Kirikōhatu

Park activities and facilities

Safety and visitor rules

Please follow these rules to help keep the park safe and enjoyable for everyone:

• Off-road driving, trail biking and horses are not permitted.
• Dogs must be under effective control at all times, as required by law (see Christchurch CityCouncil website Dog Control Policy and Bylaw 2025)

• No barbecues are provided but visitors are welcome to bring their own, provided they are gas only and used in areas clear of vegetation.
• Do not light fires. Dial 111 immediately if you see smoke or flames.

About the area (history)

Kirikōhatu sits on land once used as a river gravel quarry, an operation that shaped the area for nearly six decades. The wider landscape was historically known as Kaiapoi Island — around 2,800 hectares of dry land, wetlands and waterways.

For Māori, this place was Te Rākai a Hewa, “the adornment of Hewa”, valued both as a spiritual landscape and as a centre of learning.

European settlement began in the early 1850s, when newcomers established the planned township of Gladstone on the island’s north eastern edge. As the community grew, both the town and the island adopted the Ngāi Tahu name Kaiapoi.

Among the early settlers was Donald Coutts, who built one of Canterbury’s first flour mills at the southern end of the island. To power the mill, he cut a water race from the north branch of the Waimakariri River to the Kaikanui Stream. By 1867, repeated flooding had widened this channel so dramatically that it became comparable in size to the river’s natural branches, effectively dividing Kaiapoi Island in two.

The newly separated island was briefly called St Helena before being renamed Coutts Island in 1874. Other nearby landmarks include Templers Island, named for Edward Merson Templer upstream, and Whites Crossing Picnic Ground downstream near the former Whites Bridge over what is now the Ōtūkaikino Stream.