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

Camla — (Runs 46, 47 and 94)

page 86

Camla
(Runs 46, 47 and 94)

Camla lay on the Selwyn below Haldon, which also bounded it towards the Rakaia. It ran down the Selwyn to about the present main south railway and contained nearly thirty thousand acres. Runs 46 and 47 which were the lower or eastern part of Camla were allotted to Rowland Campion on 11th June, 1852. While he worked these runs he called his station Kensal or Kensal Green. Parker Westenra applied for a run west of Campion's which was allotted to him as Run 94 on 29th July, 1853. He was acting for his father, Captain Richard Westenra, who also had a run called Kakahu in South Canterbury and he disliked his sons crossing the rivers when travelling up and down to it, so he exchanged it with Campion for Kensal Green about the end of 1854. For a few years he called the whole place Kensal Green, but eventually called it Camla after a property in Ireland belonging to his kinsman Lord Rossmore. He had only 670 sheep there in 1855, but the sheep from the Kakahu had not yet arrived.

On the 23rd February, 1852, Henry Phillips and the Rev. Joseph Twigger were allotted a run on the Selwyn which they stocked with 630 ewes, 170 wethers and 2 brood mares. Unfortunately in the Waste Lands Board's manuscript record no number is shown for this run, but Phillips or one of his sons was still living there in the autumn of 1856. I imagine that Westenra bought it from Phillips in 1858 and that on the resurvey of Haldon and Camla which I spoke of, the area was distributed among Runs 46, 47 and 94. Anyhow it disappears from the maps about that time.

On Captain Westenra's death Camla passed to his sons Richard, Parker and Warner, known as Westenra Brothers. The present brand Z was registered in 1854. The original homestead was right on the Selwyn riverbed, which was then a beautiful flat with creeks running through it and full of native game, but all this was washed away in the 'sixty-eight flood, which also page 87drowned 3000 Camla sheep, some of them stud sheep just imported from Australia. The house was then re-built on the site of the present one, but the old woolshed remains where it was, and must be one of the oldest standing in Canterbury.

Camla has never changed hands. It now belongs to Derrick Warner Westenra, a grandson of the original owner. It is only a farm now, but until about 1910, when Derrick Westenra bought out the other beneficiaries, it was a station carrying nearly 7000 sheep on eight thousand five hundred acres of freehold and fifteen hundred of leasehold. The Fyvie settlement was part of the freehold. I have given an account of Campion in my description of Kakahu, and of Phillips in my description of the Point. I do not know anything about the Rev. Joseph Twigger, except that he gave the Twigger estate at Addington to the Church.