Historic Molesworth Station

The name Molesworth Station evokes New Zealand’s high-country identity – musterers and stockmen and their dogs working livestock in vast tussock landscapes. For Maori, the area was an easy summer route to the West Coast by way of the Upper Wairau or Awatere valleys, Tarndale and Lake Tennyson.

From the 1850s the main inland route between Nelson/Marlborough and North Canterbury ran through the heart of Molesworth. The old cob accommodation houses at Tophouse, Rainbow, Tarndale and Acheron are reminders of this. The stock routes never subsequently became public roads and throughout most of the 20th Century Molesworth Station remained terra incognita to the vast majority of New Zealanders.

Bowscale Tarn, Molesworth Station

Molesworth Station today is an amalgamation of four separate pastoral leases - Molesworth, Tarndale, St Helens and Dillon - abandoned to the Crown between 1938 and 1949 because of rabbit infestation, stock losses in disastrous snowfalls, and economic recession. The station has remained in Crown ownership and gradually recovered from its earlier desolation, thanks to extensive rabbit control and over-sowing of some 37,000 ha in the 1950s and 60s.

Today up to 10.000 cattle graze on lands that almost a century ago were being reduced to a desert by millions of rabbits and 90,000 sheep. Over the years Molesworth has developed an almost mythical status. Recently, the opening of the road through the station during summer has brought the public closer to the region. Its transformation into a recreation reserve will open up more opportunities for people to experience this remote area

Recent work

2003 -2005
Molesworth Cob Cottage (1866) repaired and maintained.
Acheron Accommodation House (1863) Repaired and maintained (by Canterbury Conservancy).

Recommended reading

McCaskill, L.W. 1969. Molesworth. A.H. and A.W. Reed
Molesworth Brochure. Department of Conservation.
Stronach, B. 1953.
Musterer on Molesworth. Whitcomb and Tombs , Christchurch.
Tomlinson, J. 1966. Remembered Trails. Timaru Herald Co, Timaru.

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