Early Travel Was Painfully Slow

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 34 (Supplement)

Early Travel Was Painfully Slow

Travel today is little trouble. Regular train, bus and air services leave Christchurch every day for all parts of the country, the inter-island steamer express is available for those preferring sea travel to the North Island, and good roads and fast cars have brought almost any South Island place north of Dunedin within an easy day’s drive of Christchurch. But in the province’s first 20 years travel was painfully slow, and often dangerous, for many lost their lives crossing the turbulent snow-fed rivers of the plains.

Roadmaking began before the main body of settlers came, and within two years there was a public cart running between Heathcote ferry and the town. The roads were primitive, however, and easily became seas of mud, so that bullocks were the commonest means of transport, up to 14 beasts being used for really heavy work.

The bullocks made rough tracks as they travelled between outlying stations and these, with sometimes a single furrow ploughed to mark a line, were the only guides to travellers. Once off the track there were no landmarks but the distant mountains, and compasses were essential for the early traveller.

The greatest bar In the south was the Rakata river, and sheep were often held up there for days. Sheepmen had to find their own way across until 1856 when William Dunford began to guide travellers across. He later built an accommodation house and used a boat to ferry people across the main channel. In one month in 1863, 217 horsemen, 68 foot passengers, 187 coach passengers, 54 vehicles, 40 pack-horses, 48 bullock teams and 534 cattle were taken across at the ferry. Nothing was done about a bridge until the end of 1868 when a contract was secured for 4480-feet-long bridge, which was opened in May, 1873. The name of Cobb and Company will always be associated with early travel in Canterbury. Their coaches began running in October, 1863, when a four and five horse coach made the journey to Timaru three times a wek. A year later the first through service to Dunedin began, the journey taking three days and a half.

while to the north coaches ran to the Hurunui.

Even with regular coach services, travel was not always smooth, Lady Barker, in “Station Life in Canterbury,” describing a journey to Timaru, said that the driver who had taken over at Ashburton had drunk too much.

“The moment the grooms let go of the horses’ heads he stood up in his seat, flourishing his long whip, shook the reins, and with one wild yell from him we dashed down a steep cutting in to the Ashburton. The water flew in spray far over our heads,” she wrote. “I expected the front of the coach to part from the back on account of the enormous strain of dragging it over the boulders. We lurched like a boat in heavy sea; the inside passengers screamed, the driver swore and yelled, the horses reared and plunged.” As the railway extended southwards coach travel declined, but Cobb and Company were still prominent in Canterbury for their coaches ran to the West Coast, taking miners to the diggings. When the gold rush began at the end of 1864 it was necessary to have a road across the mountains, and a bridle track over Arthur’s Pass was quickly made into a passable road. Long before any other parts of New Zealand, Canterbury had railways. To the envy of people in other provinces, the broad-gauge line from Christchurch to Ferrymead was opened on December 3, 1863, and the line to Lyttelton on December 9, 1867. formed a barrier to the transport of heavy goods from Lyttelton, the Heathcote became a subsidiary port, and large numbers of small vessels crossed the dangerous Sumner bar. To cany the cargoes to the town the railway was built and greatly Increased the importance of Heathcote port, but the railways also killed the port in the end. With the tunnel completed there was no longer any need to tranship goods at Lyttelton. In 1859 the Provincial Government sought the advice of G. R. Stephenson, an eminent English railway authority, and he recommended the present tunnel route through the hills. An alternative, supported rigorously by James Edward FitzGerald, Canterbury’s first Superintendent, was a highlevel mountain railway by way of Sumner. In April, 1861, the contract for the tunnel was let to a Melbourne company at a price of £240,500, and with full ceremony on June 17, 1861, the first sod was turned. Christchurch made December 3, 1863, a fete day. The Superintendent (Mr W. S. Moorhouse) and his official party boarded the "Pilgrim,” New Zealand’s first railway engine, built in Australia and of 50 horsepower, and 10 minutes later arrived at Ferrymead. On its return the train, which had two first class and two second class carriages, took passengers free. Apparently some

of the 30 available goods waggons were also used, for by 8 o’clock at night when the joy-riding ended it was estimated that 3500 passengers had been carried. Meanwhile work was going on from both ends of the Lyttelton tunnel, and on May 24, 1867, the headings met. Trains did not go through for some months, but pedestrians were allowed to use the tunnel as a short cut to the port. On November 18 a locomotive was driven through, testing the clearance as it went, and often having to stop while workmen chipped a little more rock from the roof.

December 9, 1867, was the day on which the port and plains at last had a direct link, for that day the line was opened for passenger travel. Again, hundreds of Christchurch folk, excited at the experience of travelling through so long a tunenl (just over one mile and a half) made the first journey. A service which has contributed greatly to the development of Christchurch is that run by the Transport Board, established in January, 1903. Before the board was elected there were privatelyowned trams in the city. In 1878 the Canterbury Tramway Company began to run horse trams to the railway stations of Christchurch, Addington and Papanui. On May 16, 1905, the first electric tramway route was opened, and in 1914 the last main electric extension was laid to St. Martins. In 1906 the board was authorised to operate feeder services by omnibuses, and today.