Roselyn Fauth

Ahead of the celebration of legendary racehorse Phar Lap’s birth near Timaru 100 years ago, Roselyn Fauth explores how horses shaped the town.

The quickest way to misunderstand Stafford St may be to look at it through a windscreen.
​October 4 marks 100 years since Phar Lap was born at Seadown.

Fittingly, his centenary falls in the middle of the school holidays, with a Phar Lap Centenary Raceday at Phar Lap Raceway on his birthday.

But South Canterbury’s racing story began long before Phar Lap. A Timaru jockey club was holding races at Washdyke by 1860, a course formed there by 1862, and the racecourse reserve was formally set aside that year.

By the time Phar Lap was born, horses had been raced at Washdyke for more than six decades.
Preparing for the centenary sent me looking more closely at the horses hiding in old photographs of Timaru.

Once you start noticing them, they are everywhere, pulling carts, waiting outside shops, hauling goods, carrying people and standing beside buildings we still know today.

It raised a simple question: what happens if we stop looking at Timaru’s CBD through the windscreen of a car, and look at it through the eyes of a horse instead?

Much of the heritage streetscape we recognise today took shape before the motor car became the dominant form of road transport. Timaru’s commercial centre belonged to a world of pedestrians, horses, carts, coaches, railways and ships.

Horses were not simply something people raced or rode for pleasure.

And unlike a motor vehicle, a horse could not simply be switched off and left at the kerb. It needed water, feed, shelter, somewhere to stand and someone to care for it.

That helps explain why the CBD once supported stables, blacksmiths, horseshoers, saddlers, carriers, feed merchants and yards.

One of the best places to see this is Community House at 29 Strathallan St. Designed by early Timaru architect Francis J. Wilson, the building was erected for Maclean and Stewart in 1878-79 as an auction mart and horse bazaar.

Its Victorian commercial-classical frontage presented a respectable face to Strathallan St, and behind it was something more practical.

The two-storey front portion contained offices, and at the rear was a bluestone section lit by 10 large skylights, where the horse bazaar operated.

An 1875 map records Allan and Stumbles’ blacksmith’s shop as having been at the site.

In May 1879, Maclean and Stewart advertised a sale at the Timaru Horse Bazaar of 20 heavy draught mares and geldings, including two six-horse teams with wagons and harness.

Other auctions offered hackneys, saddles and light-harness horses, the tools of everyday transport and trade.

The building while giving us a link into our hoof past, also ties us to another Timaru story.

After the great fire of December 1868 destroyed around 30 buildings in the town centre, a March 1869 council bylaw stipulated masonry construction in the central business district.

Buildings of brick, cement plaster and our distinctive Timaru bluestone became part of the town’s architectural character. The horse bazaar was part of that rebuilding generation.

In 1908, hooves were out of the old horse bazaar and the wheels for Cain’s Terrace Motor Garage moved in. The building remained and adapted as society transitioned from horse to motor power.

This change of use gives us a glimpse of what was coming next. But first there is another question worth asking.

Why did Timaru’s commercial centre grow here at all?

- The Timaru Herald

​An aerial view of Timaru’s Stafford St in July. A century ago horses in the CBD would have been a common site. (File photo)
Photo: John Bisset / The Timaru Herald

The statue of the horse racing legend Phar Lap at the racecourse named after him in Timaru. Photo: Aiman Amerul Muner / The Timaru Herald

Andrew Paul Wood

​Visitors entering Centennial Park from Ōtipua Rd pass through the magnificent Bowker Gateway, opened in 1940 as Timaru marked the centennial of the Dominion of New Zealand.

It stands as a testament to civic generosity and to the transformation of a rugged industrial landscape into one of Timaru’s most valued reserves.

The Bowker Gateway reflects the restrained civic style of the late interwar period, combining simplified classical symmetry with a sense of permanence suited to a public reserve.

Its solid masonry and clean lines create a dignified point of access to the reserve.

Centennial Park itself was officially named in 1939, straddling the north branch of the Ōtipua Stream and incorporating land once dominated by quarries operated by the Harbour Board and private contractors.

For roughly 75 years, bluestone basalt rock from these quarries fed the harbour’s breakwaters, hauled out along a railway line whose route could still be traced today.

The park’s slopes reveal baked earth from ancient lava flows, and the valley had yielded its share of surprises, including moa bones discovered in 1889.

Its benefactor, George Bowker (1877-1939), was a prominent Timaru businessman, sharebroker, and land agent.

As chairman of the Timaru Horticultural Society, during negotiations to acquire the old quarry for public use, Bowker stepped forward with a gift of 16 acres to secure access into the valley.

He hoped the entrance would offer “a commanding view of the valley, the downs and the hills in the background”, and asked only that the land be held in perpetuity and kept free of buildings.

Bowker’s generosity echoed that of his father, Charles, an early Timaru entrepreneur who donated the band rotunda in Alexandra Sq.

An elm dedicated to Bowker still stood near the gateway, a reminder of the family’s long commitment to Timaru’s public spaces.

A tall steel lattice tower still stands in the Timaru Botanic Gardens by the caretaker’s cottage. Its narrow braced frame rises to a small railed platform. Almost transparent among the trees, it is easy to miss.

Locals recall people climbing the tower in the late 1960s and early 1970s to change sunshine-recording cards. That sounds very much like a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder. The instrument focused sunlight through a glass sphere onto a curved card. As the sun moved, it scorched a trace across the paper. When cloud passed over, the trace stopped, recording the hours of bright sunshine.

Developed by John Francis Campbell and later improved by physicist Sir George Stokes, the Campbell-Stokes recorder became a standard weather instrument used around the world.

In 1907, local weather observer R. Ferguson asked the Government for one. The following year mayor James Craigie backed the idea, believing Timaru might prove sunnier than Nelson or Christchurch.

Arguments about which town has the best weather are nothing new.

When Government meteorologist the Reverend D. C. Bates visited in 1913, he encouraged Timaru to develop a properly equipped weather station and argued that sunshine records deserved more attention.

By December 1924, a recorder had arrived. Businessman A. Leslie had offered to provide one, while Timaru MP Frank Rolleston, the town’s former mayor, also helped secure one. Bates was expected to choose its position.

On February 3, 1925, The Timaru Herald reported 182 hours and 32 minutes of sunshine during January, with four sunless days.

Timaru was officially keeping score.

By the 1930s, the gardens were part of a wider weather-observation system. A 1936 report described a Government Meteorological Station there, with instruments under the curator’s care. Rainfall, temperature, frost, wind, atmospheric pressure and sunshine were recorded.

The gardens were not simply a park for flowers, trees and Sunday strolls. They were a working civic landscape, where horticulture, science and public service came together.

Behind those records were people checking instruments and changing cards day after day, building long-term observations that help us understand climate.

I have not yet found concrete evidence for when this particular tower was erected, but a clue appears in 1938. During discussion about moving the recorder to Highfield, the existing instrument was described as being near the curator’s house in the Public Gardens. The surviving tower stands close to the house.

Today, much of Timaru’s official weather observing is automated, with an automatic weather station operating at Timaru Airport. The daily walk to check instruments in the Gardens has given way to electronic sensors, but the purpose is much the same: observing and recording the weather around us.

Built heritage is not only grand façades and landmark buildings. It also includes utilitarian structures that are easily overlooked because they were built to be useful rather than beautiful.

Next time you walk through the gardens, look for the tower near the Queen St entrance. Then look up and imagine that more than a century ago, Timaru was doing the same thing: watching the sky, measuring the sunshine, and trying to prove we had more of it than Nelson.

By Roselyn Fauth
Timaru Herald
September 12 2026