury’s first farm. 

I’ve been doing a free online course from Harvard called Tangible Things, and it has been fascinating. It teaches you to really look at the everyday things we pass by without much thought, and then step back to ask deeper questions. Who made this? Why is it here? What stories are being remembered... and what is being forgotten?

So today I want to look again at something many of us walk past often here in Timaru... the statue of Captain Henry Cain outside the Timaru Landing Services Building. I have always admired it, but I see it differently now.

This bronze sculpture by Christchurch artist Donald Paterson was installed as part of the 1999 city centre upgrade. It shows Henry Cain, sitting in life-size form, confident and commanding. According to the plaque, Cain was born in 1816, went to sea at thirteen, and after 30 years as a mariner, settled in Timaru in 1857. He opened a store, developed the landing service at Strathallan Street, and served as mayor from 1870 to 1873. He died in 1886, poisoned by his son-in-law. The plaque ends with the idea that Cain represents the pioneering spirit that made Timaru.

But the course has made me ask, what else does this statue represent, and what does it leave out?

By Roselyn Fauth

I joined the Civic Trust’s Blue Plaque sub-committee in 2024 because I believe in the power of local storytelling. Each plaque is more than a label on a wall. It is a conversation starter. It says, “Pause here. Something happened.” And if we do pause, just for a moment, we might start to feel the echoes of footsteps, and imagine the lives lived behind those doors.

The volunteers behind this project have put in hours of care, research, discussion, and quiet persistence. I am especially grateful to people like Nigel Gilkinson and the Civic Trust team for their commitment to helping South Canterbury shine as part of a growing Blue Plaque trail across Aotearoa.

We began with the Landing Service Building in 2020. Since then, plaques have been added across Timaru and beyond to places like Waimate, Woodbury, Pleasant Point, Temuka, Geraldine and Cave. Churches, libraries, courthouses, railway stations and vicarages. Each one anchors us to place. Each one reminds us that history is not just something we learn in school. It is here, in the buildings we walk past, the names we say out loud, and the stories we choose to tell.

By Roselyn Fauth

If you have walked around Timaru recently, you might have noticed a few striking blue circles appearing on the front of some of our most historic buildings. These are Blue Heritage Plaques, and they are part of a nationwide initiative to celebrate Aotearoa’s built heritage. Each plaque tells a short story about a person, place, or event that shaped our local history. The first rounds have been carefully considered, researched, well made, and placed on buildings where history happened. I love how they help to raise the profile of these stories beyond our region, linking Timaru and South Canterbury into a wider national blue plaque trail of heritage recognition.

By Roselyn Fauth

Fourteen years after the Church of Englands, St Mary's Church opened in Timaru, the Roman Catholics opened a small wooden church on Cragie Ave on 25 October 1874. It was dsigned by first parish priest, Fr Chataigner, in a Gothic style cruciform plan, and built by Mr J Derby. It was enlarged in 1876 to the design of Benjamin W Mountfort, and reopened by Bishop Redwoodon 24 June 1877. The enlarged building had a rose window placed in the sanctuary. The ceiling was painted sky blue and spangled with bright gilt stars. 

By 1910, blue gum trees had grown tall by the girls school next door and were leaning over the little wooden church. In the early hours of 7 September 1908, a man walked past and flicked his butt into the church grounds. This sparked a flame, igniting a blue gum tree branch which engulfed the church. Unlike eight years earlier when the Great Fire of Timaru roared through the CBD in 3 hours and razed three quarters of the shops, offices and homes to the ground, the fire service were better equipped and ready. Thanks to their quick turnout the building was saved. However all the ceremonial garments used in church services (known as vestments) were destroyed. The church organ also sustained some damage, mainly due to water. 

High School Friends. Briget and I went to Timaru Girls High School together, and I have wonderful memories of painting together in Mr Jones art room. It was so lovely to reconnect and introduce our children to each other, who hit it off and had a great time playing hide and seek in the galleries sculpture garden. Bridget is now back in Timaru teaching art at TGHS.

by Roselyn Fauth

It was wonderful to spend a couple of hours with our friends and family on Sunday afternoon drawing in the former dining room. We talked about the Grant family who lived there over a century ago and imagined what they might think if they could see us now, enjoying their home in this new way. What a legacy their family gave to our community: a home for art.

The house, designed in the Queen Anne style by Timaru architect James S. Turnbull and built in 1905, became the Aigantighe Art Gallery when it opened to the public in 1956. While the family were living here, the South Canterbury Art Society were already laying the groundwork for a civic art collection. Their voluntary efforts provided the nucleus of what became the gallery’s permanent collection.

Over the past nearly seventy years, that collection has grown into one of the most treasured in the country, especially rich in works by local artists who offer us their lens on the world, like signposts across time. We are so grateful for the recent renovation of the historic house. It was a sad day when the impacts of the Christchurch earthquakes forced it to close, but now it has reopened, beautifully strengthened and restored. It feels wonderful to be inside again.

Art and a building may create a gallery, but it is the people who make it feel like our home for art in South Canterbury. For generations, artists, directors, staff, volunteers, donors and visitors have shaped this special place, a space where creativity, curiosity and community continue to come together. That is the true legacy.

Looking for some free fun? It probably doesn’t get more epic than a play at the award-winning CPlay playground at Caroline Bay in Timaru. Opened in December 2023, the playground was championed by a small group of dedicated volunteers and supported by the Timaru District Council, with hundreds of community members giving their time, thoughts, ideas, feedback and donations along the way. Together, they raised over $3 million to create a space that is fun, accessible, challenging and meaningful, designed for people of all ages, sizes and abilities to play together.

When Chris and I first joined the committee, to be really honest, I thought we were buying equipment from a catalogue with a bit of safety surfacing and we'd be done. But after taking time to listen to peoples experience of the old playground and generally the challenges of even being able to play at any public playground, we realised we were going to have to work harder to make sure everyone could play together. At 6ft by the time I was 13, we also wanted to make sure even adults could physically fit and be able to join family and friends in the fun. 

We also learned that one of the most powerful forms of play is imaginative play, when children lead the storytelling and adults join in. That is why CPlay’s design draws inspiration from the stories of our local people, history and landscape. Play elements reflect Timaru’s coastal environment, Ngāi Tahu traditions, shipwrecks, sea creatures and other rich layers of local identity. These stories help tamariki understand where they come from, encouraging confidence, resilience and a deeper connection to place.

To help families explore the stories woven into the playground’s design, WuHoo Timaru has created a free A3 guided tour handout. It highlights playful features to look for, local legends that inspired the equipment, and creative prompts to spark storytelling as you play. Download a free hand out and see how many story details you could find.

It is a significant moment when communities, especially young people, begin to examine our shared past with care and curiosity.

Recently, students learning about Parihaka reflected on William Rolleston’s role in the colonial government during that period. It is encouraging to see this kind of critical engagement, where in the hunt for history we don't just take it as read, but also question and explore the past through our own fresh eyes... I think this is what education can inspire. This post was prompted by a recent article on PressReader: https://www.pressreader.com/

Scenta Potestas Est - Knwledge is Power - Timaru Girls High School

So here’s the thing. I used to think high school education for girls had always been around. I assumed it was obvious, normal, even automatic. But the more I’ve learned, the more I’ve realised how recent and hard-won this right actually is.

When I walked through the gates of Timaru Girls’ High School, I didn’t know that just a few generations earlier, most girls didn’t get past primary school. I didn’t know that educating women was once controversial, even seen as a waste of public money. And I definitely didn’t realise that New Zealand was leading the world in changing that.

