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Settlement, 1853–78
1873—before the Rakaia bridge was opened—and a year later (February 1874) a further contract for the Ashburton to Rangitata section. By early 1874 he had laid the rails to Ashburton, and in March that year was obliging occasional travellers by carrying them south from the official railhead. At the end of that month a ballast train took the first 200 sacks of grain northward, and soon there was a regular goods service. The official opening in August therefore came as an anticlimax. The newspapers merely commented adversely on the omparative discomfort of the narrow-gauge carriages.
Ashburton Township
Until the railway connection became almost certain, there was little to show that Ashburton would ever be anything more than a staging point for coaches on the almost empty prairie. During the 1860s a few unpainted, wooden cottages appeared, but most of them—those of Jamieson, Chalmers, and Hunt for instance—were built at some distance from the ford and accommodation house. A Canterbury guide,[1] published annually, recorded the business places of Temuka from 1866 and those of Geraldine and Pleasant Valley from 1869. It made no mention of Ashburton until 1873 except for an 1863 reference to ‘—Thompson, blacksmith’ and the inclusion of William Turton’s name in lists of public-house keepers, and postmasters. The publication fairly reflected the relative commercial unimportance of the township, but some omissions are worthy of note.
Louis Berliner, for example, filled his brief stay in Ashburton with incident. He opened the first local store, presumably in 1865. A year later he applied to the Ashburton Road Board for £100 towards the formation of a street ‘in the Ashburton township’.[2] A fire then destroyed his store while he was absent—but allegedly after his wife Betty had removed all the valuable part of his stock. He claimed and received £1500 insurance, though a year later he had to face an action for arson which he survived on a technicality. In the meantime, William Turton having become bankrupt, Berliner leased the Ashburton Arms under an arrangement with the Provincial Government.[3] He had at least three horses running in the Ashburton races of March 1868 and won two events. Yet within a few months he was arrested on the West Coast as an absconding debtor. Although he put the court to great expense in