TIMARU
Perth St Museum and Church grounds
Have you read the plaque under the oak at the museum? St. Mary's Timaru. Boulder from Mt. Cook Station, 1986
Visit the Burnett Oak and read the plaque underneith on Perth Street, Timaru. It is on a Boulder from Mt. Cook Station, 1986. It is a protected tree on the list of scheduled trees sata sheet: web.archive.org/List-of-Scheduled-Trees.pdf more info is here: sites.rootsweb.com/trees.htm
Have you ever read the plaque under the oak at the museum?
It's a monument to Catherine and Andrew Burnett from the Scottish Highlands. This is the spot where they camped before travelling to Mt Cook in 1861 in a bullock dray. Mt Cook Station was founded in 1864. Their first home was a two bedroom cob cottage with a thatch roof. (Imagine the conditions they survived in!) The Burnetts had eight children and to provide better access to education, they purchased land in Cave in 1873 and built a homestead there. To be even closer to the schools in Timaru, Andrew Burnett had a home built in Timaru's Perth Street in 1876; this house became the South Canterbury Museum after Thomas Burnett's death.
One of their sons, Thomas Burnett was a New Zealand politician. (25 November 1877 – 30 November 1941) initially a politician of the Reform Party, he later joined the National Party. He was a student at Timaru Main School and Timaru Boys High School.
Thomas Burnett acquired ownership of Mt Cook Station at a period in Mackenzie County history when there was a series of devastating snowy winters, and in spite of the extent of his run reaching right to the Tasman Glacier, he saved his flock.
