One of the reasons the young man sought to build a life away from England was to escape the notoriety which attached to his aunt, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
In 1812, while travelling from Lisbon to Cadiz, he met Alexander Berry,[2] with whom he later formed a trading partnership, intending to operate in the colony of New South Wales.
The two men shared lodgings in Cadiz while the city was under siege; they also lived together in London from 1815 to 1819, with Wollstonecraft's sister Elizabeth as part of their household;[3] the couple eventually married.
In 1822, Wollstonecraft and Berry were granted 10,000 acres (40 km²) of land on the Shoalhaven River (now the site of Coolangatta Estate) on the condition that they took responsibility for a hundred convicts.
The crops farmed at Shoalhaven included native cedar and tobacco, which were sold at considerable profit both to the growing colony at Sydney and for export.