What can horses tell us about how Timaru’s CBD developed? Quite a lot, as it turns out.... Early Timaru depended on horsepower.
Horses carried people, pulled carts and wagons, shifted goods, worked farms and stations, and helped connect inland South Canterbury with the coast.
Once you start looking for them in old photographs, they seem to be everywhere. They are outside shops. At railway stations. Pulling delivery carts along Stafford Street. Carrying riders into town. Waiting beside businesses.
An entire economy developed around keeping horses, and the people who depended on them, moving. There were blacksmiths, saddlers, carriers, stable keepers, feed merchants and businesses hiring out horses and vehicles.
The finished Horse History Hunt traces many of those stories through the CBD.