Canterbury, New Zealand — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Canterbury known for?

Canterbury is known as the region of the eastern South Island built around Christchurch and the broad Canterbury Plains. The Pacific Ocean edges it to the east, while the flat farmland of the plains gives the region its open, level character. Christchurch is its hub.

English and Māori heritage both belong to Canterbury, and the region joins a long coast to the wide plains that run inland toward the higher country of the South Island.

Where is Canterbury?

Canterbury occupies the eastern side of the South Island of New Zealand, where the land runs down from the interior high country to the Pacific coast. The Canterbury Plains form its heart. This wide belt of flat, low-lying farmland spreads inland from the shore and gives the region the largest expanse of level ground on the island, an open landscape of paddocks broken by braided rivers running seaward.

Christchurch sits near the centre of that coast, the region's hub city on the plains. To the east the Pacific Ocean sets the region's long shoreline. Near Christchurch the volcanic ground of the Banks Peninsula juts out from the flat coast, its harbours and hills a marked contrast to the surrounding plains.

The land is mostly level. Rivers cross the plains from the ranges inland to the sea, and the flatness of the terrain, more than any single peak, defines how Canterbury looks and how its towns and farms are laid out across the ground.

What is Canterbury like?

Culture in Canterbury draws on both its Māori heritage and the English settlement that shaped Christchurch. The region's identity took form on the Canterbury Plains, where a planned colonial town grew into the hub city and gave Canterbury much of its outward English character. English and Māori are both spoken across the region, and the long Māori presence on this coast underlies the later settlement of the plains.

Farming runs through the culture as well. The wide flat land of the Canterbury Plains made the region one of open pasture and cropland, and rural life on that farmland sits beside the urban culture of Christchurch and its museums. The Pacific coast and the Banks Peninsula add a maritime edge to the region's sense of itself.

Life here has long balanced the level farming country with the busier life of the one large city near the sea, and that balance of plain and port marks Canterbury apart within the South Island.

What is the history of Canterbury?

Canterbury's recorded history on the plains runs from long Māori settlement to the planned English colonisation of the nineteenth century. Christchurch anchored that settlement. Founded in 1848 as an organised Church of England colony, the town grew into the hub of the region and drew the surrounding Canterbury Plains into a farming economy shipped out through the coast.

The wider region took its later administrative shape around that city near the Pacific Ocean.

What is the climate of Canterbury?

Canterbury has a temperate climate shaped by its position on the eastern South Island. The high country inland shelters the Canterbury Plains from the westerly weather, so the region sees warm, settled summers and cool winters over the open farmland. Rain falls moderately.

The Pacific Ocean along the eastern shore tempers the extremes, keeping the coast around Christchurch gentler than the drier plains and the mountains that lie further inland to the west.

How do you get to Canterbury?

Canterbury is reached mainly through Christchurch, the gateway city for the eastern South Island of New Zealand. Its international airport on the edge of the Canterbury Plains carries most of the region's arriving traffic, and rail and road routes fan out from the city across the flat farmland. The plains make travel simple.

Coastal roads follow the Pacific Ocean north and south from Christchurch, while inland routes climb from the level ground toward the higher country to the west.