At the northern and southern ends, the plains undulate into rolling downs.
The largest rivers, which traverse the land and carry run-off from the
mountains and foothills to the west, are the Waimakariri, the Rakaia, the
Ashburton, the Rangitata and the Waitaki. The region is sub-divided into
North, Central and South Canterbury.
The
province was named after the Canterbury Association formed in England in
1848 with the purpose of organising an idealised Anglican settlement in NZ.
The association’s members included two archbishops, five bishops,
assorted peers and baronets, and its name came from the chief primatial
see of the Anglican Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury was the president
of the association.
The
original European settlers arrived early in the 1840s, although whalers
had been visiting before that. The Europeans found fewer than 1,000 Maori
in the whole region, most of them in the bays of Banks Peninsula, at
Kaiapoi, Temuka and Waimate. A period of fierce raiding by tribes from the
North Island earlier in the century had reduced the population sharply.
This absence of Maori and the huge stretches of native tussock land
suitable for immediate adaptation to the kind of pastoral farming
immigrants had known in the northern temperate zone made Canterbury an
attractive settlement area. It was constituted a province in 1853 within
the boundaries of the Hurunui River to the north and the Waitaki River to
the south, and from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Tasman Sea on the
western side of the Southern Alps. At that time almost all the European
population was settled either on Banks Peninsula or near the present site
of Christchurch. During the 1860s gold was discovered on the western side
of the Alps and government from Christchurch being impracticable, Westland
County was formed in 1868 as a self-governing region.
Once
the pastoral potential of the Canterbury Plains had been recognised, men
and sheep arrived literally in droves, some from Australia following a
serious drought there at the turn of the decade into the 1850s. By 1855
all the flat land had been taken up, and five years later men and sheep
had moved on to the high country of the alpine foothills. Canterbury has
lived off sheep, grain and mixed farming ever since. It is served by
Christchurch International Airport at Harewood, a suburb of Christchurch,
and by the seaport at Lyttelton, and a railway that runs from Picton in
the north to Invercargill.
