Timaru Civic Trust: The tower that counted the town’s sunshine

How do you measure sunshine? Today, satellites and automatic weather stations do much of the work. But a century ago in Timaru, they used a glass ball.

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