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Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18084, 11 June 1924, Page 13 (Supplement)

Government Town.—Early Timaru consisted of two separate towns. Before the Provincial" Government sent surveyors to delineate on the ground for the future shipping centre, the, Rhodes Brothers had paid to a Lands Commisisioner at Christchurch £3OO for 600 acres of land in South Canterbury. Part of the purchase was 120 acres fronting on the beach' at Timaru, the remainder elsewhere. By July 1885 they had bought 8520 acres,, much of .it in large sections of bush land, the price, paid, being,-. £4260. When the surveyors came to lay out Timaru they found that Messrs Rhodes had run a fence along the southern boundary of the .Timaru purchase, and they were instructed to make that fence the northern boundary of the town. Had the whole of the sea frontage been 1 free it is possible that the surveyors would have laid out a town in a somewhat similar position,.,, because it was the official idea that an artificial , harbour would some day be made in the lee of Patiti Point. The surveyors laid out in sections most of the “Government” town- and Messrs Rhodes got their “rural sectipn” sub'di-‘ vided into town lots, these covering, the area between Noi-th Street and Wai-iti Road' and ' from the sea to Grey Street. “North Street” is well to the south, but it was- the north ” street of the Government survey. Government buildings, Land Office, Immigration Barracks, Hospital, Police Station and residences, the Qa,ol and the Courthouse, and the first school were all built in “Government Town.” When the time, came to provide a Post Office, the population was almost wholly residing in Rhodes Town,,, and it would therefore have been absurd to place the office south of North Street; The northern town was barred for building till 1879, when a building was erected on the site of the present Post Office, to accommodate the Postal,:. Telegraph, Customs and Education Departments. Customs and Education were subsequently housed elsewhere. Recently the Public Trust Office hasbeesa built. Stafford Street was „ laid out, not on a map, but on the ground, by bullock drivers from north and south selecting the easiest grades for crossing the gullies. ' The surveyors of both towns accepted their line, with its curve and angles, and a similar dray track up Banks Gully, and then made up maps' of straight-line streets elsewhere. The two towns were laid out on different systems, and as a consequence the north-south streets, except the old bullock tracks, do not run into each other.