West Coast Mail Centenary

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 7

West Coast Mail Centenary

A hundred years ago tomorrow a Cobb and Company two - horse “Yankee” waggon set out from Christchurch to make the first run carrying Her Majesty’s mails to the West Coast gold diggings. It left High street, from about where Hallenstein’s building now stands, at 2.30 a.m. on July 4, 1865, for the Kowai Pass (Springfield), where the 6|lb bag of letters was transferred to horseback, carried over the dray road to Cass, and along the track to the top of Arthur’s Pass. Here, the mail was met by Charles Flowers, a former ferryman at the Rakaia river, who carried the mail on foot down the Otira Gorge, and on to Hokitika. Flowers followed a surveyor’s line to a point on the Taipo, where he obtained a canoe from a Maori encampment and shot down on the crest of the Taramakau river to the beach, from whence he walked to Hokitika.

He arrived early on the afternoon of July B—the mail thus having taken four days and a-half to reach journey’s end.

This story of the first mail run has been recalled by Mr P. D. Shallard, a Christchurch man who is writing a book on the old coach journeys between Christchurch and the West Coast. Coach Owner Mr Shallard said that the famous Cobb and Companycoaches ran in Canterbury in the ’sixties under the proprietorship of L. G. Cole and Company. It was Leander

Cole, the principal of this firm, who engaged Charles Flowers to carry the mail from the top of Arthur’s Pass to Hokitika. Cole had secured the contract to deliver a weekly mail to Hokitika for six months, for £7OO a year. The first return mail from Hokitika arrived in Christchurch on July 15, it having taken Flowers three full days to make the journey from Hokitika up to the Taipo by canoe.

On July 17, the “Lyttelton Times” reported that the Hokitika beach was strewn with wrecks of 18 sailing ships and seven steamships Come to grief in the previous five months—news very probably brought back by the mail, said Mr Shallard. In Three Days By the end of July, 1865, the mail was being taken through to the Coast in three days, said Mr Shallard. A Cobb and Company coach-and-four took the mail as far as Cass the first day. according to the diaries of J. D. Enys, who ran Castle Hill station up to 1871. But there was no information on the subsequent two days of the run, said Mr Shallard.

By the end of March, 1866. the dray road to the West Coast diggings had been opened, and the mail was carried right through by Cobb and Company coach to Hokitika. On these first “through” journeys, the first night was spent at the Bealey—where a hotel had been built by Khull and Jones, on the site of the recent Glacier Hotel (burned down in 1963). Next morning, with a change of horses, the coach would ford the Waimakariri river, and run over Arthur’s Pass and hair-raisingly down the Otira Gorge, and on to

Kumara, where the second night would be spent. The third day, the coach would traverse the bush road through Waimea and Stafford —now ghost towns— to Hokitika.

A good many of the milestones which marked the old mail-coach run still exist today, said Mr Shallard. A stone inscribed “Im” was outside the west entrance of the nurses’ new home in Riccarton avenue. From Castle Hill to Cass, a distance of about 14 miles, ail the milestones but two could still be seen on the roadside. “In fact, the present main West Coast road does not deviate from the old-time route,” Mr Shallard said. Traces of the old staging stations, where horses were changed every 20 miles, could also still be seen—for instance, the ruins of the old Castle Hill Hotel. The staging stations were: 1, The Miners’ Arms Hotel, Yaldhurst; 2, The Courtenay Arms Hotel, Courtenay. 3, The

Malvern Arms Hotel, Sheffield; 4, the Kowai Pass Hotel, Springfield; 5, The foot of Porter’s Pass; 6, The Castle Hill Hotel, near Broken River; 7, Craigieburn; 8, The Cass River Hotel, Cass; 9, The Glacier Hotel, Bealey; 10, The Otira Gorge Hotel—washed away in 1886 and staging station shifted to' O’Malley’s Hotel, Otira; 11, Jackson’s Perry Range Hotel—the present Jackson’s; 12, The Taipo River Hotel; 13, Rugg’s Kumara Hotel: 14, Stafford township; 15, Hokitika. Mr Shallard has photographs and pictures of every changing station.

As the railway “closed in,” so the coach legs on the journey became shorter. In 1880, the railhead was at Springfield, from which point passengers mounted the coach—now run by Cassidy and Co.— to make the journey over the passes to Hokitika. Coaches still ran from Arthur’s Pass over the divide to Otira right up until 1923, when the Otira tunnel was opened.