The motto of Timaru Girls’ High School is Scientia Potestas Est, or Knowledge is Power. At the time, I thought it was just a phrase. Now I realise it was a commitment to equality, opportunity and change.

When North London Collegiate School opened in 1850, it marked a bold shift in the United Kingdom. Founded by Frances Mary Buss, the school was the first to offer girls a serious academic curriculum, with subjects like mathematics and Latin, the same education boys were receiving in elite public schools. This model sparked further reforms in Britain, including the creation of the Girls’ Public Day School Company in 1872.

By global standards, New Zealand moved early. In 1871, Otago Girls’ High School opened in Dunedin, the first state girls’ high school in the Southern Hemisphere. Just eight years earlier, Otago Boys’ High had opened. This was not without controversy. A Daily Times editorial in 1869 described the lack of education for girls as a "social evil" and called for change.

Group portrait of the first 69 nurses and 11 staff to leave for World War I. Taken on the steps of the General Assembly Library, Wellington, by an unidentified photographer for The Press newspaper of Christchurch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Army_Nursing_Service

I spied this photo on Facebook. Just an orphan image floating in the ether of a post... no caption, no credit, no story. But it caught my eye. A quick Google image search later, and I found it tucked away in a digital archive. That one small clue opened a new side quest story. My search for Ann, (the mother of Timaru's first recorded European baby birth), has taken me all over the place, learning how the place of women in the home, that is a centuries-old, if not thousands of years old, concept, has shifted into something much broader. A place where women can be and do what they choose.

But that freedom... that idea of choice... didn’t just happen. I’m realising now how much it has taken generations of women and men, pushing to shift attitudes, challenge the rules, break glass ceilings, and create space for the rest of us and our children. Nothing about where we are today was accidental; it came down to bravery, perseverance, and hard work.

What I didn’t know, until I started chasing the source of this photo, was that when the First World War broke out in 1914, women weren’t even allowed to serve alongside the men overseas. That was the rule. Even trained nurses were blocked until the law changed...

The Main School, Timaru, circa 1909, Timaru, by William Ferrier. Te Papa (O.051442)

On 8 October 2024, it will be exactly 150 years since Timaru Main School first opened its doors. This year marks the school’s 150th jubilee. The story of the school came to life for me recently when I was invited to speak at an event and I got to meet some truly remarkable people and hear their stories.

One woman shared a memory from her childhood, living on Cliff Street. She remembered practising for air raids at Timaru Main School. Each child wore a string around their neck, holding a small linen pouch. Inside the pouch was a piece of chewing gum and a cork. When the alarm went, the children went into trenches dug in the school grounds. They were told to chew the gum and place it in their ears, and to put the cork in their mouth. I asked her if she had been frightened. She said not really. They did not know why they were doing it, and in those days children were seen and not heard. You did what you were told.

Later, walking at Patiti Point, I noticed the old bluestone barbeque and remembered hearing it was built from the stone blocks of the old school. Between her story and those weathered blocks, I felt drawn to learn more about Timaru Main. So here is today’s blog...

Harekeke Flax at Patiti Point  - Roselyn Fauth 2025

It started with a footnote. A flax thesis, a girl from Timaru, and a doctorate in science. I had been writing about Bella MacCallum, the first woman in New Zealand to earn a DSc, when I paused at the title of her research. Phormium with Regard to Its Economic Importance.

Bella studied New Zealand flax not just as a botanist, but as an economic investigator. She explored its cellular structure, its chemistry, and its commercial potential. It made me wonder what else I had overlooked. I thought I knew harakeke. But following the thread of Bella’s story, I looked again.

The cabinet maker's workshop highlighed with the arrow is where the 1868 fire originated, now hosts Hallensteins on the corner of Church St and Great Southern Rd, now Stafford St.

Picture this… It is a scorching afternoon in December 1868. The district had been rattled by snow storms and a severe flood the same year. And before they could make it to Chirstmas celebrations, they saw the year out in the worst fire in Timaru History. On the corner of Church and Stafford Streets, where Hallenstein Brothers Clothing Store stands today, a young boy is melting glue over a fire in the back of a cabinetmaker’s workshop. For what ever reason, he steps away, just for a moment and before he knows it the wood shavings on the floor catch fire. The boy runs for help. They rushe to a neaby water tank, only to find the tap handle is missing. It had been removed because people were stealing water for their horses. No water. No fire brigade. Only a hot nor'wester fanning the growing blaze. The fire takes hold....

By Roselyn Fauth

Survey Photography - 1956 Timaru Hospital. PA Group 00080 Whites Aviation Ltd Photographs. nlnzimage 

In this house lived a pretty special woman... This was the home of Catherine Agnes McGuire. She was known to many as Kit. She grew up here, went to South School, trained as a nurse in Dunedin, and returned to Timaru to live in the family home and care for the community and especially children who were sick, neglected or disabled. This has been quite the history hunt. Exploring the early years of nursing in Timaru, the social challenges Kit witnessed, and the aftermath of war and pandemics has opened a window into the untold story of one of many special women who served and advocated through it all...

By Roselyn Fauth

https://www.massey.ac.nz/about/news/first-woman-to-get-a-massey-degree-dies/

Have you ever imagined being the only woman in a university lecture theatre? I think about that sometimes. What would it feel like to sit down in a room full of men, knowing everyone was watching to see if you belonged there? In 1941, Paddy Bassett did exactly that. She was a Timaru schoolgirl who had with big ambitions, and became the first woman to graduate from Massey Agricultural College, and her story started not in a bustling city, but in the quiet coastal valley of Menzies Bay, Banks Peninsula.

Paddy’s early years were spent on the family farm, where her father, a farmer who later became an Anglican clergyman, and her mother raised her with the rhythms of rural life. Like many children in remote places, her first lessons came from a governess before she went to Okains Bay Primary School. Later, she boarded at Craighead Diocesan School in Timaru. I can picture her there, sitting in classrooms that are still in use today. She was bright and gifted in languages, especially Latin and French, but science wasn’t taught at all...

Photography by Geoff Cloake, 2018

I grew up by Caroline Bay, and I do not remember penguins being there when I was a kid.  One scorching summer evening, my husband (boyfriend at the time) and I went for a late swim. Suddenly, something zipped past us in the water. I remember Chris shrieked in surprise. We had no idea we were sharing the ocean with a group of tiny swimmers and realised they were little blue penguins. At the time, no one knew they had quietly started nesting along our shoreline.

Since then, thanks to dedicated volunteers, community support and thoughtful council action, the area has been fenced and protected to give these birds a safe space. It has become one of Timaru’s best known secrets and a conservation success story. We often take our kids down to Marine Parade to stand quietly and watch the penguins waddle ashore. They are pretty cute. There is usually a respectful crowd gathered. Apart from a few volunteers in high-visibility vests, there is no commercial tourism. The penguins are simply allowed to live their lives while we observe quietly from a distance. For me this is what makes the experience special... to see penguins in the wild, close to home, and for free. Timaru is one of the few places in the world where you can see kororā, (the Māori name for little blue penguins), like this. All you need is warm clothing, patience and a respectful approach.

If you are looking for free, family-friendly fun in Timaru, pop down at dusk from September to March, little blue penguins return from the sea to nest in the rocks at Marine Parade, Caroline Bay...

By Roselyn Fauth

When I read through stories about the past, they seem to have a common thread… booze. Here in Timaru, pubs used to be as common as corner dairies. By the late 1800s, drunkenness was not just part of life. It was normal. For a lot of women, alcohol was not simply a nuisance. It meant empty cupboards, black eyes, and worn-out hope. Hard-earned wages slipped from the family table to the bottom of a pint glass. They tried to fix it. In 1917, the law said pubs had to close by six o’clock. The idea was to cut down drinking. But instead, it created the six o’clock swirl. Men would knock off work and head straight to the pub. Between five and six, the bars packed in. No time to talk. Just drink fast and head home unsteady...

