James Colyer came to New Zealand about 1863 from the goldfields of Victoria, Australia where he had run the United States Hotel in Talbot. He purchased the Princess Hotel in Dee Street from Messrs Rosenthal and Seylar who also had the adjacent Concert Room. After his first wife Mary died in 1864, James tried unsuccessfully to sell, and again in 1867. Colyer married again in 1868 and continued at the hotel until it was again put up for sale in 1874 and eventually sold to Samuel Jackson in 1876.

In 1870, James Colyer bought the 60-acre Cow Island, situated in Awarua Bay off the shore from Greenhills at the head of Bluff Harbour and renamed it Colyer’s Island. In 1875 the family moved from hotel-keeping to farming.

According to the Southland Times, Colyer was “a professional cricketer of repute”, and very quickly after his arrival was advertising to get up a Club established in Invercargill for the summer season. The paper went on to say that “he has brought from Melbourne bats, wickets, gloves, pads, in fact all the appliances for fitting out a first-class Club,” and that they had “no doubt his efforts would meet with hearty support from the ‘Muscular Christianity’ of the town, as there are few recreations more healthful and manly than Cricket (Southland Times, 28 September 1863, p.2).

James Colyer died at his farm in 1880.

Architect Angus Kerr designed the new two story brick Princess Hotel which was opened in 1883.

See Bibiliography for additional sources