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Gully. The evidence of the Board’s usefulness is visible everywhere, and the bay is perhaps the most central position where its headquarters could be situated. The County Council offices were built in 1879, and the Post and Telegraph Office in the same year.

Messrs Barker (father of Mr Beilby Barker) and Fry established the line of coaches running from Christchurch and Pigeon Bay to Akaroa. Mr S. Lee has owned the business for some considerable time. During the last few years communication with Christchurch has been considerably facilitated, and until the railway touches on Akaroa Harbour it is unlikely we shall be able to reach the capital of the province in a shorter time than we can at present.

There are interesting associations of the past in this bay, lying, as it does, over that rugged coast, between Peraki and Land’s End, as the West Head of the harbour is called. It receives its name from a towering rock guarding the entrance, and rising up out of the troubled waters like an old castle. The bay is lonely and deserted, and the traces of those who lived there long ago are fast disappearing. It is open to the sou’-west, and heavy seas roll in there at times, as the cave-worn sides and the heaps of smooth boulders on the beach testify well. Island Bay was inhabited by whalers in the early days: these brave men who lived hard lives and thought danger a pleasure. Since the whales left the coast the bay has been deserted and lonely.