On 6th March 1914, New Zealand’s first cross country flight landed in Christchurch. James William Humphrey Scotland was born in Auckland in 1891. After attending Kings College, he finished his education in England. It was here that he fell in love with aviation. He was the second New Zealander to get his pilot licence. Upon …
It wasn’t until morning’s first light that the fate of Mrs. Rosana Lilley could be fully understood. Upon discovering her body via candlelight, just 30 yards from their farmhouse, her husband John Allan Lilley had concluded that she had just collapsed and passed away suddenly. But as the police and a doctor arrived the following …
On 30th October 1911, Cashmere joined the Greater Christchurch and came under the care of the C.C.C. To look at Sir John Cracroft-Wilson (pictured), you would never guess that he was born in India! It was only his health that caused him to look for a cooler climate and Canterbury looked good! In 1853 with …
In June 1911, the Peacock Fountain, a gift to Christchurch by much respected business man – John Thomas Peacock – was unveiled outside the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in Christchurch’s Botanical Gardens. Just like its second unveiling on the 26th May 1996, the fountain raised all sorts of mixed opinions. Peacock arrived in Port Cooper …
For Christchurch’s first ten years, the South East corner of Cathedral Square sat empty and unused. The owner was a Rev. Thomas Rowley and this site was just one of eight he held by a Crown grant. Although the Reverend never stepped foot in New Zealand, his son Thomas Rowley Jnr. did but still this …
Excited and enthusiastic supporters kept the Terra Nova company, as it carried Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his crew, out to the Lyttelton Heads on its way to Antarctica in the race to the South Pole. How bittersweet this image is now that we know how fateful this adventure would end up being. “We advertised …
On 12 September 1910, at 175 Manchester Street, the first Para Rubber shop opened. George Waldemar Skjellerup was born in Cobden, Victoria, Australia in 1881. In 1902, just before his 21st birthday, he arrived in New Zealand and began working in Dunedin at a bicycle shop. Within a year, it was another change of scenery …
In 1894, a small group of Catholic nuns, known as the Sisters of Mercy, arrived at Lyttelton from the West Coast of the South Island. It had been deemed safer to for them to travel by sea as bad weather could have made the cross country journey unsafe and unpredictable. They were led by Mother …
Although he was in the company of a news reporter, famous British author Rudyard Kipling refused to be interviewed during his one day visit to Christchurch in 1891. He was doing a tour (mainly of the North Island) of New Zealand so that he could write his view on our way of life. He did, …
In 1909, after years of surgeries being performed by brave general practitioners, Sir Hugh Acland became Canterbury’s first full-time paid surgeon. Hugh was the youngest of eleven siblings; his father (John Barton Arundel Acland) first arrived at Lyttelton in 1855 with fellow British lawyer, Charles Tripp. Wishing to be sheep farmers, the completely inexperienced pair …
