The New Zealand Company primarily required young married couples perhaps with a young family, or older couples with grown or near grown children, who had manual skills such as carpentry, farming, labourers, builders, millers and so on, who could contribute to building the new colonies on land purchased by the Company and sold as stakes to the emigrants and to increase the future population.
Stephen Higgins was initially turned down on application due to his widower status, however doctors intervened and wrote a letter to the company directors instructing them of the ill-health of Sarah's older sister, and confirming that they could do nothing further for her, but advising that it was in the professional opinion that the fresh air of New Zealand would be of profound benefit to her prognosis.
Passengers disembarked and made land by means of small craft, being forced to leave their belongings behind on board until such times as they could be transferred to shore.
The effects were dreadful for the settlers in the town.. Not only were they concerned with further reprisals, but the death of their leader and main employer meant the work building the roads and houses stopped, and wages with it.
Hunger became an issue and Sarah recalls local Maoris trying to assist by selling them a few vegetables, and teaching them which berries and fruits were safe to eat.
Following their move to Spring Grove, Stephen Sharp was given work as a farm overseer which necessitated his being away from home between Monday and Saturday each week.
With both of her brothers also out at work, Sarah was offered a position as a live-in domestic help to a slightly wealthier family, the Ottersons in nearby Richmond.
Over the following few years, they expanded the home to include a large kitchen, and Sarah helped her husband grow and harvest the crops, and tend the animals.
Their family started to grow, and soon they moved to a larger plot and again built a home, including a dairy where Sarah made butter.
When in her early 80s Sarah wrote with amazing clarity a history of her life, which was later put into a collection of stories of the first female pioneers of the frontier colonies of the nineteenth century and published in 1961.
Her personal account of her life as an emigrant is simple yet detailed, and demonstrates a profound insight into the trials and hardships of a young girl living on the edge of a new frontier.