The Star: June 14, 2018

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Latest Christchurch news at www.star.kiwi
Thursday June 14 2018
News
City’s first mayor was an accused wife-beater
• By Bridget Rutherford
WILLIAM ‘Cabbage’ Wilson
was a fraudster and an accused
wife-beater – and 150 years ago,
he was elected as the city’s first
mayor.
Monday marked the anniversary
of the day the city became a
full municipality.
On June 10, 1868, the now city
council formally acknowledged
the Governor’s proclamation
of Christchurch as a borough
under the provisions of the 1867
Municipal Corporations Act.
At that meeting, nurseryman
and prominent landowner Mr
• By Bridget Rutherford
THE AVON-Heathcote Estuary
could become the country’s third
site to gain an internationallyacclaimed
status because of its role
in hosting migratory birds.
Department of Conservation
ecology technical adviser Bruce
McKinlay said, while not yet
officially confirmed, the estuary
was in contention to be named
the next East Asian Australasian
Flyway site, due to of its
Wilson, whose nickname was
Cabbage due to his hat made of
cabbage leaves, became the first
mayor.
Before that, the town council
only had a chairman since
1862.
But Mr Wilson fell from grace
when he was convicted of fraud.
His wife Elizabeth Williams then
sought a protection order from
him after alleging he beat her.
After they split, Mr Wilson
tried to break into her house
and threatened to murder her
brother.
Mr Wilson did manage to get
re-elected to council 10 years
connection to the bartail godwits.
The status would make
the estuary one of a chain of
important wetlands around the
world where migratory birds visit
to feed and rest on their journeys.
Only two other sites in New
Zealand have the status. They are
the Firth of Thames and Farewell
Spit.
Mr McKinlay, who is the New
Zealand representative to the
East Asian-Australasian Flyway
Partnership, said the estuary had
HISTORY: William ‘Cabbage’
Wilson was elected as the
city’s first mayor on June 10,
1868.
later causing uproar among five
city councillors who resigned in
protest.
Last year the Government took
Godwits make estuary special
hosted the migratory godwits each
summer for the last 10,000 years.
He said the news the estuary
could gain the status was
“exciting” for DOC, which had
been working with the Avon
Heathcote Estuary Ihutai Trust
since 2016 to do so.
“Each year a maximum of 2000
bartail godwits (1.8 per cent of
the world’s population) spend
the summer at the estuary before
migrating back to the Arctic to
breed over winter.
ownership of a strip of land once
owned by Mr Wilson that runs
between 130 and 132 Lichfield
St, near Smash Palace, because it
was unable to find a beneficiary.
Since Mr Wilson, there have
been 45 other mayors.
Garry Moore, who was mayor
from 1998-2007, said a lot had
changed.
“Well I’ve found it interesting,
when you look at Cabbage Wilson,
he had the nursery that supplied
quite a lot of the trees that were
supplied around Christchurch. In
those days, the whole of society
had conflicts of interest.”
Mr Moore said he and son
The Star
Johnny Moore, who owns Smash
Palace, wanted to call it Cabbage
Wilson’s instead because of the
strip of land nearby.
But when they found out about
Mr Wilson’s past they decided
against it.
Mr Moore said the South
Island needed to act more as one,
similar to what it used to be like
when there were councils were
regional.
“If I were to look at the next
150 years, unless the South Island
starts thinking as an island,
we will be completely overshadowed
by Auckland.”
•Lianne Dalziel’s column, p26
TEMPORARY HOME: The Avon-Heathcote Estuary hosts
the bartail godwits every summer. PHOTO: DON PARISH