By Roselyn Fauth

I’ve always been in awe of our Southern Alps. Growing up in Timaru, they were my ever-present backdrop—the jagged white teeth on the horizon. “Where else can you look out past palm trees over the Pacific to snow-covered mountains?” It really is an incredible view, and I think Timaru is beautiful.

My parents, Marthy and Geoff Cloake, were keen trampers in the 1970 and 80s. So passionate, in fact, that they wrote a book together called The Secret South Island: The Hidden New Zealand Off the Beaten Track and dedicated it to me, their bun in the oven, while they tapped away at the typewriter. It was born of their love for walking, discovery and remote places. Some of these places were not on known trails, and may have never had a human set foot there. My mum has walked all over this landscape, and I now realise that on some of those tracks, she was following in the footsteps of only a few pioneering women before her, women who helped reshape the history of mountaineering in Aotearoa New Zealand. The book captures the same spirit I now find in their stories: a reverence for the land, a quiet determination, and a desire to make the way visible for others. (You can read it here: archive.org/secretsouthisland)

As we trace those paths today, I try to remember that to many of Ngāi Tahu descent, the iwi who hold manawhenua over this land, Aoraki is an ancestor. Rather than looking at Aoraki as a shape to be conquered, we acknowledge them with deep respect. The stories that follow unfold in the shadow of this maunga... shared with those who have walked humbly and bravely upon its slopes...

By Roselyn Fauth

If you’re a regular visitor to the South Canterbury Museum on Perth Street like I am, you may have noticed the beautiful old oak tree between the museum and St Mary’s Church. It’s a peaceful spot, but if you look closely, you’ll see a plaque tucked beneath the tree. It marks the place where Catherine Burnett and her husband Andrew once camped overnight with their bullock wagon, on their way inland to establish what would become Mount Cook Station. It’s hard to imagine now. What is just a few hours by car today was a much bigger undertaking back then. No roads, no bridges, no backup. That simple plaque gives us a window into the world Catherine entered, and the journey that lay ahead.

She went from the relative comfort of the coast into the stark and unforgiving Mackenzie Basin, helping to set up one of the earliest pastoral stations in the region. It was a tough place to exist, especially for a woman. There’s an account from one of her sons that has always stuck with me... describing a snowstorm so severe that sheep began eating each other’s ears just to survive. That image says a lot about how extreme life could be. Maybe it was that experience that turned him off farming altogether. Instead, he went into politics and ended up representing the area in Parliament. He used that platform to champion better infrastructure for rural communities, including the water race at Cave, which still helps farmers navigate dry seasons today.

So next time you’re passing through Perth Street, take a moment. Stop at the rock. Read the plaque. Imagine Catherine Burnett wrapped up warm beneath the stars, the vast unknown ahead of her. Her story is one of resilience... and one of the reasons Timaru and the Mackenzie are what they are today. Put the kettle on, have a read, and raise your mug to the bullock dray days and the amazing women like Catherine Burnett and her family...

Cemetery - 1953 - Map of Timaru - Electronic reproduction of Land Information New Zealand original University of Auckland 2013

“Every gravestone tells a story... just take some time to look.”

The views from Timaru's cemetery are stunning. A vista out to the pacific ocean. We like to wander through, find interesting graves and learn about or local people and place. There are stories of pioneers, sea rescue tragedies, wars, whalers, mothers, politicans, a few naughty people, and generations of South Canterbury families.

There are a few ways to find the information, and a great place to start is with the Timaru Trails Cemetery App. If you are hunting for your ancestry, searching local legends, or just taking a peaceful stroll, this is a easy way to find your way around the grounds. https://timarutrails.stqry.app/1/list/1050

Many records have photographs of the headstones (it took a guy 9 months to take some 30,000 photos!). You can also look up row and plot numbers and location map. There are many intresting headstones out there with a history to be remembered. A wee tip as not all plots are marked with headstones, you could look up their neighbour to confirm that you are looking at the right row and plot. 

South Canterbury Geneologiests have a great list of where else you can look to see birth and death records: sites.rootsweb.com/lookups

Timaru's first cemeteries were surveyed in 1859. There were two. One at the current site was to be managed by the Anglican Church, St Mary's, and another area was allocated on the corner of Wai-iti Road and Selwyn Streets, where the Aigantighe Art Gallery is now for Wesleyan, Presbyterian, and Catholic communities. Before the colony got organised, burials were overseen by churches. It wasn't until the cemeteries act was passed that the logistics were handed over to  the councils. The current cemetery plot on Domain Avenue was fenced, cleared, and developed by 1863. Timaru District Council now oversees the site alongside others in Temuka, Geraldine, Pleasant Point, and Pareora West. Children's and stillborns sections are quite recent when compared with the old section. There large green section with lots of humps and hollows was used for burying stillborns up until the early 1980s and include many government burials that are unmarked.

By Roselyn Fauth

Next time you are at Caroline Bay, wander over to the waterfall fountain and pause for a moment. Around its base, you will spot a striking plant with broad, jagged leaves. It is called acanthus. At first glance it might just look like another ornamental garden choice, but this plant has a story that stretches across continents and thousands of years, reaching all the way back to the beginnings of classical architecture... and to the grave of a young girl in ancient Corinth...

By Roselyn Fauth

Lorna Grant, born Marion Lorna Guthrie in 1887, was the only daughter of Dr John Guthrie (b.1859, d.1930) and Marion Hay Guthrie of Christchurch.

Dr. John Guthrie (1848–1922) was a Scottish-born physician who played a notable role in early New Zealand medical practice, particularly in Christchurch and Akaroa. Born in Kendal, England, he was the eldest son of Rev. Dr. John Guthrie, D.D., who had seceded from his church over the doctrine of predestination. Initially working in commerce with Patrick Henderson & Co., John Guthrie later pursued medicine at the University of Glasgow, where he earned his M.D. in 1872, writing a thesis on yellow fever based on personal experience aboard an emigrant ship to South America—an event that included future writer Cunningham Graham among the passengers. After serving as a resident house surgeon and physician at the Royal Glasgow Infirmary, he emigrated to New Zealand in 1874 with his sister Hannah aboard the leaking Crusader. Once in Christchurch, Hannah married Tom Hay, and John soon married her sister Marion Taylor Hay in 1876. Guthrie initially served as Resident Surgeon at Christchurch Hospital before entering private practice. He lived in Armagh Street and later moved to Akaroa, where he worked for five strenuous years in an isolated and demanding district, eventually contracting rheumatic fever. Following his recovery, he returned to Christchurch and entered medical partnerships—first with Dr. W. F. Moore, then with Dr. Walter Thomas, and later Dr. A. H. Devenish-Meares—practicing from homes on Colombo and Cashel Streets. Health concerns forced another break in 1894, prompting travel to England and, by 1897, permanent relocation with his family, though he briefly returned to New Zealand. A skilled caricaturist, Guthrie was also active in sports, serving as a founding member and president of the Christchurch Golf Club. His children included John, who also studied medicine, and Robert Neil. His brother, James Guthrie, became President of the Royal Scottish Academy. Dr. John Guthrie died on 7 August 1922, aged 74, leaving a legacy of medical service and cultural contribution in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

So, as you can see, Lorna grew up in a family rooted in both medicine and the arts. Her father had emigrated from Glasgow in 1874, and her uncle was the celebrated portrait artist Sir James Guthrie, known internationally for his paintings of prominent figures including Winston Churchill. Lorna’s upbringing, with two older brothers and strong family ties to Scotland and the arts, helped shape a life devoted to care, beauty, and the value of public good.

