Woodbourne Homestead

You can't visit this place because it is a private home, but we had to add Woodbourne Homestead and Historic Farm here on NZPlaces as it is virtual centre of so much Marlborough History. Even the very flame that fired the beginning of Woodbourne Airport can be traced back to this property, as well as the beginnings of farming, milling and pakeha occupation in Marlborough.

Henry Godfrey was the squatter farmer who kicked off all this success, arriving in the 1840s with a few sheep. He somehow gained a lease on the land, built a cottage, found a wife in a virtually all male settler community. He also put up a flour mill, and in 1862 the homestead went up. The current building is a nineteenth century re-imagination, but many relics remain.

Nissen aircraft hangars here are the earliest relics of the airstrip that became Woodbourne, the earliest days of which were linked with pioneer aviator Charles Kingsford Smith.