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Coringa
(Pastoral Runs 27 and 102)

Coringa, the nearest station to Christchurch, lay on the South bank of the Waimakariri and came down to Riccarton Church, and to the back of Fendalton, then the outer fringe of the freehold sections. The two runs, originally of. ten thousand acres altogether, were taken up by Charles Church Haslewood, an old Australian squatter, in the autumn of 1852.

In 1858 Haslewood, having drawn the charge from a gun, held the nipple to a candle and looked down the barrel to see if it were clean. The remains of the powder went off, causing him such injury that he died next day. His executors sold the station a few months later to Edward Merson Templer, another Australian squatter. Templeton and Templer's Island, which both lay on the run, are named after him.

Being so near Christchurch, the best of the land on Coringa was soon bought out of the run. By 1865 the ten thousand acres had been reduced to four thousand, and the leases were put together and renumbered 136, Class II.

Templer sold Coringa to George Gatenby Stead in 1882, the place then running about 1000 sheep.

Templer was a great reader and a very cultivated page 22man. He spoke and read French, German and Italian. He came to Australia in 1839 and started two stations in partnership with his brother. He was driven out of Australia by the 1850 drought and came to New Zealand with some of his sheep in 1851. He first lived with his brother-in-law Caverhill at Motunau which he managed for a time, and he also owned Longbeach for a short time in partnership with Michael Campbell. He was a member of the Provincial Council. After he sold Coringa he lived in Christchurch until his death in 1897.

Stead kept Coringa until his death in 1908, when it was sold to James Nixon for £42 an acre, but Stead had let it from 1893 to 1900 to one of the Mangins. Stead will long be remembered as the most successful owner we ever had on the New Zealand turf. He was born in London in 1841. He spent some time in South Africa, and arrived in New Zealand in 1865 and joined the Union Bank. He eventually became a grain merchant and leading man of commerce in Christchurch, and made a fortune.

Coringa is only a farm now, but there are still some eight hundred acres of riverbed leasehold attached to the old freehold. It is hard to say why it was not taken up until 1852 when so many runs further from Christchurch were taken up in 1851. Perhaps there was a doubt as to how far the freehold round Christchurch would extend, or Coringa may have been taken up and forfeited afterwards, though I can find no note of it in the old Land Office records.

John Carter, afterwards of Maronan, managed Coringa for Templer in 1861, and Richard Collings managed it for a long time for Stead.

The first recorded public sheep dip in Canterbury was at Coringa. In 1867 the Provincial Government authorised Templer to make charges for cleaning sheep of scab.