Sir James Guthrie. Portrait Sir Winston Churchill (Oil on Canvas). Marion Lorna Guthrie 1895. christchurchartgallery.org.nz/sir-james-guthrie/marion-lorna-guthrie. "James Guthrie made his mark in the early 1880s as a member of the ground-breaking Glasgow Boys, who were influenced by French painters, particularly Jules Bastien-Lepage. This later work, with its restricted range of colour and tones, also shows the influence of Guthrie’s friend and mentor, American-born, London-based artist, James McNeill Whistler."

By Roselyn Fauth

If you are anything like me, you probably never visited The Croft until someone you love moved in. I had always assumed it was run by a church, and like most rest homes, that it probably made enough money through aged care services to sustain itself. But this was totally wrong, and what I learned was a remarkable story of women volunteering together in their hundreds who saw a need and got on with meeting it.

In 1918, while New Zealand was still reeling from the losses of the First World War and the ravages of the flu pandemic, a group of women formed the Women’s Auxiliary to support orphaned and vulnerable children in South Canterbury. Fathers were lost, incomes disappeared, mental illness was not well understood, and many children were sent away. The women responded by sewing, baking, mending, and fundraising. They did not wait for government help. They did not ask for permission. They simply got stuck in...

By Roselyn Fauth

In the early days of European settlement, South Canterbury was a place alive with birdsong. The forests, swamps, lagoons and open plains thrummed with the calls of native birds, many of which were completely new to the arriving settlers. Early writings from those settlers paint a picture of incredible abundance—birdlife that was prolific, varied, and deeply woven into the natural balance of the land.

As new people arrived, so did new birds... deliberately carried across oceans, tucked into cages, crated in straw, and placed on the decks of ships bound for the colonies. These were the feathered companions of memory: blackbirds, thrushes, pheasants, partridges, sparrows, familiar voices from English hedgerows and game estates. Their journey sounds like it was pretty brutal.

Waimataitai was my childhood stomping ground for me and my three siblings. I loved this school and used to imagine all the students who had come before us. Fortunately, I don’t remember the strap room, which ended just a few years before my time, but I do remember the smell of the books and many of my favourite teachers purfurme.

By Roselyn Fauth

By Roselyn Fauth

I was born in 1983 in the Jean Todd Ward at Timaru Hospital. So were my three siblings. Later, my two daughters arrived there as well. Babies take their first breath there. People come and go. You walk in focused on the moment and walk out without really thinking about the name on the door. Jean Todd.

I always thought it was just a name. Probably someone official, or the first to work there, or a donor. On one of my pregnancies I was admitted to the ward for weeks with severe cholestasis. Thanks to a naughty liver I was crazy itchy, but the obvious concern was stillbirth, and so I was happy to be in the care of professionals and monitored closely.

Over those weeks (I saw and heard) so many women come and go. I had time to think about things while my six foot frame let my feet dangle over the end of the short bed. I had the most amazing care, particularly from my midwife’s student who followed our journey through her placement. Kendra was amazing, and went on to care for many of my friends, including my younger sister.

Midwives are in a special role. They see it all — and sadly, not just the highs. I think the profession is incredible and certainly, in my experience, our South Canterbury mothers and babies were very well cared for.

It was then that I started to wonder. Who was Jean Todd and why was the ward named after her? This is what I learned, and my reflection on the nurse they accused and then tried to honour... Jean Todd who died Masterton 18 Aug 1929, Trained at Wellington Hospital from 1897. Sister, Wellington Hospital 1901 – 1906, and Matron, Timaru Hospital 1906 – 1916. Assistant Matron, Wellington Hospital 1916 – 1918. Secretary, Wellington Branch New Zealand Trained Nurses’ Association

By Roselyn Fauth

Inside the historic Landing Service Building owned by the Timaru Civic Trust on George Street is Te Ana Māori Rock Art Centre. A stunning and special centre for indigenous rock art. This is the perfect place to begin exploring the region’s earliest artists, their stories and histories. Te Ana brings to life the rock drawings created by Māori ancestors from as early as the 1300s. Found in limestone shelters across South Canterbury, these artworks are among the oldest in Aotearoa. At Te Ana, you can see them up close, hear the stories behind them, and learn how Ngāi Tahu with the community are protecting this heritage today. You can take a look around the space by yourself and study their exhibits, or join a personalised tour with a guide around the centre for an hour. Visiting a rock art site remains a quiet and moving experience. Sitting in the shelter, surrounded by silence, many visitors reflect on the journeys of the original Māori artists and the meanings behind their marks. The sense of presence and connection is strong. teana.co.nz/our-tours

By Roselyn Fauth

At the top of the Timaru Cemetery, with a view to the pacific ocean lies the grave of Captain Alexander Mills (1833-1882). While he witnessed is story is bound to the lifeboat Alexandra and to one of Timaru’s darkest days — the wrecks of the Benvenue and the City of Perth in May 1882.

Mills was the Harbour Master at the time. He’d stepped into the role after Captain Woollcombe, who before him had been beach master. Woollcombe had seen enough wrecks to read the sea like a sentence. That morning, looking out over the bay, he turned to his daughter and said something was wrong. “If the ships don’t get moving, they’re going to be in real trouble.” He wasn't wrong... 

Timaru’s city centre is full of hidden gems if you take the time to look. That is why we created the Look Up, Look Down CBD Heritage Hunt. It is a simple double-sided A4 self-guided treasure hunt that helps you slow down, look closely, and discover stories tucked into the footpaths and rooftops of our town. See if you can spot ships on manhole covers, tiny lions perched on buildings. These details tell the story of Timaru’s past, hidden in plain sight. This free activity is an easy free adventure for families, curious children, visitors or locals keen to explore the CBD. Pop into the Timaru Information Center, the South Canterbury Museum for a free copy, and print one yourself. If you don't have a printer, you can ask a librarian to print one off for you for a small fee. Bring a pen, wear comfortable shoes and keep your eyes peeled. Whether you are new to town or have lived here all your life, you are sure to spot something you have never noticed before. Download your clue sheet here: www.wuhootimaru.co.nz/cbd-heritage-hunt

We had a big problem. By the end of World War I, New Zealand had alarming levels of child malnutrition and poor health. National focus had been directed overseas for the war effort, and many services at home were stretched thin. The war left many families in economic hardship, especially those already living in rural or low-income communities.

Children were arriving at school undernourished, pale, and underweight. Their diets were often lacking in fresh produce and protein—some didn’t even know what vegetables were. Many lacked adequate clothing, sunlight, and exercise, and often slept poorly in overcrowded homes.

At the time, New Zealand had no comprehensive school health service. Although school inspectors might note signs of poor health, there was no established system to refer children for preventive or non-urgent care. Hospitals were not equipped to manage children who simply needed better nutrition and rest.

In response, a shift in public and professional attitudes emerged. Increasingly, it was recognised that the state had a responsibility to support child welfare, not just individual families. New research was linking nutrition, environment, and education to long-term wellbeing, and there was growing awareness that child health care needed to be proactive, not reactive.

In 1919, this momentum was given form by Dr Elizabeth Gunn, a school doctor with military experience, a booming voice, and a deep concern for children’s wellbeing. Shocked by what she saw in schools, she made a bold wager with a member of the Wanganui Hospital Board: that she could improve the health of frail children using only tents, basic equipment, nourishing food, fresh air, and daily routine.

