Harman And Davie's Station
(Runs 53, 82 and 426)

Harman and Davie's station lay in the angle between Lake Ellesmere and the south bank of the Selwyn. The homestead was in the bend of the river a couple of miles below Washbourn's.

Run 53 was taken by the Hon. James Stewart Wortley in October, 1852, and stocked with 500 breeding ewes. He sold it to Harman and Davie in June, 1853. Harman and Davie had taken up Run 82 a month before. Their stock on Run 82 was 41 head of breeding cattle.

In 1862 they took up Run 426 on the lake foreshore.

Harman and Davie made several thousand acres of their run freehold, most of which they cut up and sold at the end of the 'seventies. Davie, however, retained a thousand or more acres which his executors sold not long before the 1914-1918 War.

James Stewart Wortley was afterwards one of the partners who started Hawkeswood Station north of the Waiau. He did not stay very long in New Zealand. R. J. S. Harman was one of the leading early settlers. He went to England and was Immigration Agent for the Canterbury Association from 1853 to 1857. He was one of the original partners in the firm of Harman and Stevens and died in Christchurch on 27th November, 1902.

Cyrus Davie came out as a surveyor and succeeded Cass as chief surveyor of the province for a short time. In 1850 he booked his passage in the Randolph (one of the first four ships) and sent his luggage on board but missed her, so was given a passage on the Sir George Seymour which sailed the next day. On the voyage out the Randolph and Sir George Seymour met page 95in mid-ocean and Davie was transferred to his proper ship. In the second half of the voyage the Randolph beat Sir George Seymour by nearly a day, so that Davie made the passage from England to New Zealand two days faster than anyone else in the fleet, and I believe his record was unbeaten for several years. He died in June 1871, aged 50.