I enjoy reading “Today in History” in the paper in the morning and a line in it on Friday caught my eye. It stated that on 3 May 1887 a new bridge across the Molyneux (Clutha) River at Roxburgh was opened.

It was reference to the Molyneux River that caught my eye. 

My dad grew up in Alexandra around the time of the Great Depression and later, as I grew up in Balclutha, he would sometimes mention how the Clutha as we knew it was often called the Molyneux when he was a kid, and he often wondered whether back in the day if it was Molyneux upstream and Clutha down a bit, or how the name came about to go from one to the other.

The piece about the bridge got my memory and my inquisitive brain going. 

Back when dad was wondering about it, the internet didn’t exist and the Encyclopaedia Brittanica at home was no use, but now there is endless resource on the subject at the click of a few keys.

The 1966 edition of the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand states “The early whalers and settlers of South Otago called the river and the district the Molyneux, and the name survived well into the gold mining era. It has often been stated that Cook gave the name Molyneux to the river, but this is incorrect for he never saw it. What he did name was Molyneux Harbour which was probably in the vicinity of Waikawa. The correct name is the Clutha, first suggested in 1846 when the Scottish emigrants were preparing to settle in Otago”.  

The venerable volume misses the rather important Port Molyneux which stood, and to a lesser extend still stands, on Molyneux Bay near Kaka Point and was at the time it was going gangbusters at the mouth of the river. 

However, three disasters ended its journey to city status; the great flood of 1878 changed the course of the river, a devastating explosion in the Kaitangata coal mine killed 34 people six months later, impacting on a major customer of the port, and just months after that the railway between Balclutha and Dunedin opened, ensuring that port’s supremacy.

The 1966 entry suggesting “Molyneux” was a South Otago name also belies the recollection of my dad that the river was called the Molyneux inland when he was a lad, and of course the name persists here today with Molyneux Park in Alexandra and Molyneux Avenue in Cromwell carrying the legacy. 

Wikipedia clears this up though, stating “During New Zealand's early colonial history it was officially known as the Molyneux from below the junction with the Kawarau River at Cromwell”.

That at least answers part of my dad’s question, being that the change in name was chronological rather than geographical. 

So, when did the use of “Molyneux” stop? I have searched Papers Past and the last entry, other than Letters to the Editor arguing the point, delightfully demonstrates the muddle the whole story is, where a report from 11 August 1950 states that the dredge owned by the “The Clutha Dredging Company” was moving to the other side of the “Molyneux River”!

That is not the end of the story though, because today, neither Clutha nor Molyneux is the official, legal name of the river; which is “the Clutha River / Mata-au” by virtue of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998, quite rightly reflecting what is truly the original name for this marvelous body of water.