Early Otago runholder dies

ONE of the earliest identities of Otago, Mr Watson Shennan, passed away at his residence in High street yesterday in his 86th year. Mr Shennan left Scotland with his late brother Alexander on July 8, 1857 and sailed from Liverpool on July 12 en route for New Zealand via Melbourne, on the Royal Mail steamship Emu. After spending a short time in Melbourne the brothers sailed in the brig Thomas and Henry for Port Chalmers, arriving in Dunedin October 3, 1857. Mr Shennan had a vivid recollection of Dunedin in those days. It was only a village with a house here and there among the ridges. There were no streets, merely bullock dray tracks, and a large portion of the town was still covered with native timber. The brothers explored Otago looking for suitable land to take up as a sheep station. They chose the Manuherikia Valley, at that time covered with a vast expanse of snow grasses, and they assured themselves that at last they had reached the promised land. They named their stations Galloway and Moutere — Galloway after their native county in Scotland. They were the first white men to explore that part of the country where game was plentiful in the form of wild duck and quail, and wild pigs were numerous.