With support from the Defence Department and community volunteers, she ran a three-week experimental camp for 55 children in Turakina Valley. Almost all gained weight and showed signs of recovery.

It worked, and it sparked a movement of civic duty to children, a health reset: Children’s Health Camp movement.. ‘Sunshine Camps’

By Roselyn Fauth

Timaru's first hospital emerged not from a grand governmental plan, but from the persistent advocacy of civic leaders like Belfield Woollcombe, responding to urgent health needs. Though modest in size and imperfect in location, the 1862 hospital marked the start of organized medical care in the region... a foundation that would grow into the Timaru Hospital we know today. I just assumed that nursing was a centuries old perfession, in today's deep dive, I have learned it is far more recent and through the work of the community we have saved many lives and improved the standard of care for those who became unwell, and in prevention too.

By Roselyn Fauth

The Point has had all kinds of history. It's located on the South Canterbury coastline at Timaru. According to a creation story, Pātītī was a passenger on the Ārai-te-uru waka, which capsized off Matakaea on the North Otago Coastline. After the capsize, many of the passengers went ashore to explore the land. However, they needed to be back at the waka before daylight. Most did not make it, including Pātītī, and instead were transformed into many of the well-known landmarks of Te Waipounamu.

The area at Pātītī Point has been a place for shelter for many hundreds of years. Moa bones and a moa hunter’s necklace found in the area are thought to be more than 800 years old..

In in 1839-1840s the point was home to whalers working for the Weller Brothers. Samuel Williams who was the boat steerer returned with his family to Timaru around 1856 and became the first perminant European family to live in Timaru. For a couple of years they lived in the only house in the area as a coastal station for the Levels connecting the Ships anchored near the shore to the arriving pioneers and settlers to the area. Belfeild Woollcombe and Captain Cain were the next to build basic huts on the beach, and welcomes the immigrants who sailed direct from the UK to Timaru in 1859 boosting the population from five houses and a few families to 110 new residents. A whale pot (for rendering blubber) at the current-day carpark is a reminder of this part of the area’s history.

Incredible story on how the combined efforts of medical professionals, community spirit and volunteer support came together in 1935, right here in Timaru, to take on polio. Thankfully, polio is now a past illness for most of the world. Thanks to a determined and far-reaching eradication programme, the only corner of the globe still grappling with this disease is Afghanistan, where ongoing conflict has made vaccination campaigns incredibly difficult.

It is hard to believe now, but at one point, polio ruined lives all around the world and even in small communities like ours in South Canterbury. The disease especially targeted children, often leaving them suddenly and permanently crippled.

In 2025, we mark the 90 years since the founding of the New Zealand Crippled Children Society, established in Timaru on 1 March 1935. At a time when polio was crippling children and there was no universal healthcare, this small South Canterbury town became the starting point for a national movement that brought together doctors, volunteers and local communities to support disabled children. The anniversary offers a chance to reflect on Timaru’s proud legacy of compassion, leadership and action—a legacy that helped shape New Zealand’s disability support system and contributed to the global effort to end polio.

Before vaccines, polio was a dreaded epidemic. In New Zealand, major outbreaks in 1916 and again in 1924 to 25 caused panic and heartbreak, leaving thousands of children with lifelong disabilities. These devastating outbreaks helped galvanise the country into action. Out of that need for care and rehabilitation came the founding of the Crippled Children Society in 1935.

By Roselyn Fauth

Next time you are at Ashbury Park, see if you can find the Matson Tree. At the base is a plaque: Dedicated to the memory of the late W. M. Matson by the N.E. IMP. Assoc. Oct. 1922 This inscription refers to William Matson, a respected member of the Timaru community, whose passing in 1922 prompted the planting of this tree as a tribute to his character and service. It was placed there by the North End Improvement Association, of which he had been an active member.

By Roselyn Fauth

If you’ve spent any time wandering through Timaru, chances are you’ve already passed the work of Margriet Windhausen—maybe without even knowing it. Her bronze sculptures are part of the backdrop of our town, quietly holding stories of people who shaped New Zealand and our region. Margriet Windhausen trained as a sculptor in the Netherlands and emigrated to New Zealand in the 1970s. She’s a fourth-generation artist and brought with her a skill set built on classical training and a respect for materials, story, and place.

On the afternoon of 20 November 2019, Timaru was struck by a weather event so sudden and severe it was later dubbed “the costliest hailstorm in New Zealand history.” What began as a warm spring day quickly turned into a scene of chaos and destruction — one etched into the memory of every South Cantabrian who experienced it.

Do you get a little storm anxiety after the 2019 hailstorm too? Remember that afternoon of 20 November 2019, when Timaru was struck by a weather event so sudden and severe it was later dubbed “the costliest hailstorm in New Zealand history.” at the time? What began as a warm spring day quickly turned into a scene of chaos and destruction... one that many South Cantabrians who experienced it, will still remember well.

When I began hunting out the story of Ann Williams, Timaru’s first recorded European mother, I went on many side quests of curiousity about the world her son was born into. William Williams, born in 1856, holds the honour of being the first recorded European baby born in Timaru. Recorded and local are the key words here, because there were a few earlier bubs in the District, so here is side quest number 14... who else was born in Timaru around this time? Who were these early families building lives from scratch on our windy coast?

By Roselyn Fauth

Graham Murray Thompson, Elizabeth Jane Whittet (2024). Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 20/07/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/8115

There is no known photograph of her face. No surviving letters. No signature I can point to and say, “That’s hers.” But there is a house. A photograph. A family plot. A few records in the library online.... that is enough to begin.

In the hunt for the grave of Ann Williams I found her death notice in the Lyttleton Times. I was asked by WuHoo Timaru Facebook followers why the local papers did report her death as well. So here's a blog to explain. In the 1860s Timaru's news was reported by newspapers outside of the region. Papers like Lyttleton were acused of slanting the story to support their harbourworks. It was time that Timaru took the propoganda into their own hands, and so on 11 June 1864 the first editions was printed. The Herald was founded by Alfred George Horton and Ingram Shrimpton. The first issue was printed on 11 June 1864. The original publication was weekly.

The first edition was printed in the Williams Kitchen! "First edition of the Timaru Herald. It was printed in a small room, a detached kitchen in the George Street cottage on a hand press. You can see early editions here: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/timaru-herald

Back in 2021 our daughter Medinella Fauth found a medal on the beach by the carpark at Patiti Point. I bumped into Lee Johns - Raine and Horne Real Estate the other day, which sparked a reminder to keep hunting. We still have the medal and thought by sharing this again... maybe we could find some new leads to find the owner of the medal and be able to return it to them?

In researching the early whaling era, I’ve been particularly interested in understanding what a cob or daub cottage actually was. While learning about Ann, Timaru’s first permanent European mother, I’ve often tried to visualise what her home might have looked like in 1857. To help form a clearer picture, I’ve been exploring buildings around the district that date from a similar period. This cottage is a remarkable example. The best place to begin is at the Levels. This was my first visit to the Keane Cottage, and I was genuinely excited to experience it in person and to imagine what life might have been like for Elizabeth Rhodes at that time.

Our girls were excited in their double denim to see a "Blues Brothers" car at Kyle Park today. Our youngest said they were dressed like Americans haha. My grandfather was in the police, I enjoyed seeing the police station photo where he used to work and items from the cop days.

Next time you're in town... see if you can spy a plaque, for the 1851 hut that was built for the Rhodes, and transformed for a home for the Williams family - Timaru's first European permanent residents...

20 April 2025

From Whales to Gold: Timaru's Flash Billy was one of the three Larrikins who discovered one of the West Coast’s richest gold-bearing leads.

