📍Waitohi, near Temuka, South Canterbury, New Zealand
1898 – 1911“I grew up on my family's farm at Waitohi, near Temuka in South Canterbury, the fourth of nine children of a Cornish-born farmer. I was always more interested in machines than in farming. I loved reading the scientific journals, and I spent hours in a workshop tinkering, designing and building. In 1898 my father gave me a 100-acre block of land at Upper Waitohi, hoping I would farm it, but I turned the old farmhouse there into a workshop instead. Behind a tall gorse hedge, away from curious eyes, I built a bicycle of my own design, for which I was granted a patent, and then something far more ambitious: a monoplane made of bamboo, wire and canvas, with an engine I designed and cast myself. Neighbours thought I was eccentric and called me Mad Pearse or Bamboo Dick. Some saw me steering my machine around the paddocks with reins attached to the controls, or running after it holding the wing. In 1903, according to many local witnesses interviewed years later, my plane rose into the air and flew some distance before crash-landing on the gorse hedge, possibly months before the Wright brothers' first flight. I never claimed to have flown first, and I always said my flights were not controlled. In 1911 I left Waitohi for Milton in Otago, and later Christchurch, where I kept inventing. A memorial near the site of my flight at Upper Waitohi honours me as one of the world's pioneers of powered flight, and a replica of my plane is displayed in New Zealand museums.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today