Between 1885 and 1886 he made three unsuccessful attempts to reach the centre of Guadalcanal from his base on nearby Bara Island, to collect specimens for the British Museum.
He wrote "I know no place where firm and paternal government would sooner produce beneficial results than the Solomons...while I believe that the natives themselves would not be slow to recognise the advantages of increased security to life and property.
The High Commissioner of the British Western Pacific Territories, Sir John Bates Thurston, paid a visit, reporting that there was no means of raising revenue, and that no settled government could be established.
Thurston was away when the Colonial Office refusal came, and was able to write that a small salary recently voted on in the High Commission, and an annual imperial grant of £600, with further revenue to be raised through traders' and recruiters' licenses, as well as commercial prospects.
[9] Woodford's report from his first trip as Commissioner in 1896, impressed the Colonial Office, and he was given a small amount of money and permitted to hold the position provisionally for a year, though it remained precarious.
He was directed to control the coercive labour recruitment practices, known as blackbirding, operating in the Solomon Island waters and to stop the illegal trade in firearms.
[11] Woodford established the first mails from the islands which travelled by sealed bag to Sydney, New South Wales, and from there on to their destination.
[14][11] Woodford seized the opportunity provided by the Anglo-German Samoa Convention, in which Germany ceded the North Solomon Islands to Britain, to stress the extension of the area of his responsibility and get another sailing vessel and more police.
However, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore, who Woodford had been able to interest in commercial investment in the Solomons, persevered with his plans, buying German landholdings and trying to amass enough capital for large-scale coconut agriculture.
[19] The development of local plantations coincided with the end of the labour trade in Queensland, and the difficulties caused by the repatriation of the workers under the White Australia policy was predicted by Woodford.