Kettle, Charles Henry

Kettle was born at Sandwich in Kent. He was a mathematics master when in 1839 he decided to emigrate to New Zealand. He sailed in the Oriental and arrived at Port Nicholson in January, l840. On arrival he was employed as a clerk with a firm of shipwrights and engineers until September, 1840 when he joined William Mein Smith’s survey staff as Assistant Surveyor. He explored Porirua, the country surrounding Port Nicholson, and Upper Hutt. In 1842 with Alfred Wills he made a journey round the Tararua Range. Leaving the present site of Foxton on 5th May he reached the Manawatu Gorge on 11th and then traversed the gorge and travelled through virgin bush to the Wairarapa. After two attempts he found a passage from Wairarapa Lake to the Hutt Valley and reached Wellington on 8th June. They made an epic journey through country previously unknown to Europeans. Kettle returned to England in 1843 and there joined the “New Edinburgh” scheme for the settlement of the Otago Block. He was appointed surveyor and engineer for a term of three years. He returned to New Zealand in 1846 and assembled a party of surveyors and proceeded to Otago Heads. The contract surveyors under his direction then laid out the settlement. His personal contribution was the surveying of Port Chalmers town and the sounding of the harbour, followed by a reconnaissance of the whole block and the setting out of the town of Dunedin. After completing that task he fluctuated between surveying, politics and farming. In 1851 as Government Surveyor he made two exploratory expeditions westwards of Dunedin, towards central Otago. His work at that time included Deputy Registrar of Deeds. He later took up land at Kaihiku as a sheep grazier. He abandoned sheep farming when his station was declared a “Hundred” and sub divided. In 1861 he was elected Member of Parliament for Bruce. He was keenly interested in social movements and was a founder and later the president of the Young Men’s Christian Association at Dunedin In 1862 he was appointed Provincial Auditor but died shortly afterwards on 5th June, 1862, the victim of an attack of typhoid fever in an epidemic brought about by the unsanitary conditions in Dunedin caused by the large influx of population at the beginning of the gold rushes.