You might have seen some of our recent Facebook posts and blogs on a deep dive into early Timaru's whaling history. That curiosity has now led us down an unexpected road... Larrikins Road, near Kumara on the West Coast. It’s here we learned about the special link between the whale hunters of Timaru and the gold hunters of Kumara. From Caroline Bay shore to Taramakau glacial gravels... I think we've got a pretty cool story for you.

While visiting Greymouth, we paid our respects at the graves of Sarah (1862-1939 77 yrs) and William Williams (1856-1936 80 yrs) and shared their story with our girls Medinella and Annabelle. Our family loves to go history hunting for free fun, and so the girls have learned to be patient and curious. Learning about people from the past, and visiting special locations has been a lovely way to connect to history and stories. And by doing so, we've learned a bit more about ourselves. It makes our free time meaningful and I think if our kids know where they have come from, they can better know themselves and make better choices for their future. WuHoo Timaru is a result of our free fun and history hunting - with the aim to help you find free fun too.

So... buckle in... here is what we learned so far... it started as a short story, and I've accidentally written a novel - but I think it's worth the read!

47 Milton Street Greymouth where Doreen and Harry Cloake raised their young family for 6 years

We're heading to the coast soon... did you know this fun fact about Chris and I? Chris grew up in Greymouth. When I went over to meet his family, we went to the Marist rugby club rooms. I was walking around the room, looking at all the men in the photos on the walls who had played rugby over the decades. There was one photo I looked at, and I was like... "woah that guy has big ears, they look so much like mine! I looked down and couldn't believe my eyes, it was my grandad, Beekper Harry Cloake, who had lived in Greymouth for a short time as a policeman with my nana Doreen. My father's oldest siblings, Mervyn and Marilyn, were born there. I had a short panic that Chris and I could be related like some tragic movie twist, but fortunately, that was not the case. It turned out, though that our grandfathers were really close friends.

12 May 2025

1 May 2023

Street Art by Aroha Novak at Community House called Wall Flowers "After much googling and research at the library about the history of Timaru, Aroha decided to keep this particular composition simple but nostalgic “as a little girl, I loved the Mount Cook lily logo, and always wanted to travel on one of their planes”. It references the former Mount Cook Airlines logo of the Mount Cook lily, creating a wallpaper pattern on the side of the building. Novak said it was a nostalgic reference to the Mt Cook Airlines logo, which featured the Mt Cook lily." - Aroha Novak

Most people know Mount Cook Airline for its little white “lily” painted on the side of planes and trucks, but few realise that flower was not a lily at all, and even fewer know it was designed by a Timaru woman. In 1913, Jessie Wigley turned the alpine buttercup into a logo that would carry her family’s transport company from dusty roads to glacier ski-planes and international publicity. Her story is not just about tourism or branding. It is about a woman whose creativity gave New Zealand one of its most recognisable and iconic symbols.

I absolutely love the mural that the Timaru Civic Trust championed with Vibrant Timaru, that Aroha painted across the Community House wall. I have been helping the Trust to share the stories and meanings of their street art, and this is what I learned from a deep dive into the buttercup’s history hunt trail and the journey leading me to Jessie Wigley...

There are so many ways to play! See if you can run, swing, climb, and roll through the Play43 challenge by visiting all 43 Timaru District Council Playgrounds?

Did you know...
Timaru District has about 650 ha of parks
43 playgrounds in Timaru, Pleasant Point, Temuka, Geraldine, Rangitata Huts & Cave
55 km of off-road walking and biking tracks
4 skate parks
11 parks have netball and tennis courts
3 parks have outdoor fitness equipment
Nature parks provide a habitat for plants, insects, birds, penguins and possibly bats! Many historic events are commemorated in parks as well as art history signs, sculptures and a murals!

By Roselyn Fauth

Good news for your Thursday! We have a new Guide and Hunt ready for your school holidays... this one shows you around the art history trail at Caroline Bay and Pātītī Point. It includes tips on how to read a painting with your kids, some info about Timaru and the project... and then as you spy the signs you can connect to the artists, and their work to learn about our past people and place. See if you can find all of the signs! wuhootimaru.co.nz/signs

WuHoo And Aigantighe Art History Sign at the Port Loop Rd - Mollie Stevens

I’m so excited to announce the newest addition to the Timaru Art History Trail — a beautiful new sign featuring Ports and Journeys No.1 (1967) by Astrid Mary Davies, later known as Mollie Steven (1906–1999). This striking view of Timaru’s Port adds another layer to our growing outdoor gallery and brings a fresh female perspective to the waterfront story.

Big thanks to the Friends of the Aigantighe Art Gallery, Aigantighe Art Gallery, and the amazing team at South Canterbury Museum for helping bring this project to life. Mollie was part of a wave of New Zealand artists working at the edge of tradition and modernism. She studied art in Ōtautahi Christchurch and exhibited alongside some of my favourite Canterbury legends — Rita Angus and Colin McCahon. She made Timaru her home in the 1960s, living on Beverley Road until 1972, painting at the same time as local art heroes like Clifford Brunsden and Vivna Lynn. Her work blends strong design with movement and mood — and Ports and Journeys No.1 is a perfect example. I love how it offers a modern, abstract take on the port, in contrast to some of the other artworks featured on the trail.

This sign has been crafted to last. Thompson Engineering made the galvanised steel frame, and the sign itself is a high-quality reproduction of Mollie’s painting from the Aigantighe’s permanent collection. It’s printed on ACM board with a protective anti-graffiti coating so it will stay vibrant in the elements. You can find the sign at the carpark on Loop Road, off Marine Parade. It’s a great spot to start or end a walk along the bay toward Patiti Point, following the rest of the art history trail. Art, place, and local stories... all together on the coast. Come check it out, and let us know what you think.

? For more on Mollie Steven’s life and art, check out this article from the Timaru Herald (2019).

Would you like to go on an architecture hunt in our CBD? Here's a free guide we have made for you to help you find your way... Spy 50+ illustrations of our beautiful CBD. Timaru heritage buildings. Wander around town, look up, and see if you can find architectural features designed by our early architects. Free download on our website... Print off a copy, or pop into the Timaru Information Centre to pick one up. https://www.wuhootimaru.co.nz/timaru-cbd-architecture-hunt

31 March 2025

If you’re after a bit of free fun with a side of Olympic history and tree-hugging heritage, We’ve got just the thing. On a recent mission, we set out to find a very specific oak tree. Not just any tree, but one that’s listed in Timaru’s new District Plan as notable. Clue: it’s tucked away at Timaru Boys' High School. Ten points if you can guess how it got there. Even more if you can find it.

1 December 2024

Great day at Timaru Festival of Roses ! We launched our new fact sheet with activities to help people learn about the amazing people involved in our internationally significant rose gardens here in Timaru. We turned the rose garden into a maze, had colouring in activities and the organisers had a heap of free to play games. The sun turned out and we had a ball. The garden was designed by Sir Miles Warren and planted with love by the Griffiths family and dedicated volunteers, this garden features over 1,200 roses arranged in stunning geometric beds. From rare species roses to vibrant English varieties, it offers a sensory journey through colors, fragrances, and history. It is recognized as one of the largest rose collections in the Southern Hemisphere, this award-winning garden is a must-visit destination. Step into a world of beauty and heritage, and explore how a community’s vision blossomed into a cherished landmark. You can see them all year round at various life cycles, and flowering from November until July.

Throwback to Timaru’s coastline before the Port was built! This old map shows just how different the coastline looked – can you spot where Ashbury Park and Caroline Bay are today?

