Searching for the Great Forest – by Wayne

South Canterbury

The South Canterbury Plains, which comprisies some 300,000 to 400,000 hectares, was originally a lowland forest of giant tötara trees, mataï and kahikatea trees which towered over the native bush. 

By the time Europeans first established a whaling station near Timaru in 1839, just one year prior to the signing the Treaty Of Waitangi, only 3% of this original forest remained.   The forest had been destroyed by fire a 1,000 years prior.  Whether these fires had been started by Māori, who had established themselves in the region at this time, or by natural events we will never know.

A desire to know what the Canterbury Plains were like before the Māori settlers arrived prompted me to search for the remaining  fragments of this great forest which had survived the fire.

Woodbury

Our journey began in Woodbury, just 8 km from Geraldine, as this was where one of the largest fragments of the forest had survived the great fires.  At the time this area was called Waihi Bush and is where my father grew up.  When I visited Woodbury as a child, it boasted no more than 20 houses, one dairy, one church and a very small building – about the size of a small bedroom – which locals called a library.   But in 1860 when the first settlers arrived, Woodbury was a booming metropolis, boasting two pubs that served a large forestry workforce.  In 10 years, this workforce destroyed the 5,000 hectares of forest that had been spared the ravages of the great fire a century before. 

Woodbury used to be called Waihi Bush

None of the Great Forest survived the destruction by the European Settlers at Waihi Bush 

 

One of the sawmills that turned the great trees of the forest into lumber was owned by a Mr Taylor and Mr Flatman. They generously donated two acres of cleared land for the construction of an Anglian Church, which was completed in 1878.  We visited the Church, which had been rebuilt many years later in stone, through the generous donations of the Tripp family – one of several early settler families in South Canterbury.   I was baptised there as a child in 1957, at a time when the rebuilt church was barely 20 years old.  As I sat respectfully in the church noting its crafted stonework, elegant timber roof structure and beautiful stained glass windows, I become aware of a profound sense of belonging, heightened by appreciation of the historical and architectural significant of this South Canterbury Church following the wanton destruction of stone churches in Christchurch by the 2011 earthquakes. 

St Thomas  - Woodbury Church Today

Where I was Baptised in 1957

In 1887, the church was given the name St Thomas by Bishop Harper, apparently by accident rather than by design.  When dedicating the church, the Bishop paused to ask the church warden what the name of the church would be, and the warden said he would need to ask the chairman of the building committee, a man by the name of Sir Thomas Tancred.   Bishop Harper, who was slightly deaf, took this to mean that the church was to be called St Thomas, and he proceeded with the dedication service on that basis.  It has been called St Thomas ever since.

The War Memorial that stands in front of the Woodbury Library records the number young men that were killed in the Great War.  It caused me to reflect on the impact that the war had on communities as tiny as Woodbury.  For the record, the Woodbury War Memorial records the slaughter of 25 young men. Similar to other rural communities within New Zealand, Woodbury sent a significant proportion of their best young men to support the Empire during the 1939 Great War.  Consider the neighbouring Mackenzie area.  A plaque, recently mounted in the main street of Fairlie, faithfully records the gruesome details.  Of a population of 2,400, the Mackenzie community sent 425 of their best young men into harm’s way – nearly one fifth of their population.  Of these 425 young men only 319 survived, and of this group 105 returned with permanent physical wounds. How many of the remainder were left with permanent mental wounds, we will never know – but the numbers would have been significant, especially for those who served at the front.      



War Memorial records the Names of the 25 Young Men that were the Slaughtered.

Peel Forest  

Woodbury had not provide us with a view of what the great forest would have looked like as it had been completely destroyed by the early European settlers.  So we pressed on to Peel Forest; this being one of only two fragments that survived both the great fire and the European settler’s destruction.  

Nearly 3,500 hectares of a lowland forest that had survived the great fire at Peel Forest, slightly smaller than the remnant at Woodbury.  Beyond Peel Forest towards Mesopotamia there was also an extensive Beach Forest, but this was destroyed by fire in 1889.  Fire has a lot to answer for. Today, Peel Forest covers just 783 hectares.  Nevertheless, the forest appeared large to us when we visited it.

If it had not been for a British MP, a local ginger group, and an Act of Parliament, Peel Forest would have been total destroyed, like the forest we could no long find at Woodbury.

When visiting the area in 1881, British MP Arthur Mills, was so horrified at the thoughtless destruction of the great forest that he bought a 16 hectares fragment of uncut forest.  We visited this fragment which is located at the start of the Fern Walk.  No other stand of lowland forest compares with what we saw.  Mills ended up gifting his little forest to the Government and following pressure from locals, the Government added additional area to establish the forest reserve that we enjoy today. 

One the oldest tötara trees in NZ grows in Peel Forest and stands a massive 30m high – being the height of a 10 storey building.  However, this is not the tallest tree in the area.  That honour goes to a kahikatea that stands 33 m high.  You can view this great tree in the other forest remnant that remains in the area: Talbolt Reserve.  Luck would have it that this reserve is located within a 5 minute walk of Geraldine’s main street of all places.  

 



Julie Standing in Front of a one of many 'Grandad' Tötara Trees that Survived 

 

 A Tötara Tree that resides in the Main Street in Gerladine.
Being only 150 years Old, it is just a Baby Compared the Tötara Trees in Peel Forest.

Talbot Forest

I was surprised that Geraldine could boast of having its own fragment of the original great forest.  I can’t recall visiting it when I was a small boy growing up around Geraldine.  Comprising only 26 hectares, it is much smaller than Peel Forest and takes minutes rather than hours to walk though.  Nevertheless, it has some of the largest mataï, kaikahikatea and tötara in the area, trees that are thought to be centuries old.   It turns out that this forest hides a secret: a past volcano, one of only two within the South Canterbury region.  The other near Timaru has been given the name Mt Horrible.  But that is another story.  

One of the many walks within Talbot Forest