DYERS PASS ROAD REFORE THE HOUSES

Press, 23 October 1976, Page 13

DYERS PASS ROAD REFORE THE HOUSES

The road to Governor’s Bay begins at the foot of the Cashmere Hills, at one of our liveliest and most historic intersections. There, four of the longest roads in Christchurch > Dyers Pass Road, Colombo Street, Centaurus Road, and Cashmere Road — start their journey. According to Johannes Anderson the Maoris knew this spot as Iringa o Kahukura, “The Setting -up of Kahukura.” The Maori trail from Riccarton Bush to Rapaki evidently ran up Latter’s Spur (which Dyers Pass Road now ascends) and an image or emblem ’ of the rainbow god, Kahukura, was set up on a post near the trail. Aptly enough, Bowenvale, just east of this point, has always been renowned for its rainbows, and early settlers nicknamed it Rainbow Valley. Where the trail crossed over the hills to Governor’s Bay, the saddle was called Puke Atua. The hills immediately eastward culminated in Te Poho o Tama t e a , “Tamatea’s Breast,” above Rapaki. The short ridge running westwards from Dyers Pass to Marleys Hill was known to Rapaki Maoris as Otu Tohu Kai, “The Place Where the Food was Pointed Out.”

Some of the Maori folklore dealing with this part of the Port Hills may be traced back six centuries and has been entertainingly recorded in the writings of both James Cowan and W. A. Taylor. The first European 'route over this pass was pioneered by John Foster, licensee of the Travellers Rest, the first hotel at Governor’s Bay. This sod structure, later destroyed by fire, was situated at the start of Foster’s track, on the other side of the valley from where the present road descends to the harbour. Travellers from the south side of Governor’s Bay had to cut through John Dyer’s 100-acre property to reach the track. Dyer, from Stoke-by-Nail-ing, in Essex, had come to Lyttelton in 1851 in the Canterbury.

When the Provincial Government engineers were putting an official road over- the pass in 1859 along a route surveyed earlier by Henry John Cridland, they were so pleased by Dyer’s assistance that they named the road and the pass after him. The valley and the bay at its foot already bore his hame. Peninsula cattle drovers and sheepmen used the pass road for bringing their stock to ' the Christ-

church market, and it became the main link between the head of the harbour and town. The 1090 ft saddle at the top was sometimes referred to as Governors Gap. Sugar Loaf rose to the east and Coronation Hill (not so named until 1912 in commemoration of George V’s coronation in the previous year) to the west. Tbe Governor’s Bay side of Dyers Pass Road was re-aligned up the western flank of Dyers Valley in the 1890 s. The old road was then closed off but it can still be distinguished easily enough as it angles down the hillside from a point just over the creek from the bottom dog leg.

The Christchurch end of the pass was marked by a large stand of bluegums which grew in the angle of Dyers Pass Road and Cashmere Road between about 1875 and the turn of the century. In 1907 the sharpcornered section of the road between the summit and Victoria Park was re-surveyed by A. G. Allom at the insistence of Harry EIl, then beginning his vigorous campaign for a Summit Road. A walking track was formed along this improved line in 1915.

Three years later the track was widened sufficiently to take motorcars to Ell's newly built

Sign of the Kiwi, at the top of the pass.

The old road can still be seen skirting the lower edge of the plantation which the modern route passes through below Victoria Park, and climbing steeply to rejoin the present road just short of the Kiwi. A 14ft vehicle road was also formed round to the Sign of the Bellbird at Kennedys Bush, but many preferred to park their cars at the top of Dyers Pass to avoid paying the toll instituted by Harry EH in 1922 to help finance the work on the Summit Road.

The road down to Governor’s Bay was still so rough that those intending to picnic there usually left their cars at the Kiwi, too, and walked the rest of the journey. Victoria Park, twothirds of the way up Dyers Pass Road, had been set aside initially as a quarry reserve in 1870 by William Rolleston. Quite a lot of good building stone — some of it used in the cathedral — was removed from a dike alongside the present adventure playground.

In 1883 it was constituted a recreation area, and a caretaker’s cottage was built there in 1886. The planting of native trees and pinus radiata began at the same time.

One of the early caretakers, Mr Moon, sold refreshments to picnickers, a service which has continued. Moon was Fatally burned in 1908 while fighting a grass fire below the park. The present stone shelter on the hill behind the refreshment rooms is a successor to one built of brick and corrugated iron in 1898 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in the previous year. Victoria Park, and the valleys either side of it, were also a popular venue for Volunteer encampments and mock battles during these times. When Mr John Cracroft Wilson, the distinguished and highly individual owner of most of the Cashmere hills since 1854, died in 1881, much of his 5000-acre Cashmere estate was sub-divided and sold. Thirty acres were purchased by the sons of Robert Heaton Rhodes of “Elmwood,” and the Rhodes Memorial Convalescent Home was established in 1886. The bottom end of Dyers Pass Road now came to be referred to as Convalescent Hill Road. Most people knew Dyers Pass Road as the Governor’s Bay Road anyhow, and its present name does not seem to have become properly established until about 1910.

The settlement of Cashmere Hills began, properly, with the activities of Captain Stephen Fisher, who bought from the Cashmere estate a block of land further up Dyers Pass Road from the convalescent home, by the Dyers Pass Reserve. Fisher had come out to Canterbury in the Charlotte Jane and purchased a 100-acre farm where Beckenham now lies. He later served in the Crimean War and rose to be Pay-master-in-Chief in the Royal Navy.

After his return to New Zealand he also bought Glenthorne Station in a fork of the Wilberforce and Harper Rivers where, according to Leo Acland, he had a tame paradise duck which used to follow him around everywhere. Fisher put Glenthorne on the market in 1894 and his Cashmere block in 1896, a year before he died.

By 1897 the first homes were established on the hill and the settlement of Cashmere Hills was at last under way. Dyers Pass Road was now more than just a convenient way of getting to Victoria Park, or up on to the hills, or over to the harbour. It was to become the address of some of the most talented and influential citizens in Christchurch!