Station Life in New Zealand

Lady Mary Barker's three years in New Zealand resulted in two much-loved volumes chronicling the life and challenges of a well-to-do Englishwoman on a Canterbury Plains sheep farm in the mid-1800s.
'I was a proud and happy woman the first day my cream remained cream, and did not turn into butter,' she writes with her usual wit and wisdom, in Station Life in New Zealand, 'for generally my zeal outran my discretion.'
Her courage, good humour and ingenuity made her the ideal candidate to face the challenges of her role as a sheep station mistress. It, too, was a rich life: she was adopted by a wild piglet, taught herself how to make a cake, and started a book club for the station's lonely shepherds.
Republished here for a new audience, Station Life in New Zealand is a seminal text by an important figure in New Zealand literary history.

She primarily wrote about her experiences in New Zealand. She was the eldest daughter of Walter Steward, Jamaica's Island Secretary, and was born Mary Anne Stewart in Spanish Town, Jamaica. Mary Anne was given the title "Lady Barker" after Barker was knighted for his leadership during the Siege of Lucknow. Barker died eight months later. Mary Anne Barker married Frederick Napier Broome on June 21, 1865. They subsequently set ship for New Zealand, leaving her two children behind in England. The couple's first child was born in February 1866 in Christchurch, but died in May. By this time, they had relocated to the sheep station Steventon, which Broome had purchased in collaboration with H. P. Hill.