By Roselyn Fauth
The Point has had all kinds of history. It's located on the South Canterbury coastline at Timaru. According to a creation story, Pātītī was a passenger on the Ārai-te-uru waka, which capsized off Matakaea on the North Otago Coastline. After the capsize, many of the passengers went ashore to explore the land. However, they needed to be back at the waka before daylight. Most did not make it, including Pātītī, and instead were transformed into many of the well-known landmarks of Te Waipounamu.
The area at Pātītī Point has been a place for shelter for many hundreds of years. Moa bones and a moa hunter’s necklace found in the area are thought to be more than 800 years old..
In in 1839-1840s the point was home to whalers working for the Weller Brothers. Samuel Williams who was the boat steerer returned with his family to Timaru around 1856 and became the first perminant European family to live in Timaru. For a couple of years they lived in the only house in the area as a coastal station for the Levels connecting the Ships anchored near the shore to the arriving pioneers and settlers to the area. Belfeild Woollcombe and Captain Cain were the next to build basic huts on the beach, and welcomes the immigrants who sailed direct from the UK to Timaru in 1859 boosting the population from five houses and a few families to 110 new residents. A whale pot (for rendering blubber) at the current-day carpark is a reminder of this part of the area’s history.
Pātītī Point was also know as a government immigration designated quarantine reserve. Some of the passengers from the Peeress Ship in 1874 lived in basic cottages whenb they arrived. This was only supposed to be a temporary settlement, for 24 immigrant families who arrived. But with nowhere else to go, many families stayed on. After a typhoid breakout and issues with some "un-savoury characters" the area got a bad reputation and some Timaru Borough residents wanted it gone. Eventually the town was emptied and the buildings razed, leaving the former residents to find new homes. These were simple cottages made from cob and sod (Cob was a combination of clay, tussock and dirt-bricks. Sod was cut from the ground), and were a welcome relief for the families who had been housed in barracks up until that point. “The sooner they are destroyed the better for the moral tone of the town”. There were concerns about sanitation and crime from some residents of the neighbouring Timaru Borough. However the area fell outside the council boundaries at the time, so they had no ability to intervene in the township. “It would seem almost a pity… to pull them all down, as several of them have been made comfortable little homes” Mr March, Immigration officer. The government also wanted to keep the area as a quarantine/military reserve in case it was needed, rather than turning it into a permanent settlement. Eventually, the government ordered all residents to vacate the township and the vacant buildings to be razed. The area was then sown with English grass and returned to a reserve.
Later on, the reserve was considered for a battery where the big gun stands and used for rifle practice. The rail line from the rock quarry (now Centennial Park) used to run up Otipua Rd and down to the port past the rifle training butt. The train would ring a bell to warn the rifle men that it was coming and to cease fire while it went past.
In 1910 a foghorn was erected on the cliff overlooking South Beach. It was not popular with nearby residents and was removed in 1913. A small tower was built on the cliff a bay North in 1877. This was developed into Le Cren Terrace and a Blacket Lighthouse was later built on the site.
The area was also used by the Borough Council. A WuHoo Timaru sign is at the car park celebrating the painting by William Greene, The Roadmakers 1916. These horses were used to plough the roads. It took hard labour to level the ground and form new roads, but this was necessary for a growing town.
"At Patiti Point, the fields have been successively occupied by five different peoples: the Moa-hunters, the more modern and warlike Maoris, the whalers, the immigrants from the Peerless, and the present-day agriculturalists. South of the railway bridge, a warrior was buried many ages ago, probably one of the Tipua, a tribe from whom the locality is believed to have taken its name." - Hall-Jones, Frederick George., Early Timaru: some historical records of the pre-settlement period, annotated and analysed.. Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 18/04/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/161
The President of the Timaru South Rotary club, Bob Southgate, posed with a large anchor, and a whale pot in the background, dated 25 June 1990. South Canterbury Museum 2012/186.9281 timdc.pastperfectonline.com/627531263200
St Mary's Retrolens survey photo from 1856 show Patiti Point neighbourhood at the time from above.