Southern Breakwater

Andrew Paul Wood

​Timaru would not exist as we know it without its breakwaters, making safe a harbour that had been plagued by shipwrecks and creating Caroline Bay.

Work began on the 700m southern breakwater in 1878.

In 1870, during the beginning of Julius Vogel’s public works programme, John Blackett (1818-1893) was appointed acting chief engineer for New Zealand and eventually assumed responsibility for the colony’s marine engineering.

It was Blackett’s responsibility to give a final report to the colonial government on the completed southern breakwater, which he did in 1880.

His conclusions were damning, with the suggestion that the breakwater was dangerous and should be destroyed.

Such was the civic indignation in the town that several hundred Timaruvians converged to burn Blackett in effigy. The papers reported:

“The figure rigged out for the occasion was first paraded through the main streets, the crowd hooting and hissing it all the way.

“After this uncomplimentary and humiliating treatment had been indulged in for fully an hour, the representative of this obnoxious gentleman was taken to the outward end of the breakwater, where amidst renewed and unmistakable contempt, it was blown up in the most approved style and its remains scattered broadcast over the surface of the bay, a fervent hope being expressed that the relics might rest there in piece.”

Harsh for someone described by Te Ara: The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand as “a hard- working and modest man, who made a substantial contribution to the infrastructures of the province of Nelson and the developing colony of New Zealand”.