sketcher, amateur photographer(?), lithographer(?), model-maker, cartographer, architect, surveyor and grazier, was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and educated at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. A royal engineer, he joined the Hill Drafting Department of the British Ordnance Survey and apparently gained most of his mapping experience in Ireland. He was working there when appointed surveyor-general of New Zealand in 1841. A small pencil drawing (c.1844, Alexander Turnbull Library) depicting the waterfront at Auckland is initialled “C.L.” and attributed to him.
Ligar retired in 1856 and, while searching for suitable grazing country for cattle (taken up in South Otago), discovered gold in the Mataura River. He visited Victoria in 1857 as land commissioner for Otago and in 1858 was appointed surveyor-general of Victoria. Powell states that during the eleven years he held this position he and three partners leased 3 million acres in the Riverina. He was a councillor and sometime vice-president of the Royal Society of Victoria to which he delivered a paper titled “Grass Tree”. At the 1861 Victorian Exhibition, Ligar showed, as surveyor-general, lithographs, photographs and a plaster model of the colony, receiving first-class certificates for the lithographs and the model – both apparently in his own right. Since no other references to any photographic or lithographic activities are known they were most probably done by members of his department. However, he certainly modelled relief maps. In the Victoria court at the 1865 Dublin International Exhibition he showed specimens of J.W. Osborne 's photolithographic process and his own 'Model maps of Victoria, cast in relief & coloured to indicate the physical characteristics of the country’.
Ligar’s wife Grace, née Hanyngton, whom he had married in Ireland in 1839, died in 1868 and the following year he married Maie Williams of Auckland. After retiring from his department (where he has never been popular), Ligar retired to the Mediterranean coast. Eventually he came to rest on a cattle ranch in Texas, USA, where he died in February 1881.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 1989
