page_title: History of Canterbury, New Zealand
section_title: Early exploration and pastoral settlement
hierarchical_section_title: History of Canterbury, New Zealand / Early exploration and pastoral settlement
caption_attribution_description: English: A bullock wagon team taking wool from a station (farm) in New Zealand down to Gore Bay during the early European pioneer days around the 1880s. Extended information on origin webpage reads: Bullock team and wool wagon, Cheviot, New Zealand [1880-1889] / Reference number: PA1-o-497-27 / 1 b&amp;w original photographic print(s). Albumen print, 26 x 14.3 cm, mounted on album page. / Part of Tonks album (PA1-o-497) Photographic Archive / Scope and contents: Bullock team and wool wagon taking Cheviot Station wool to Port Robinson in Gore Bay. Photographed by F Bradley &amp; Co sometime in the 1880s. / Historical notes: At the time that this photograph was taken Cheviot Station was owned by William (Ready Money) Robinson. He died in 1889, and his heirs sold the station to the Government in 1893.
context_page_description: The history of the Canterbury Region of New Zealand dates back to settlement by the Māori people in about the 10th century.
context_section_description: The arrival of the French, creating at Akaroa a centre of European population both larger and permanent than the whaling stations, not only led to a fairly frequent movement of whaling schooners between Wellington and Banks Peninsula, but attracted attention to the district as a possible site for British settlement. The first examination of Port Cooper and the adjoining plains for this purpose was made by Captain E. Daniel and G. Duppa in August 1841. seeking a site for the Nelson settlement for the New Zealand Company, they left Wellington on 28 June, and visited only Port Cooper and Port Levy, having no time to go further. In his report to Colonel William Wakefield, chief agent of the New Zealand Company, Captain Daniel stated that a road to the plains could be made through a gap on the hills on the western sides of the harbour between the peninsula and the snowy mountains. There was a ‘splendid district of flat land...covered with luxuriant vegetation’. The soil was of excellent quality, and free from swamps of any importance. Duppa had gone eight miles (13 km) up one of the rivers draining the plain — either the Heathcote or the Avon. Several groves of trees were scattered on the plain, these groves becoming more numerous nearer the mountains. ‘The whole district backed by these stupendous Alps affords a scene of surpassing beauty’, Daniel added. ‘I do not believe a more splendid field for colonisation than the one I have endeavoured to describe is likely to be met with.
  Having received this report, Colonel Wakefield applied to the Governor to be permitted to place the Nelson settlement at Port Cooper. Hobson left Wellington for Akaroa on 11 September and did not deal with this matter until after his return a fortnight later. He then informed Wakefield that as Banks Peninsula and the lands about Port Cooper were subject to several undecided land claims, including those of the French or Nanto-Bordelaise Company, the Crown was not in a position to appropriate the land for the purposes of a new settlement. He had suggested earlier that a suitable site might be found at the Thames, in the Auckland district. Wakefield rejected this alternative, and decided to place the settlement at Blind Bay, which was already within the company's territory.
  A year later another examination of the Port Cooper and Banks Peninsula district, to assess its suitability for his own farming venture, was made by the William Deans, a pioneering Wellington settler who had arrived by the Aurora in 1840. Deans sailed from Wellington on 15 July 1842 on the cutter Brothers, with Captain Bruce, which served the southern whaling stations. In this cruise, after visiting Port Cooper, Akaroa and the Banks Peninsula whaling stations, Deans went as far south as Jacobs River on Foveaux Strait. When he returned on 3 September the Wellington newspapers published a full report of his notes on the nine whaling stations he had visited, but confined reports on his remarks about the Port Cooper country to the statement: ‘We hear he brings highly favourable information of that locality.’ Yet it was the impression he gained of the Port Cooper district during this cruise, in which he had seen a great deal of the South Island, that confirmed Deans in the decision to settle there — a decision that led to the first effective occupation of the Canterbury Plains. He had found it impossible to get suitable land in Wellington and he had a very poor opinion of Nelson. Immediately after his return to Wellington he began preparations to break up his establishment at Eastbourne, on Wellington harbour, and to transfer it to Port Cooper.
  Within a fortnight of Deans' return from the south, the Surveyor-General to the New Zealand Company, Captain W. Mein Smith, left Wellington to examine the harbours on the east side of the South Island. Deans' tour had been a private investigation; Captain Smith's was an official survey. Unfortunately, after completing the southern part of his work, covering the coast between Akaroa and Stewart Island/Rakiura, Captain Smith lost his charts, field bo
caption: A bullock wagon in the Canterbury region in the 1880s.
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