[3] Busby is regarded as the father of the Australian wine industry, as he brought the first collection of vine stock from Spain and France to Australia.

[6] Busby received a Grant of Land from the Governor of New South Wales and after much careful deliberation chose a block of 2,000 acres in the Coal River area of the Hunter Valley, where he began growing grapes.

The government made him a new job offer but he was not happy with it nor with the terms of his severance from the orphan school, and returned to England in 1831 to petition the Colonial Office.

A selection of three or four designs was sent from Australia, and Māori chiefs chose one at a meeting at his residency on 20 March 1834; see United Tribes of New Zealand.

In 1835 Busby learned that Baron Charles de Thierry, a Frenchman, was proposing to declare French sovereignty over New Zealand.

He declined an offer for a position in the new colonial government, and instead focused on farming interests, but became entangled in litigation over his own land titles: the New Zealand Banking Company seized his Waitangi property without giving Busby's debtors an opportunity to pay what they owed, and Governor Grey expropriated Busby's land at Whangārei.

The Waitangi property, on which the Treaty was signed, was derelict until the 1930s, when it was purchased by the Governor-General of the day, Viscount Bledisloe and donated to the nation.