CAROLINE BAY VIADUCT
Wai-iti Rd / Caroline Bay Viaduct
Weller Bros Whaling Station near this place 1839-1840. A try pot stands here as a reminder of the past. The area was called Pohatu-Koko (later Whales Stream), and old maps even show whaling huts. The cauldron was used to boil the blubber of whales down to extract the oil. Large cast-iron trypots were used at sea on the ship’s deck, and shore whalers built fires on the beach.
Try pots were big iron cauldrons used to boil whale blubber into oil. The word ‘try’ comes from the old word ‘to try out’—meaning to extract or render fat. The blubber or fat was cut off the dead whale, then thrown into large metal pots and boiled down to make oil.
1839 The Weller Brothers, prominent Sydney-based whalers, establish a shore whaling station at Pātītī Point (Timaru). This marks the first European presence in South Canterbury. Falling whale numbers and financial issues force the Wellers to wind down operations.The Timaru station is abandoned, and the brothers eventually go bankrupt.
70 tun (66,780 L) of oil was exported from Caroline Bay in 1839.1 tun = 8 barrels. A wine tun is 252 gallons.
Just think for a moment, as you touch it or look at it, that this pot was here at the Bay was the time of the Treaty of Waitango. Whalers set out from this shore in long boats powered by, men with oars, and hand-launched harpoons on board into the sea. This old iron cauldron once bubbled with smoking, pungent whale oil.
The Wellers established a number of shore stations along this east coast. The whales came in large numbers to give birth to their young in the warm current which flows along this coast. Here they launched the whaleboats and laneded carcasses of the whales that they managed to harpoon. Joseph Price had moved his shore station to Banks Peninsula, and in 1840 the Wellers gathered up their gear and moved to Otakou, on what is now known as the Otago Peninsula. They left behind a number of trypots of which this trypot is one.