Colonial Timaru developed around two settlements: Rhodes Town, north of North Street, and Government Town, to the south.
Rhodes Town grew around the landing place near the bottom of George Street. Before Timaru had a harbour, surfboats carried people and supplies between shore and ships anchored offshore, while wool and other produce travelled out in the opposite direction. Horses were a vital part of connecting those landing services with the farms and stations beyond the town.
The Rhodes brothers were among the major early landholders. In 1855, James Mackenzie was caught with about 1,000 sheep missing from their Levels Station. He denied stealing them, but was convicted. Less than a year later, after concerns were raised about the investigation and trial, he received a free pardon.
Another little piece of Timaru history happened nearby. The first edition of the Timaru Herald was printed in the kitchen of the George Street cottage on 11 June 1864.
These stories sit within the wider horse-powered history mapped through the hunt.
Follow the horse and you can follow the town
By the 1870s, Timaru had businesses specifically serving horses and the people who relied on them. James King’s Timaru Horse Repository hired out horses and buggies, provided livery and feed, and broke horses for saddle and harness. Saddlers supplied leatherwork. Ironmongers sold tools and equipment. Hotels advertised stabling. Carriers shifted goods around town and out into the district.
Timaru Borough Council was even regulating passenger vehicles and public carriers before there were motorcars filling the streets. The vehicles simply had horses attached to them. That is one of the things I find fascinating about this story. A street we now associate with cars was already a busy transport corridor. The technology changed, but the basic questions stayed the same.
How do we move ourselves, our goods and our produce from one place to another?
The streets start changing
Horses did not disappear the moment somebody invented a car. For a time, Timaru’s streets were a mixture of technologies. Horses and carts shared space with bicycles. Railways connected the district. Then motor vehicles began to arrive.
Timaru cycle manufacturer and inventor Cecil Wood was part of that change, building an engine-powered three-wheeler that ran in Timaru in 1901. Over time, motor vehicles took over many of the jobs horses had once done.
Businesses changed... buildings changed, and the way people used the CBD changed. But the horse didn’t disappear. And you can still find traces of that transition in the buildings and stories along Stafford Street today.
South Canterbury knew horses
This was the world Phar Lap was born into. People still rode horses, worked them on farms, bred them, trained them and raced them.
Horse knowledge was part of everyday life. Our school histories give little glimpses of this too. Timaru Girls’ High School had a horse paddock that was converted into a playing field in 1926, and horsemanship later appeared in school competitions.
Horse racing was part sport, part social occasion and part test of generations of breeding and training. A racehorse needed speed, stamina, temperament and the ability to perform under pressure. Trainers and jockeys had to understand how to bring out the best in them. Then, on 4 October 1926, a chestnut colt was born at Alexander Roberts’ Seadown Stud near Timaru. His name was Phar Lap.
Why Phar Lap?
This was the question that sent me down the rabbit hole. Plenty of racehorses have come and gone over the past century.
So why are people still travelling to Timaru to celebrate this one? Phar Lap went on to win 37 of his 51 starts, including the 1930 Melbourne Cup, and became one of Australasia’s most famous racehorses.
But his story became bigger than his racing record. He lived at a time when newspapers could turn sporting figures into household names, radio could carry the excitement of a race far beyond the racecourse, and film allowed people to actually see him run. Then came his sudden death in California in 1932.
Today pieces of Phar Lap’s story are held across three countries. His skeleton is at Te Papa in Wellington, his heart is in Canberra and his mounted hide is in Melbourne.
But his story began here... in South Canterbury.
Follow the horse
That is really what this project is about. Not just Phar Lap, or even racing. It is about using the horse as a thread through the history of Timaru. Follow it and you find farmers, shopkeepers, blacksmiths, saddlers, carriers, inventors, school pupils and racehorse trainers. You find changes in technology, transport and business.
You start to understand why the CBD developed the way it did. And perhaps you start noticing familiar buildings and streets differently.
That is the bit I love.
Explore it for yourself
The Horse History Hunt brings those stories together in one A3 trail through Timaru’s CBD. You can walk the whole thing, explore a few stops at a time, or simply use it as a guide to look more closely at places you might normally walk or drive straight past. Because once you know what to look for, the clues are still there. And next time you travel along Stafford Street, imagine it without the traffic... long before the cars arrived, you would have heard hooves.