Location: Pātītī Point / South Beach area, south Timaru
Access: Public reserve and coastal area, but obey current cliff, track and safety closures
Associated years: 1866, early 1900s, 1924 account
Associated people/groups: Volunteer Artillery, Timaru Port Guards, Timaru City Rifles, Timaru Naval Volunteers
Pātītī Point is a strong place to begin our Timaru War Tour because it shows that Timaru’s defence story began before the world wars.
A 1924 Timaru Herald article says the area between the sea and railway from Otipua Lagoon to the creek through the park was set aside at the survey of Timaru as a Military Reserve. It says two or three heavy iron smooth-bore 18-pounder cannon were placed there for the Volunteer Artillery, formed in 1866, and that a powder magazine and rifle targets were also built. The range was later moved to Scarborough because the nearer range was considered unsafe for the public.
South Canterbury Museum records also identify the Timaru Port Guards and Timaru City Rifles at the Patiti Point Rifle Range around 1904 to 1906. The Port Guards were not modern security guards. They were part of Timaru’s volunteer defence culture, apparently developing from the earlier Timaru Naval Volunteers. This stop connects local men, rifle practice, military drills, the coastline and the port town’s sense of vulnerability.
Find a WuHoo - Stand on the coast and ask why a town in the 1800s would want cannon, a powder magazine and rifle targets here. Imagine people using the rifle butt to train, and the quarry train going under the rail viaduct on its way to the Port with a load of rock to signal to the rifle men to cease their rifle training while the train went past.
1911. Section of Miscellaneous Plans - Borough of Timaru, South Canterbury. R25538727. Borough of Timaru, South Canterbury. NZ Heritage Maps Platform, https://maps.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/336
Side Quest: Peeress Town
This area was once a small town, and was only supposed to be a temporary settlement on a designated quarantine reserve. for 24 immigrant families who arrived on the Peeress Ship in 1874. The simple cottages made from cob and sod were a welcome relief for the people who had been housed in barracks up until that point. But with nowhere else to go, many families stayed on. After a typhoid breakout and issues with some "un-savoury characters" the area got a bad reputation and some Timaru Borough residents wanted it gone.
The government also wanted to keep the area as a quarantine/military reserve in case it was needed, rather than turning it into a permanent settlement. Eventually, the government ordered all residents to vacate the township and the vacant buildings to be razed. The area was then sown with English grass and returned to a reserve. Eventually the town was emptied and the buildings razed, leaving the former residents to find new homes.
Later on, the reserve was considered for a battery where the big gun stands and used for rifle practice. The rail line from the rock quarry (now Centennial Park) used to run up Otipua Rd and down to the port past the rifle training butt. The train would ring a bell to warn the rifle men that it was coming and to cease fire while it went past.
The area was also used by the Borough Council.
Timaru town. NZ Heritage Maps Platform, accessed 02/05/2026, https://maps.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/1138
"At Patiti Point, the fields have been successively occupied by five different peoples: the Moa-hunters, the more modern and warlike Maoris, the whalers, the immigrants from the Peerless, and the present-day agriculturalists. South of the railway bridge, a warrior was buried many ages ago, probably one of the Tipua, a tribe from whom the locality is believed to have taken its name." - Hall-Jones, Frederick George., Early Timaru: some historical records of the pre-settlement period, annotated and analysed... Aoraki Heritage Collection, accessed 18/04/2025, https://aorakiheritage.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/161