Building a harbor in Timaru was a hot topic 1860 and 70s. Many thought it wasn’t needed because the railway was about to connect Timaru with Christchurch’s Lyttelton Port. But others could see the opportunity that would come from improving safety and efficiency and so locals pushed forward, believing a port was key to the town’s future. The port was only one of two independently owned ports in the country, a critical asset for the ratepayers of Timaru.
Construction started in 1878 with the 700m southern breakwater, designed by John Goodall. As the breakwaters were built, sand began to accumulate, transforming the Stoney shoreline into what we now know as Caroline Bay. The harbor continued to expand and change, with work continuing even to the present day.
Timaru Harbour, Province of Canterbury : general chart of Timaru and adjoining coast by Sir John Coode showing works recommended by Sir John Coode, August 1875. (from Patiti Point to Washdyke Lagoon). The proposed works are shown by red colour. Timaru Foreshore. NZ Heritage Maps Platform, accessed 10/09/2024, https://maps.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/404

I’ve just finished reading my neighbour (and high school friend) Pauline’s thesis — and wow, it’s opened my eyes. She’s was awarded a Master of Indigenous Studies (MIndS) for COVID-19 Talanoa: The Voices of Tongan Kāinga in South Canterbury.

Her research gives voice to Tongan families in Timaru, capturing how they faced the early days of COVID-19 with strength, faith, and family at the centre. Every story she gathered is more than “research” — it’s real life. What stood out most to me is how every decision — moving here, sending money home, getting through a global pandemic — always came back to family.

Resilience, as Pauline shows so beautifully, isn’t just individual. It’s cultural, communal, and deeply rooted in stories. Read it here: otago.ac.nz/COVID-19-Talanoa-The-Voices-of-Tongan and then if you like, read on for my reflection on her thesis and what Pauline has taught me... 

In this map you can see the waimataitai lagoon before it was drained and turned into a park. The stream was piped underground and can be seen at the golf course. Miscellaneous plans - borough of timaru, south canterbury, 1911 - t.N. Brodrick, chief surveyor canterbury. ndhadeliver.Natlib.Govt.Nz/ie31423732

Have you wandered through Ashbury Park, noticed the old trees and winding stream, and wondered—what used to be here? Before sports fields and supermarkets, this was Waimātaitai, a vast coastal lagoon alive with birdsong, whitebait, and the shimmering shapes of tuna (freshwater eels). Beneath your feet lies a forgotten wetland, rich in Māori history and ecological wonder, where eels once thrived and journeys began that stretched all the way to the heart of the Pacific Ocean. This is the story of a lost lagoon, an ancient traveller, and the community working to bring both back into the light.

Today we hunted for graves connected to Timaru's shipwreck history. Captains, Boatmen, people whose livelihoods needed successful way to export and import, mayor's, harbour board members, grain merchants, sheep station owners, meat exporters, first to export flour in Timaru, and the wives arriving to a new colony...

I imagine the day when 5000 sacks of locally produced grain were on board the City of Perth, in danger of smashing into the Benvenue wreck, and what it must have felt like to be on the cliff above, watching your communities hard work to break in the farms and produce the grain... and to see it under threat... fortunately the grain was salvaged and able to be sold.
How many more wrecks would the insurers pay out on before the Timaru Harbour was too high risk to insure vessels and cargo.

The first person to be buried at the Timaru Cemetery was a boatman from Deal on his way to save a ship in trouble. So many lost their lives so close to our shore.

I often wonder what Timaru would be like if it didn't have a Port. And how the efforts if those back in the day to make it happen and be a success helped make our region a feasible place to live, and thrive.

Check out the Timaru Trails Cemetery Trail to learn about Timaru-vians who rest here.

There's an area that looks like there could be graves, but no markings, I wonder if these are the "pauper graves"?

Photo by Roselyn Fauth

By Roselyn Fauth

We are often reminded that the best decisions are made not just for today, but with the future in mind. When it comes to our art collection, this means caring for it in ways that reflect the kind of community we want to be remembered as. If we decide with the next fifty years in mind, we show that South Canterbury is a place that honours its heritage, treasures creativity, and gives generously to those who will come after us...

Wow we had a special day out exploring the Waitarakao Washdyke Lagoon with a heap of passionate people. This was a free event as part of #Seaweek Our girls loved spying on the birds, noticing how they were behaving, took their curiosity down to the rocky shore looking for Crabs, Limpids and Chitons... Then had a free sausage and enjoyed the displays. So cool. What a special place. Thank you to the organizers. Did you go today?

The Scenic Drive was renamed Centennial Park. The arch features bluestone, volcanic rock from 2million year old lava that flowed from Mt Horrible through here to the sea. The rock was quarried for the harbor construction and to manage coastal erosion.
The Treaty of Waitangi (Māori: Te Tiriti o Waitangi) was first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and Māori chiefs (rangatira) from the North Island of New Zealand.
George Bowker donated 16 acres of land to connect the former quarry to Otipua Rd.

Have you been on an adventure out to Pioneer Park? It’s one of those magic places you can visit for free (or camp very affordably), packed with native bush, birdsong, towering trees, and layered with stories from the early settler days. Just 32 km from Geraldine, this 390-hectare conservation area is tucked away off SH79 and makes for a perfect day trip or overnight camp. It’s a spot for walkers, history buffs, families, tree lovers, and anyone chasing a bit of nature-based reset. Dogs are allowed too—just keep them under control.

Take a look around St Davids Church. Built from river stone found nearby, and glacial granite from Mt Cook, not a single nail is used inside. It was designed in 1930 by Herbert W. Hall. The building was awarded the New Zealand Institute of Architects gold medal in 1934.

It was built for Thomas Burnett in memory of his father Andrew Burnett (1838–1927) and his mother Catherine (1837–1914), as well as to commemorate other pioneering run-holders who took up runs in the Mackenzie country. Andrew and Catherine Burnett arrived in Timaru in 1861.

"Her late Majesty famously declared that on her 21st Birthday, her whole life would be dedicated to serving the Nation and Commonwealth. Rarely has such a promise been so well kept." Thank you for your service, and Rest in Peace your Majesty. I took this photo at a guest speaker night at the Aigantighe last week. it was about the importance of Friends organizations. As we all know, volunteering and serving our community is a huge part of our kiwi culture. We can connect communities, support each other and enrich lives.  So on today's public holiday, while i think of someone who gave her life to serve others, i raise a glass to acknowledge everyone who cares, and does their bit, to make all of our lives better.

Timaru's famous Blackett Lighthouse doesn't often have its doors open, but while filming for Frank Films we had a council staff member open it up for us for filming. Photos by Roselyn Fauth 2022

Free fun, giving a salute to our Queen for her Jubilee ... Happy Birthday Queen Elizabeth, and congratulations on your 70 years of service to the commonwealth.

Oh we had the best free family fun day, showing friends around the Waitaki region. Key highlights are the Elephant Rocks in Duntroon, the whale fossil just 1 min up the road, and then some peaceful scraping of ancient limestone to reveal the remnants of creatures from millions of years ago... The Vanished World Centre is a really cool experience, its worth the small fee to help teach your kids about the geology in the are The geology here, connects to Timaru's story... next time, when you look at a block of Oamaru limestone on our Council Building, imagine all the tiny fossil remains of ancient creatures, and the Diatom. 

We had a pavlova picnic at Mt Nimrod Scenic Reserve today with friends and family... such a special wee spot out the back of Maungati at Cannington. Initially we thought we'd go to Pareora River, Evans Crossing but the water was still a bit fast for paddling with our young kids so we ventured a little further... love exploring!

