Timaru

Timaru, city (“district”) and port, east-central South Island, New Zealand, on Canterbury Bight. Although the settlement’s boundaries were delineated as early as 1856, the actual founding did not take place until 1859, when the first ship taking immigrants directly from Britain to New Zealand arrived. Made a borough in 1868 and a city late in the 1940s, Timaru derives its name from Maori terms meaning either “shady cabbage tree” or “place of shelter.” The city,...