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The Early Canterbury Runs: Containing the First, Second and Third (new) Series

Wakamoa and Land's End — (Run 13)

Wakamoa and Land's End
(Run 13)

Run 13, of five thousand acres, was on the southwest end of Akaroa Harbour, the landward boundary running from Island Bay over Mount Bossu to a point about a mile south of Wainui. The only other boundary was the sea.

I think this was one of several runs on the peninsula which were taken up as an afterthought, the owners having first settled on smaller sections nearby. Elsewhere in Canterbury, I know of no run which the owner did not take up first as a run, afterwards choosing a place on it for his homestead.

Run 13 was allotted to James Wright and William page 347Lucas on May 1, 1852. Wright, who had served in the Life Guards before he left England, was afterwards known as the Baron of Wakamoa. He had been whaling off the peninsula in the 'forties, and settled at Island Bay as a shore whaler about 1848. The Cyclopedia of New Zealand says that he soon afterwards bought a fifty-acre section at Wakamoa, but Andersen says he did not buy any land there until 1862. I think he probably rented, and afterwards bought, a section which Colonel Muter had bought there in 1850.

Wright and Lucas did not work their run as partners, but each took his own part and ran his own stock. Lucas took the end near the west head and Wright the northern end. They both went in for dairying at first, Wright forming one of the best milking shorthorn herds in the province; but later on both changed over to sheep.

In the middle 'seventies Wright bought Lucas out and Lucas retired and went to Christchurch where he died. Wright eventually made some sixteen hundred acres of his run freehold. On this he carried from 1500 to 2000 sheep. He went on with this property until he died, aged 78, in 1894, and most of the property still belongs to his descendants.

The name Wakamoa is, of course, taken from the bay on which the homestead is situated; Land's End is obvious. But whether Lucas gave the name to his station first or whether someone else had already named the head when he went there, I do not know. The earliest quotation for the name that Andersen gives is February, 1851.