Near the edge of Ashbury Park, the stormwater drain reveals its tunnel to the sea. Above, the old Blacket lighthouse watches from the Benvenue cliffs. The area used to be a huge wetland and coastal lagoon, and was drained in the 1930s to mitigate the highway flooding issues and coastline change. We love it here, it’s a place to wander, to notice small things, and to breathe with the rythum of the seas waves. sometimes I forget that this is the edge of the ocean that goes on for miles and miles. 

Ashbury Park is a green space with a rich and layered history. Originally, this area was the Waimātaitai Lagoon—a 50-acre coastal wetland fed by Waimataitai Creek. For generations, it served as a vital mahinga kai site for Ngāi Tahu, providing tuna (eels) and inaka (whitebait) . In 1857, Captain Belfield Woollcombe, often reffered to himself as the "father of Timaru," settled here. He built one of the town's earliest European homes, naming it "Ashbury" after his family's estate in Devon, England. The English trees he planted still grace the southern end of the park .

The construction of the Port of Timaru in the late 19th century disrupted natural sediment flows, leading to the erosion of the lagoon's protective barrier. By 1933, the lagoon had drained away. The reclaimed land was transformed into Ashbury Park, now featuring open lawns, sports facilities, and playgrounds. Today, Ashbury Park stands as a testament to Timaru's evolving relationship with its natural environment, blending historical significance with community recreation.

Some FREE fun at Dashing Rocks today at low tide. On the 5th December there's a really low tide and would be a great time to explore the rock pools, find carvings in the 2 million year old basalt, see remains of a contraption that harnessed the waves energy... lots to explore and find here

On a clear South Canterbury afternoon, we set off on a little historical wander to one of the lesser-known but fascinating heritage sites near Pleasant Point, the Taiko Monument. The reserve, quietly nestled in rolling rural landscape, marks a legendary event in New Zealand’s colonial history involving sheep theft, Māori shepherds, and the man whose name was later given to the Mackenzie Country.

Did you know caretakers of the Bay actually lived there? Mr Gibson was one of the early caretakers (1904 -1939) and the steps behind the tea rooms (currently Sopheze) were built by him. His caretaker cottage used to be next door. The stairs used to have rustic wooden (Kauri) railings along the side and an archway at the top. A fence in the same style ran along to terrace edge.

Have you been to Patersons Cottage? The land was owned 1872-1883 by Henry Le Cren (built the Beverley Estate and lived at Craighead house before it was a school). Then James Patterson and his wife, three boys, daughter and step son lived here. There's some debate about who built the house but it could be as old as 140! (Built 1880s). You'll find this on the Strawberry Heritage Trail between Waimate and Kurow. "It is a classification 1 by Heritage NZ, it is historically significant nationally and worthy of preservation"

Crazy weather huh... did you know there was an epic flood in 1945? When your next on Domain Ave by the railway line (near the Temuka Domain), check out the ECan depo fence... there's a plaque showing the flood depth from that event. About 2 feet of water went through the main street of Temuka, with widespread flooding across South Canterbury. Here are photographs of Temuka town centre during 21 Feb 1945. There was another huge flood 13 March 1986. Note that most of the flooding (except for right at the south end of town which was the Temuka River) was from the Waihi and Orari Rivers flooding into the town from the North not from the Temuka River.

16 March 2020

Just to change the subject from worrying viruses... Who knows who lived here on Keane Road, Pleasant Point? I would love to find the home of George and Elizabeth Rhodes at The Levels, but Im not sure if this is it? Cob buildings were once a significant part of New Zealand's early history and census figures from 1845 recorded more than 40 per cent of building stock in the South Island was of earth construction. As times progressed and more building materials became available this percentage declined to the point where there are fewer than 200 earth dwellings in the South Island today.

16 March 2020

Relaxing wander around the river bed under Brasells Bridge today. Lots of interesting rocks to discover. Saw an awesome swimming hole, hopefully we can test it out in warmer weather. Have you ever stopped to look at the monument to the first of the Brasell family members arrival to Timaru in 1863? Brasells Bridge is a bridge in Waimate District, Canterbury. Brasells Bridge is situated nearby to the village Pareora, as well as near the hamlet Fairview.

14 March 2020

 

Our WuHoo find free fun Friday... Have you been to the Parrs Water Wheel on Mill Rd, Pleasant Point? We went for a wee drive to investigate with my father Geoff. It's a Category 2 listed Heritage Site and was first constructed in 1865 by the Parr Brothers, operating until 1905. It powered the gear to grind local grains in a three-story building. A water race channelled water from the Opihi River to the overshot water wheel. There was a deadly flood in 1868. The Parr Brothers also established a five sailed windmill in Timaru in 1871 and demolished it in 1888. The wind wasn't favorable, and the windmill was later powered by steam. See if you can find the plaque on the dry cleaners wall on what used to be the corner of Elizabeth and Theodosia Street, Timaru.

15 January 2020

Have you been to Claremont Bush? We hadn't until yesterday... It's 10 km southwest of Timaru, up the side of Mt Horrible with a view at the top. Drive down the Fairview Zig Zag and it's the 2nd intersection before the Pareora Bridge. There has been a wonderful community effort to trap pests and weed the track too. There are lots of native birds, excellent regeneration of totara, matai, mahoe, hen and chicken ferns, coprosma, cabbage trees, matipo and kowhai. keep an eye out for native flora like kahikatea, kowhai, totara, matai, mahoe, and the rare climbing daisy with its bright yellow flowers. The area is alive with birdlife, including bellbirds (korimako), fantails (piwakawaka), riflemen (titipounamu), grey warblers, brown creepers, and occasionally native pigeons (kereru). The track features a steep ascent and descent, which can be slippery when wet, so sturdy footwear is recommended. There are no facilities on-site, so plan accordingly, and note that dogs are not permitted to protect the native wildlife.

17 January 2020

15 January 2020

12 January 2020

10 January 2020

The Rata at the Timaru Botanic Gardens is flowering. This beautiful tree used to be in the hospital car park, it was moved when they made alterations. Even though it was only shifted meters from the car park to the botanic gardens boundary, it was bundled up on a truck and driven through the gates, down the drive to the other side of the fence.
I've seen a photo of the tree in it's original position, but I can't find it on Google to share with you.

8 January 2020

Gleniti Park is so picturesque... and has some beautiful memorials on their original school building. You could pack a lunch and then bike down to Centennial Park through the trees - it has a dog friendly space too

7 January 2020

Have You been to this cute little Trees of the World rest stop in Temuka.. There's quite a collection... see if you can find the army man. So next time you're passing through Temuka, take a moment to explore this cute little rest stop. It's a small detour that offers a refreshing pause and a touch of global greenery.

5 January 2020

Centennial Park Pond, feed the ducks, go for a wander... Centennial Park, Timaru is a former basalt quarry just minutes from the town centre. Known locally as "The Scenic," it was renamed for the centennial of the Treaty of Waitangi. There has been a huge community effort to revive the area supported by Timaru District Council. It features serene walking trails, native bush, a small lake (great for ducks, but not suitable for swimming), and plenty of spots for picnics and birdwatching. There’s a few playgrounds for kids, open spaces for dog walking, and even mountain biking tracks. Perfect for a peaceful stroll, a family outing, or just soaking up nature in the heart of South Canterbury. https://wuhootimaru.co.nz/.../123-centennial-park-pond

27 June 2019

Photo sourced from here:

https://files.interpret.co.nz/.../Crown_803.../High.jpg...

 

Here's a photo of our favorite cabbage tree at the Timaru Botanic Gardens... Its so old it was here before the whalers arrived in 1838... pre the arrival of Europeans to Timaru! This tree has a hollow trunk. Apparently cabbage tree's like this made excellent chimneys in the first European immigrants homes...