I can never look at a view of our beautiful Lyttelton Harbour without looking for the ‘Charlotte Jane’ to come sailing around the corner of the heads – just like she would have done on the 16th December 1850, carrying the first of our Anglican settlers. So would have loved to have seen that historic …
Captain Joseph Thomas is easily the most forgotten man in Christchurch’s history. Born in 1803, Joseph was educated at the Royal Military College – so naturally he spent the beginning of his working life in the Army. He served in India and the West Indies, retiring in 1830. He travelled to South America where he …
The names of Rhodes and Barker, for Canterbury historians and alike, represent a delicious smorgasbord of old photos, journals, homesteads, memorials and real-life colourful characters who made the swamps and Toi Toi of Canterbury their home. The Rhodes Brothers – William, George and Robert – had settled on Banks Peninsula – from Akaroa in the …
Legend has it that this was the first flushable toilet in Canterbury!!! Of course, more modern now than when first built by the Rhodes brothers at Purau Bay in Lyttelton Harbour in 1853. A HUGE thank you to Chris Gardiner who welcomed me onto his earthquake shattered Purau property that has been in his family …
