Our Migration Stories

One of the earliest European settlers was a woman. Betty Guard arrived at Kākāpō Bay in the Tory Channel as a teenager with her husband, a former convict turned whaler. She gave birth to the first white child born in the South Island, tended by Māori midwives. In 1834, the ship Harriet was wrecked on the Taranaki coast, and Betty was taken captive with her two children. The rescue expedition that followed involved two frigates and hastened efforts towards a more peaceful arrangement between Māori and Europeans. Betty returned to Kākāpō Bay in 1836 and lived out her days there.

By 1848, pastoral farmers from Nelson were establishing wool-producing stations on the Wairau and Awatere plains. A small settlement grew on the Boulder Bank at the river mouth, with hotels, wool stores, and wharves serving bullock drivers, seamen, and traders.

Chinese migrants came to Marlborough from the 1860s onwards, bringing horticultural skills and a formidable work ethic. In 1900, Pin Y and family established the Chong Le fruit shop on Market Street, advertising as the cheapest shop in town. Chan Bing Thai, known as Charles Bing, set up his own Market Street fruit shop in 1938. He and his wife Ping raised seven children who all worked in the business.

The Bing family's story continued into later generations. Eldest son Ian became New Zealand's only Chinese publican when he took over the old Clarendon Hotel in Picton. Another son, Graham, sold the fruit shop and established Bings Motel, one of Blenheim's earliest motels. Other Chinese families followed similar paths. Leonard Wong and Ining Fong ran a Market Street fruit shop, supervised workers at the Rapaura apple orchard, and eventually bought a farm near Renwick.

The immigrants brought many new ideas, and women were often at the forefront of the push for social change. Mary Müller, who lived in Blenheim, wrote extensively on women's rights under the pseudonym Femina. Her writing influenced public opinion at a time when women had no political voice. When New Zealand women won the vote in 1893, Kate Sheppard herself acknowledged Mary Müller as the pioneer suffragette who had made it possible.

Mary was followed by generations of Marlborough women who found their own way to stand tall. Ada Redwood became Blenheim's first elected woman councillor in 1919, serving until 1927. Born at Cutters Bay in Port Underwood, Ellen Dougherty trained at Wellington Hospital and became the world's first registered nurse in 1902, holding registration medal number one. Pauline Bennett flew high at the Marlborough Aero Club as New Zealand's first female flying instructor. Mary Watson ran a travelling electric washing service from her motorcycle, riding rural roads to do the weekly wash on back country farms.

Marlborough has always attracted people with vision. In 1864, fourteen-year-old Austino Perano ran away to sea from his home in Genoa, Italy, and settled in Picton a few years later. His son Joe harpooned his first humpback whale in 1911. The Perano family hunted whales in Cook Strait for the next 53 years, until whaling ended in December 1964. Their legacy remains in Cook Strait place names and the abandoned whaling station.

Others came for the land. David Herd from Scotland planted grapes at Fairhall in 1873, and the original earth cellar he built still exists. Mansour Peters immigrated from Lebanon in 1898 and planted his own small vineyard, selling wine from his Main Street general store until the 1950s. Seventy years later, Frank Yukich from Croatia quietly purchased farmland in the Brancott Valley and planted the first Montana grapes on 24 August 1973. That vineyard sparked the huge growth of viticulture on the Wairau and Awatere plains, and Marlborough is now recognised as one of the world's great wine regions.