Diamond Harbour #5

Aerial view of Diamond Harbour 1949 with jetty in foreground, Purau in background. 
V.C. Browne & Son

Diamond Harbour wharf. Christchurch Star photo (1950s?), Canterbury Museum

Diamond Harbour #4 post ended with significant additions the Diamond Harbour jetty in June-August 1915. This was to accommodate the anticipated increase in passengers following the subdivision of the ‘Diamond Harbour Estate’. However the First World War put the brakes on development. Sunday trains from Christchurch to Lyttelton were stopped, meaning that fewer city residents had access to the Diamond Harbour ferry. Godley House was closed for some time and the ferry service was curtailed. 

By 1918 things were looking up. A shelter shed fitted with a water tank and fireplaces was built half way between the jetty and Godley House – a welcome resting place for locals and visitors lugging goods uphill from the ferry. A ladies’ bathing shed was erected on the Diamond Harbour beach. The Lyttelton Borough Council decided to withdraw from running of the ferry service and put it out to private tender. A. Rhind and Co., awarded the tender for a period of two years, then purchased the Ruahine from the Council.[1]

In December 1920 the Press reported that the Diamond Harbour ferry traffic had increased beyond all expectation since the resumption of Sunday trains to Lyttelton and the opening of golf links in Diamond Harbour. A 6000-gallon concrete tank had been built to supplement the water supply (the settlement was dependent on rain water). All the sections in the first and second subdivisions had been sold and the third subdivision was to be opened up in 1921. 

Press, 23 July 1924

Three years later, the building of a flight of shallow steps leading down to the jetty, made it easier for campers on Stoddart Point to access their sites. Heavy items, like dairy produce, continued to be sledged to and from the jetty. Sadly the camping ground was closed with the onset of the Great Depression. Instead a Public Works Camp was set up under canvas with about 30 men working on improving road access from Purau, through Diamond Harbour to Charteris Bay. In contrast with the high old stock route, the new road was lower and the gradients more gentle. Of course improved vehicle access ultimately threatened the viability of the ferries although war-time petrol rationing meant that farmers reverted to shipping fat lambs by launch to Lyttelton.  

Goods carried by horse and sledge from the Diamond Harbour jetty. Note the bathing sheds on the beach in the distance. Paine Collection, Diamond Harbour Historical Association

Today we enjoy a speedy, relatively smooth trip across the harbour in the privately-owned Black Cat cataramans. But the much slower ferries of previous years made heavy weather of blustery conditions. Growing up in Diamond Harbour in the 1930s, Betty Agar recalled...

I went to school from Diamond Harbour to Lyttelton Main School and then to the Lyttelton District High School. I went on the ferries (which was the only way I could go). I remember using the Onawe, the Reo Moana, the Owaka and the Tui. I remember Tom Cleary and Demi-Kelly (Demeschelli) who owned the Owaka and Wal Toy – he ran the steam launch Tarawai during the war-time petrol shortages...

We’d try and do our homework on the ferry if it wasn’t too rough...In really rough seas the boat would go ‘thump, thump’ into the waves as soon as we’d left the moles... We’d head for Payne’s Quarry, and make our way along the shoreline where there was a bit of protection from the wind. The seats weren’t bolted down so both seats and passengers slid about in the bad weather... At Diamond Harbour we’d often hitch a ride with Mr Paine’s horse and cart.[2]

Moturata,  Reo Moana and possibly Manuka crossing the harbour. This photo in the possession of Lyttelton Museum but taken from Mary Stapylton-Smith's book From Adderley to Bradley because the Lyttelton Museum archives cannot currently be accessed

Owaka in Lyttelton. Health and Safety clearly not an issue... (see attribution above)

The situation was not so very different in the late fifties and through the sixties when our family would travel by train from Opawa to Lyttelton, cross the harbour on the Onawe or Ngatiki and be met by Mr Paine’s taxi (in response to a toot the ferry’s horn) which would transport us, and all our gear for a two-week holiday, to a rented bach in Church Bay, or Charteris Bay. I remember that 'thump, thump'. So exciting!

