Station Life in New Zealand

First published in 1870, Lady Barker's enthusiastic description of three years spent on a sheep station in New Zealand is full of intriguing insights into colonial life. These letters to her sister record the 'delight and freedom' of Barker's daily life and surroundings, as well as some daunting adventures.

Written by the adventurous and widely travelled Lady Mary Anne Barker (1831–1911), this 1870 publication records 'the expeditions, adventures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of the wife of a New Zealand sheep farmer'. Born in Jamaica and educated in England and France, Barker married her second husband in 1865 and spent the next three years living on his sheep station on the South Island. This book is based on letters written to Barker's younger sister, beginning with an account of her two-month voyage to Melbourne and her onward journey via Nelson and Wellington to Christchurch. Barker vividly describes her domestic surroundings, friends, neighbours, servants, her first (and last) experience of camping, the Canterbury landscape and vegetation, and the 7,000 sheep on the farm. Her enthusiastic personal account of Victorian colonial expansion captures the 'delight and freedom of an existence so far from our own highly-wrought civilization'.