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as the virtual founder, in 1873, of the New Zealand Shipping Company, of which he became first manager. Apparently Charles Norris Mackie and his brother, Charles Strickland Mackie, had shared the management for some years of the Lavington run. Their father, the Rev Charles Richard Mackie, first vicar of Avonside, Christchurch, took up this run in 1853 in partnership with G. C. Beard, and held it until all the land was made freehold. Alington and Holmes were among the first men to buy farms near Rakaia.^[1]

This board remained in existence only five years from 1874 to 1879. Before the district finally divided again, it achieved more prominence than any similar body in the history of New Zealand. By 1877, like many others in Canterbury, it had accumulated, from its share of land sales in the district, money which it had not yet been able to spend on roading the newly bought areas. These reserves then amounted to £28,000 and the board resolved, after acrimonious discussion, to transfer its account from the Bank of Australasia, which had a branch in Rakaia, to the Bank of New Zealand. Wason opposed the decision with heat. He declared it to be the result of a plot hatched by the Coster brothers ‘in a back parlour in Christchurch’ and ‘characterized the suggestion . . . coming from such a source as being simply an outrage upon decency, and the ordinary methods of transacting business’.^[2] This use of the bludgeon in debate and the course of the subsequent controversy revealed that Wason had done most of the board’s business, such as accepting tenders, without reference to other members and that they had resented his high-handed ways without daring to oppose him. Wason apologized to a meeting of fifty ratepayers, but made out a good case for his opposition ‘in the public interest’, to giving business to the Bank of New Zealand. There was at the time a good deal of apprehension concerning the control which this institution appeared to be exercising. Coster and Wason resigned; Wason was not returned.

Immediately following this defeat, Wason inspired a petition asking for the division of the district at the railway line. Personal feelings came to the fore and it was signed by three-quarters of the ratepayers, either because of animosity towards the bank or because those living in the eastern half thought themselves insufficiently represented. The government complied and issued the necessary proclamation with almost unseemly haste. The new road districts