7. Blackett Lighthouse

BENVENUE AVE
WALKING & BIKING TRAIL SITE OF THE BENVENUE & CITY OF PERTH WRECK

Can you find? The date the lighthouse was built at it’s original site No.7, The Terrace. Captain Meredith was the first keeper. In 1980 it moved to Benvenue St, and then in 2010 moved down to the Benvenue Cliff.

Did you know: The Cliff was named after the ship that wrecked here on “Black Sunday” 1882. 3 crew drowned and 3 rescue boats capsized, leaving 40 men in the sea. 6 lost their lives including Harbour Master Alexander Mills. Timaru needed safer mooring and built a breakwater in 1878.

But maritime engineer and architect of this lighthouse, John Blackett, demanded the destruction of the early breakwater due to the impacts it was making on the long shore drift of gravel and on coastal erosion.

Supporters of the Port, paraded an effigy of Blackett down the main street, filled it up with fireworks and blew it up in protest.

 

While you are here, check out Park View Terrace: view to Dashing Rocks and the Port this park used to be a wetland and Estuary before it was reclaimed land. The Woollcombe family used to live here including Timaru's first Government representative, The first nurse to be certified in New Zealand by Florence Nightingale.

Did you know:  It was erected in 1878 at the top of the Terrace, No. 7, for a cost of £350 with a keepers house. It's light was able to be seen about fourteen miles nautical miles in clear weather. In March 1878 Captain Meredith was appointed by the Harbour Board to the position of lighthouse-keeper, at a salary of 50 guineas per annum. In 1980 the Timaru Harbour Board moved the tower to Benvenue Street, Maori Park. and it was then shifted again in 2010 several hundred metres down the street, across the rail track to Benvenue Cliffs.