An interesting correspondence from 1937 details a disagreement between the Lyttelton Harbour Board and the Lyttelton Borough Council over ongoing responsibility for the Diamond Harbour jetty.  The Council had been granted a license for the jetty ten years previously, in return for a rent of £35 per annum.  When the license expired the Council clearly didn’t want to continue paying such rent. Equally, the Harbour Board didn’t want the burden of maintaining the jetty. “The Board knows from its experience of the claim in respect of the loss of life by drowning from the Governors Bay jetty that these outlying jetties are liabilities rather than assets.”[3] The Council declined to renew the license. 

The Diamond Harbour jetty wharf at Lyttelton. (I've lost my source for this great photo - if anyone knows, please let me know!!)

Buried in the Lyttelton Harbour Board archives is a plan dated 25 November 1947 for a proposed jetty further around Diamond Harbour to the west of the derelict Cameron’s Quarry jetty.[4] The Diamond Harbour village was slowly expanding westwards and the idea was to service residents further round the bay with an alternative jetty and also encourage yet more settlement. The more exposed site called for two sets of landing steps[5]. Nothing came of the idea. 

In a further effort to keep Diamond Harbour, and the harbour bays in general, growing as communities, the Mount Herbert County Council and the Governors Bay Progress League floated the idea of a vehicular ferry between Lyttelton and Diamond Harbour.[6] A letter in the Lyttelton Harbour Board archives indicates that the Board was actively exploring the possibility in the mid 1960s.[7] Clearly nothing came of this either.

Proposed jetty at Diamond Harbour, January 1947 (see small circle in map for location).
Lyttelton Harbour Board, Archives NZ/ECan MA50C/1/453

Also in the 1960s came letters from residents of Diamond Harbour seeking improved parking at the jetty and facilities for storing dinghies and launching small craft. Similar requests were being made at Purau and Port Levy. As the once-buoyant harbour ferry traffic declined, the interest in recreational boating increased. As Clarence Paine pointed out,

what a fantastic situation exists here, when one stops to realise that Diamond Harbour is one of the oldest pleasure bays in the Lyttelton Harbour and yet the only boating amenity is an old inaccessible prehistoric boat slip that no one can use.[8]

A dinghy platform had been proposed in 1961 to the south-east of the jetty. However, in 1969, the Lyttelton Harbour Board drew up plans for the current dinghy shelter at the land end of the jetty. 

Proposed dinghy shelter at Diamond Harbour, 1969. Archives NZ/ECan MA50C/4/630

With the sealing of the road between Christchurch and Diamond Harbour finally completed in 1967, travel round the harbour by car became more attractive for residents and visitors. Private vehicle ownership also meant that families who might once have relied on ferry services for an annual holiday could take a break further afield. Harbour crossing by ferry became a choice rather than a necessity. The demolition of Godley House following the Christchurch 2010/11 earthquakes robbed Diamond Harbour of a gracious homestead and significant tourist attraction. However new cafes and attractions in Diamond Harbour, plus the growing environmental constraints on car ownership, should ensure a secure future for an historic ferry service.    

Onawe, 2011

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[1] Press, 22 April 1918

[2] Quoted in M. Stapylton-Smith, Adderley to Bradley. Friends of the Diamond Harbour Library, 166.

[3] The drowning reference is to the death of a young boy who fell from the Sandy Bay/Percival’s Point jetty at the head of the harbour. Lyttelton Harbour Board correspondence, outlying jetties, 1913-1946, Archives NZ XBAH-A002-401

[4] Proposed new jetty at Diamond Harbour 1947, Archives NZ/ECan MA50C/1/453
[5] Lyttelton Harbour Board, correspondence outlying jetties, 1946-1966, Archives NZ/ECan

[6] Press, 5 September 1944

[7] Lyttelton Harbour Board correspondence, 27 January 1965, outlying jetties, 1946-1966, Archives NZ XBAH-A002-402

[8] Letter from C. Paine to the Diamond Harbour Burgesses Association, 12 February 1966. Lyttelton Harbour Board outlying jetties 1946-1966, Archives NZ/ECan XBAH-A002-402