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John Sidey (1823-1915)
The canny Scotsman of Corstorphine
John
Sidey was one of the canny 'Early Settlers'
who prospered from the 1860s gold rushes
without ever panning for gold. A Scotsman,
he had arrived in Dunedin after some years
in London as a building contractor. He arrived
on the Blundell, the last immigrant ship
to come to Dunedin in 1848. His first rural
property was a ten acre section, halfway
between Port Chalmers and Dunedin. He also
owned a town section, on the site of the
present Southern Cross Hotel, where he operated
a store during the early 1850s. But Sidey's
ultimately prosperity came from his extensive
holdings at Corstorphine, where he bought
land in 1855. Sidey's cattle farm stretched
from the hills above Caversham to Mount
Grand in Kaikorai Valley. He named it Corstorphine
after the suburb in Edinburgh where he was
born. In 1861 miners began pouring through
Caversham Valley following the only road
south on their way to the inland goldfields.
Sidey was ideally placed to supply them
with meat and carted supplies to the mining
settlements with such success that his fortune
was made. He replaced his small farm cottage
on the hill with 'Corstorphine House', one
of Dunedin's finest mansions. From it he
watched the rapid development of the Flat
below -parts of it subdivided from his land
- until his death in 1915.
(Photograph, Sidey Family History, Otago
Settlers Museum Collection)
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