localeye reaches  6000 records

localeye is continuing its steady growth. As at May 15 there were 6, 030 resources listed.

If you know of any site based in, or about, this region, please let us know and we will add it to our growing database.

Recent News and Events

Air Force Museum
Opening of redesigned kiosk footbridge
Crime and crash stats for SW Christchurch
Awards in Oral History
Record number of nationalities
Colonial carnival at Ferrymead
Nga Pounamu Maori Centre
Fast facts from ECAN
NZ population to reach 4 million
Reservations
Hagley/Ferrymead Community Board Heritage Awards for 2003

Sites Added

Darfield Genealogy and Family History Group
Genealogy group with monthly meetings, research assistance, a small library and resource room.

COMIT Free To Air 
A  free service to information about the New Zealand Electricity Market(NZEM. This site is designed to make electricity prices, demand and hydrology information available to anyone.

Ferrymead - brief history
A brief history of the Ferrymead area.

Genealogy Online - the Canterbury Perspective

The Internet has been eagerly embraced by genealogists as a tool for facilitating family research. On localeye we have gathered together local genealogical and whakapapa sites under one heading  Some local genealogical groups have their own website e.g Canterbury Genealogical Computing Group and others are listed in regional groupings - North and Mid Canterbury GenWeb or the Selwyn District Historical Groups 

If you are just begining your research, joining a group is a good way to go.New Zealand Society of Genealogists Canterbury provides a comprehensive contact list. Checking out the resources of your local public library could also help - in Christchurch, the City Libraries site has a helpful page Genealogy / Family History   which provides information and links from the Christchurch City Libraries about growing Family trees, Whakapapa - A Guide to Resources held in the Aotearoa New Zealand Centre and resources for genealogical research. At a government level the Department of Internal Affairs publishes a helpful  guide called Finding Family History Records  A final example of the wealth of material on the net is Canterbury - New Zealand Bound

Buried Treasures

The development  of the new Christchurch Art Gallery has been accompanied by an informative website. An interesting section of this for local historians is History of the Christchurch Art Gallery Site which includes a wealth of fascinating information about the past residents of houses and businesses on the site. Some Christchurch characters are revealed.

Belfast is one of the long settled areas of Christchurch. Although it has now been swallowed up in the urban sprawl of Christchurch, a  part  of its history has been retained with the establishment of the Kapuatohe Historic Reserve on which is preserved  a collection of significant woodland trees and two century old buildings - the old Belfast School and an old farm cottage. Both of these buildings have undergone  considerable restoration works in recent years. The management plan for the reserve includes considerable background history to the building, occupation and restoration of these buildings.

Pictures of the past are fascinating in what they reveal and  as part of their Imprints project  Christchurch City Libraries has digitised a number of photographs from their collection. This on-line collection contains a selection of historical images of Christchurch and Canterbury. The photographs depict local people, places and events and are dated from approximately 1860 to 1975. In the people section of this selection check out the nurse, doing her rounds of patients by bicycle,  during the influenza epidemic of 1918 and the Ritchie family in their garden in 1890  with willow trees and cabbage trees side by side.