Travel in the Amuri District, North Canterbury, early 1900s

The Hanmer coach leaving Culverden, early 1900s. The sender writes that motorcars have replaced the coach, postmarked 1913.

Before the railway line was extended all the way to Waiau in 1918 - and to Parnassus in 1917 - the Amuri and Hurunui districts relied on stagecoaches to deliver the mails and passengers to points north of Culverden. The various accommodation houses, later improved to hotel status, provided more than a watering hole for the weary traveler.

Waiau Hotel, Hanmer early 1900s

By the early 1910s, service cars were beginning to replace the coaches but bridging remained a problem in such sparsely populated rural districts.

Departure of Service Cars from Hanmer Springs, circa 1910.

Drowning was a leading cause of accidental death in nineteenth century New Zealand for humans, frequently along with the loss of bullock and horse teams as coaches and wagons got washed away.

Till the arrival of the railway and better roading, bulk commodities such as the wool of the "Amuri Wool Kings" had to be moved by bullock wagons down to the shore to be lightered out to coastal steamers.

Wool wagon - 1880s view - Ready Money Robinson's Cheviot Estate.

Kaikoura New Zealand - Early Views 1908 #1

Amuri Rutherford sent these two cards to her postcard penpal in Austin, Texas in 1908. Amuri was the daughter of Andrew Rutherford, one of the "Amuri Wool Kings" of the nineteenth century, owner of the large pastoral run Mendip Hills, and Liberal member of parliament.

Some sense of the health difficulties faced in daily life in the early twentieth century are given in Amuri's messages to her Texan penpal. On the reverse of the first card, she writes:

“This seaside resort is 34 miles from “Mendip Hills”.

“Was indeed sorry to hear you had been so ill & hope you will soon be quite strong again. I think sickness detestable. Did I tell you that seven of us had scarlet fever last winter; since then I have not been very strong, but I suppose one cannot get well too suddenly" - Amuri Rutherford, 16 March 1908.

And on the second, Amuri reveals something of the class-structure of the times to be found not only on the large sheep runs, but more generally in New Zealand society:

“We have rather a “difficult” time with our maid servants in N.Z.. At present we have two girls who call themselves “lady (?) helps.” I am teaching my youngest brother (11 years) until Sept. when he goes to Christ’s College [an elite private boarding school], Christchurch. I am just twenty one, & not being the proud possessor of “brains” find it rather difficult to teach him! With kindest regards.”

Amuri Rutherford married Eric Russell, a wealthy grazier from Victoria, Australia, in a society wedding at St Andrews Presbyterian Church, Christchurch in 1912. The couple returned to Victoria to farm Russell's property. Amuri died in Geelong in 1988 at the age of 101.

Janet Holm, Nothing But Wind and Grass, 1992.

Today Kaikoura is a coastal town of 2,172 with eco-tourism constituting the major industry in the form of whale watching, dolphins, and marine birds, supported by farm services.

Ready Money Robinson & The Cheviot Estate

William "Ready Money" Robinson, circa 1865,
with his hand on a roll of 5 pounds notes in his pocket?
Source: Alexander Turnbull Library

William Robinson (1814-1889) - runholder, pastoralist, racehorse owner, and politician - is best known in New Zealand history as "Ready Money" Robinson, a land speculator and pastoral farmer who owned the Cheviot Hills run in North Canterbury from the mid 1850s to the time of his death in 1889.

Born in Lancashire, England, Robinson emigrated to South Australia in 1839 where he rapidly accumulated capital as a livestock dealer. Rapid financial success permitted him to purchase the Hill River run of more than 100 square miles by 1844.

In 1856 Robinson sold up his property and emigrated to New Zealand looking for new opportunities. He and his family landed in Nelson and within days made a deposit of 10,000 pounds with the Nelson commissioner of Crown lands that gave Robinson right of choice over 40,000 acres of 5 shilling land. It was an illegal transaction but gained "validity" because the commissioner accepted it.

Robinson then proceeded to purchase the Cheviot Hills run, some 84,000 acres of freehold, between the Hurunui and Waiau rivers in North Canterbury. This landholding increased to 92,928 acres valued at 279,392 pounds by 1882.

The Cheviot Estate, 1893.
Source: Alexander Turnbull Library

The Amuri and Hurunui districts were attractive to land speculators where "free land" could be obtained and the speculators were followed in turn by squatter pastoralists like Robinson who might have tenuous legal status on the land but were prepared to undertake the task of breaking in large areas of low quality, unimproved land for pastoral farming.

Of course, the land was not "free". The tangata whenua, Kaikoura Ngai Tahu, occupied the land and were paid only 300 pounds for the entire million hectare Kaikoura Purchase of 1859 that covered lands stretching north from the Hurunui river, west to Lake Sumner and up the Main Divide to White Bluffs on the Marlborough coast. It was not until the Waitangi Tribunal's Ngai Tahu Report (1991) recommendations were incorporated into the Ngai Tahu Settlement Act of 1998 that reparation for the loss of land and the associated monetary loss was made.

After a period as absentee owner between 1857-66, Robinson spent more time at Cheviot Hills undertaking pastoral improvement of the run. The operation included stocking the property with sheep, fencing, milling timber, constructing a bridge over the Hurunui, and building a slipway at Robinson's Bay for wool lighters to be launched to ferry wool bales out to coastal steamers waiting offshore. It was tough, dangerous work in an isolated environment on one of the frontiers of the British Empire.

Robinson's Bay Slipway, lighters return from steamer for next load of wool bales. circa 1893.
Source: Alexander Turnbull Library

Robinson's lavish spending habits on his farm, on his race horses, and on the mansion he built at Cheviot Hills earned him the Ready Money moniker. As land become less readily available on the market at affordable prices for the growing number of settlers arriving in New Zealand, public attention increasingly focused on the runholders of large properties who were seen by many as a landed gentry locking others out of the dream of family farming.

The Cheviot Hills Mansion, circa 1893.

The mansion is long gone. The Cheviot Hills Domain is located where the homestead once stood. The steps of the original mansion house form the steps of the cricket pavilion.

Source: Alexander Turnbull Library.

The long depression of the 1880s contributed to the ebbing fortunes of the pastoralists, many of whom faced financial hardship. Robinson, although he never mortgaged Cheviot Hills, did have a large overdraft with the Union Bank of Australia that only got larger as the wool price slumped in the 1880s.

After his death in 1889, his estate was valued at 324,729 pounds but was burdened by the huge debt to the Union Bank. Subsequently, his daughters - there were no sons - sold the estate in 1893 to the Liberal government elected in 1891 on a ticket of land reform which would break up the large estates through a graduated land tax and compulsory purchase if necessary in order to subdivide the large runs into smaller holdings for family farms.

This was a pivotal event in securing the institution of family farm land settlement that has formed the backbone of New Zealand agriculture down to the present day.