January 1858 the Strathallan, Timaru’s first direct immigrant ship from the UK leaves the UK for Timaru. On The Strathallan, a lady wrote; if Timaru was a third of the size of London she would be happy. Imagine the look on her face when she arrived in 1859, and saw only 5 houses and about 19 locals! The ship was two weeks early and caught our towns folk off guard, so the new locals had to sleep in the Rhodes wool shed until their homes were built. Timaru would have looked so different then, mostly tussock, harakeke flax, toetoe, cabbage trees and bullock wagon trails here and there. Their arrival doubled the towns population and they were joined by a further 360 immigrants between 1862 and 1863. By 1866 the town had a population of 1,000, and it became a borough in 1868.
At the time, Captain Cain was living in a cob house on the hillside where Turnbull and Co's brick store is. At the back of Mee's office. Dr Butler had a small one-roomed house at the back of what would later be the Crown Hotel.
An essential part of the towns development was improving roads. In 1912 prisoners from the jail were brought in as labor using picks-and-shovel work. Establishing drains was difficult. At one point it was reported that sewage was floating in a down Stafford Street. A night cart used to come and collect peoples waste and then throw the "night soil" into the sea. James Craigie proposed an underground sewage system and work began in 1907. Drainage gangs trenched and piped their way through town.
An unused postcard entitled "Timaru Drainage Works. Changing Shifts", circa 1910. Depicts Council Workers on King George Place, posed behind a pair of bicycles leaning against the barricade beside the work site. Handwritten on verso "Probably 1910/12" - presumably during the term of Mayor James Craigie who initiated a programme of underground drainage (to replace the previous open drain). South Canterbury Museum 4616