Imagine an event so exciting, so spectacular, that 38 trains were required travelling at 28 minute intervals to convey curious sightseers to Lyttelton in order to witness it.
The roads from Christchurch were chock-a-block with cars travelling in first gear, with many people choosing to walk over the hill roads on foot. On the morning of the 3rd January 1838…
Category: Lyttelton
Port Lyttelton – ‘a mean, insignificant little place’
This land-locked port of Lyttelton – called occasionally Port Cooper and sometimes Port Victoria – is the main, or rather the only, entrance to the Province of Canterbury. The surrounding hills, which are entirely volcanic, vary in height from 2000 ft, to 6000 ft, and bear, on close inspection, very palpable marks of calcination. The…
The Glenmark – Tragedy and a Fortune in Colonial Gold
“The tale of a shipwreck has for most readers a fascination unequalled by any other of the many forms of tragedy which from time to time sweep some unlucky band or section of humanity into eternity, and during last century [19th Century] shipping disasters were all too frequent around our rugged and then little-known coast….
Rudyard Kipling’s Flying Visit to Christchurch
By Our Special Reporter Yesterday morning I was at the Christchurch railway station with the intention of going to Port by the five minutes to eight train, in order to meet Mr Rudyard Kipling, who was a passenger on the Talune. I found that the steamer had arrived early in the morning, and that some…
An Extraordinary Accident
Excitement at Lyttelton The ordinary routine of running the express train on the No. 2 wharf at Lyttelton and transferring the passengers to the waiting ferry steamer was disturbed on the evening of the 26th March, 1907 by a startling incident at about a few minutes past six o’clock. The Southern Express which arrives…
Lost Christchurch 