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Government leased land there at a relatively small rent. Indeed, the Rhodes brothers, who held a sheep run on the shores of Lyttelton Harbour, had already heard of the fertile land in the ‘Timaru district’ and in December 1850 applied to the government for licences to occupy three pastoral runs totalling 159,000 acres in area. They received permission to pasture sheep in the region pending formal arrangements for leases. As a result, early in 1851 while the newly-arrived colonists were making their land purchases in and around Christchurch, Robert and George Rhodes with their men drove 5000 sheep to the new country. For three days they camped at the Rakaia River unable to force their animals to face the river current. On the fourth day they induced them to cross and were thus the first to succeed in what for twenty years remained a necessary though difficult task.

It was August 1851 before Godley made an agreement with an Australian named J. C. Aitken which enabled him to take up 20,000 acres of Canterbury land on easy terms. This was a first step towards changing the system. In the meantime the New Zealand Government had appointed Colonel James Campbell as local Commissioner of Crown Lands, with authority over those immediately outside the Canterbury Block. At the end of the same month, on 30 August 1851, he published a list of the applications he had received for pastoral leases. One of the six southern runs in his schedule included all the country between the Ashburton and Hinds rivers, from the mountains to ten miles from the coast, that is to about the inner edge of the swamps. The same J. C. Aitken applied for this run on behalf of Joseph Hawdon, a fellow Australian; but nothing came of their application. Campbell’s muddled administration produced confusion, not licences, and both men took possession of land inside the Canterbury Block.

During the last months of 1851 much of the plain between the Waimakariri and Rakaia rivers was parcelled out in runs. Canterbury colonists competed with Australian pastoralists in selecting suitable areas, usually of from 10,000 to 20,000 acres and preferably on a stream and marked by other natural features to act as points of reference on their sketch maps. They registered their claims at the land office in Christchurch and secured licences from