This choice proved unfortunate for Mathew as in 1839, the Colonial Office decided that the Australian states should govern its own affairs and discontinued all appointments that it had made.
It was at this point that Captain William Hobson arrived in Sydney and he offered Mathew the post of acting Surveyor-General of New Zealand.
Mathew made another exploratory trip, examining the Waitematā Harbour, and was with the first party of officials to settle in Auckland in September 1840.
[4] His wife carried on to England and lived for the next decade in Sussex before she returned to New Zealand to sell their land holdings.
Rutherford states that a valid criticism of Mathew is that he paid more attention to level building land than to deep water for shipping.