Beginnings in the Wairau

The invitation to Lewis and Ellen had come from Dr Stephen Muller, the first Resident page 4Magistrate of the Wairau District. The young couple had produced a baby sometime before arriving in the Wairau, but it had not survived.

To understand what the Wairau was like, it was, of course, an alluvial plain which was surveyed prematurely by the New Zealand Company in 1843 and successfully in 1848 by William Budge. In 1855 the European population was only 352 males and 185 females. The small population of Maori were victors and vanquished from the Ngatitoa invasion of circa 1827–30. Although the population had grown by 1858, and a settlement known as Beaver Station had been established in the early 1850s, the area was largely undeveloped, without good roads. The main artery of supply was the Opawa River, which allowed the visiting of small ships to the Beaver, later Blenheim.