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BUSHTOWN VISITORS TO SITE

Waitaki Valley School visit to Bushtown Friday 8th November...

STEAM UP DAY 2024

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Bushtown Colouring Competition

Be creative and no matter your age... Get out your colouring pens, pencils or paints and colour in one of these two Posters to enter our Colouring Competition Bring along to Bushtown Waimate on Dobson Street Saturday 11th March by 10 a.m. and enjoy the annual Bushtown Steam Up & South Island Woodchopping Championships being held at Bushtown on 11th & 12th March 🖌🎨🖼🖌...

BUSHTOWN CAMP AT SC A & P SHOW Waimate

Everyone was looking forward to the Show day and hoping the weather would be favourable!  It was!  The sun shone and the crowds turned up and celebrated a day showcasing the best of local agricultural farming in the district. Bushtown Waimate were present.   The European Bushmen of the mid 1800's were drawn to Te Waimatemate to log and mill the hillside forests of Totara and Matai, much prized for the hardwood  used in construction of bridges and homesteads in the d...

Bushtown at SC A&P Show 5th November 2023

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WOOD CHOPPING CHAMPIONSHIPS

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BUSHTOWN STEAM UP WEEKEND 2023 & THE SOUTH ISLAND WOODCHOPPING CHAMPIONSHIPS

Saturday 11th & Sunday 12th March 2023NZ Axemen Woodchopping Competition Weekend event+South Canterbury Traction Engine & Transport Museum in action! ..........Bushman’s life styleEdwardian heritageEarly Settler historyCraft Displays & StallsKids activities & ridesHeritage SawmillSteam Traction & Vintage EnginesThreshing & BalingForest walk through native Tōtara bush & forest hutFood & drink stalls Admission:Adults Day Pass $10Kids Under 15 FreeNo dogsWet or fi...

In The News! The Timaru Herald/Stuff - Steam Up Day 2021

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STEAM UP DAY 2021 - FULL STEAM AHEAD!

 - SUNDAY 14th MARCH - 10am to 4pm -...

In The News! The Oamaru Mail - Bushtown Open Day - October 2020

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THE GREAT FIRE OF 1878

 The 'big burn' began innocuously enough on 12th November with grass fires on Hunters Hills set by musterers. One was still burning three days later when a spring nor'-wester gale put in an untimely appearance. This was no ordinary wind. In Timaru, where a falling chimney claimed the lives of a mother and child, the Timaru Herald declared that 'without in any way exaggerating, we may say that South Canterbury was ... visited by the heaviest north-west gale which has visited the district sin...

FIRE RISK PRIOR TO 1878 IN TE WAIMATEMATE

Fire began to affect the landscape once the first European settlers arrived. Nowhere was this more so than on the East Coast of the South Island, where the dry vegetation was highly flammable.There one spark was enough to set a fire racing along a front several kilometers long, especially when one of Canterbury's notorious spring nor-westers was howling along behind it. The first warning of what a careless settlers fire might do came as early as 1853 when 40 kilometers of Banks Peninsula forest ...

THE BURNING OF THE WAIMATE BUSH, 1878

from TALES OF PIONEER WOMENBy "Te Wahine," Waituna W.I. "Tell you the story of the bush fire, children? But I have told it to you so many times before, why worry poor grandma to tell it again?It is ever fascinating, you say. Well, well, settle down around me, and once again I will recall those dreadful days and nights of long ago." "Your grandpa and I had recently been married, and we lived in a bush cottage on the east bank of the Waimate Creek, just where it flowed alongside the bullock t...