'Jollie by name and jolly by nature', so was described a firm friend of von Haast, Edward Jollie (1825-1894), surveyor and sheep farmer. A tall, straight, dark-haired, handsome fellow, a Cumberland lad born at Carlisle. Of Huguenot origin, he was one of numerous pairs and trios of brothers who tried their luck in a new land. He began early, coming out at sixteen as a Surveyor-Cadet of the New Zealand Company.
After stirring adventures up and down the coast in a cutter,- two boats in which he just missed travelling, disappeared and a third was wrecked in Tory channel, he joined Captain Thomas when the latter had arrived to make preparations for the Canterbury Pilgrims. He laid out Lyttelton and prepared the plan for Christchurch. Being a bit of a town planner, he laid out some streets two chains wide, to be planted with trees down the middle, some nice crescents also; but he was ahead of his time, or of his superior, for Capt. Thomas cut out the crescents as unpractical 'gingerbread'. Next Jollie set out the original road from Lyttelton to Sumner, but the road was never completed and when Edward Dobson came, the new road with the zigzag over the Pass was substituted.
Then Jollie did much survey work in South Canterbury, including the survey of Timaru. When Haast arrived, Jollie had helped to found the Christchurch Club. He had represented Cheviot in Parliament. He was to have a long period of service in the Provincial Council; to have a farm near the mouth of the Rakaia River and to help Haast in his researches among the kitchen-middens of the Moa-hunters in the first great geological investigations into the life of that bird. So the two got into close touch as employer and employee, as fellow workers in science, as personal friends. Mr Jollie was musical and that formed a bond of union between the two families. The Jollie family had two sons and seven daughters, ( one girl died aged four ).
Mary von Haast, thinking not long after the arrival of Professor Macmillan Browne that it was high time he was married, sent him down for a visit to the Jollies at Southbridge. Her matchmaking intentions were disclosed by Haast to Heinrich. This best-laid plan however 'gangs-agley', for the professor preferred someone more staid and blue-stocking than the jolly unconventional Jollie girls; who perhaps on their side wanted something more rollicking and sporty than the studious professor.
Puns were the order of those early days, and one is associated with Jollie. Surveying down south, he was one day toiling up a tussocky hill. Away in the distance he saw a lofty cool white peak. "They call that Mount Aspiring" he muttered, as he wiped the sweat from his brow, "Well we'll call this Mount Perspiring". The name stuck for many years but it is now 'Mototapu'.
In 1871 von Haast's first investigation of a Moa-hunter encampment of a considerable size was at the mouth of the Rakaia River. His friend Edward Jollie who had a Station nearby and whom he was visiting, called his attention to the fact that a neighbour, Cannon, when ploughing, had uncovered a mass of cooking-places and kitchen-middens, the latter consisted mostly of broken Moa bones, and extending over an area of fifty acres.
On the way to Sumner, just after you pass the cutting that leads into Redcliffs you see on the right the Moa Bone Point Cave. This in 1872 was to be the scene of Haast's excavations. The idea of the excavation of the cave had been suggested to Haast in the spring of 1872 by Edward Jollie who thought that it might lead to the solution of the age and date of the extinction of the Moa. When Haast said there were no funds available, Jollie headed the subscription list.
Von Haast named the Jollie River on the east bank of the Tasman River after his friend Edward Jollie, surveyor, farmer and Secretary of Public Works at different times. Jollie helped to found the Christchurch Museum; and in 1869 he decided the museum building should be erected in the north-east corner of the Domain.