“Peddling through a department’s history”
Last month the team from the Canterbury College Collections Survey project visited the UC Forestry Department and discovered a bicycle with over 100 years of history. Its traceable record begins at Cass Field Station, which has been a research centre for the University since 1914 and is the oldest field station in New Zealand.
A photograph, taken at the station by Mr Charles Foweraker around 1914-15, identifies this very bicycle in the foreground. We can imagine that the bicycle was a useful addition to the station for students and researchers exploring the local area.
Foweraker was likely one who benefited from the use of the bicycle, as he spent many years taking students to Cass and carrying out research in the surrounding area. Having studied Botany at Canterbury before WWI, Foweraker returned from the War and became New Zealand’s first university lecturer in Forestry in 1921. Other artefacts that have now been surveyed in the Forestry Department include two microscopes that Foweraker built as a student of Botany and continued to use for years afterwards.
To commemorate his significant work around Cass and the surrounding area, Foweraker’s name has since been given to a prominent mountain in Arthur’s Pass National Park, which can be seen from the field station in Cass.
It is not known how long the bicycle at Cass remained in use, but it was rescued from the Cass dump site in the 1980s and brought back to Ilam campus where it was stored in the basement of the Von Haast building. In 2014 the Forestry Department gave the bicycle a new seat and fresh tyres and proudly displayed it as a symbol of the department’s valuable history for their 100th anniversary.
Artefacts continue to appear in interesting and unexpected places. The survey team are looking forward to exploring more history at some of the University’s remote field stations over the coming weeks. As always, please contact us if you would like to provide any information about heritage artefacts from around the University that may be of interest to the project.
Amy Boswell-Hore, collection technician.
Natalie Looyer, collection technician.
Images supplied by the University of Canterbury School of Forestry
