CHCH Canterbury timeline

  • 1450

    The Moa had been killed off

  • Captain James Cook in his ship the Endeavour first sighted the Canterbury peninsula.

  • the Ngāi Tūāhuriri sub-tribe of Ngāi Tahu were in control of the coast from the Hurunui River in the north to Lake Ellesmere in the south.

  • sailors from the sealing ship Governor Bligh landed that Europeans first set foot on Banks Peninsula.

  • Captain William Wiseman, a flax trader, named the harbour (now known as Lyttelton Harbour) Port Cooper, after one of the owners of the Sydney trading firm, Cooper & Levy.

  • Captain William Rhodes first visited

  • Captain George Hempelman set up a whaling station on-shore at Peraki on Banks Peninsula.

  • Caption William Rhodes came back and landed a herd of 50 cattle near Akaroa.

  • Major Thomas Bunbury arrived on the HMS Herald to collect the signatures of the Ngāi Tahu chiefs for the Treaty of Waitangi.

  • William and John Deans arrived and established a farm at Pūtaringamotu.