Eldest son George had emigrated earlier and was farming in Cromwell, where they joined him initially, but within a year the Cockburns had moved thirty miles to Queenstown.
[2] Her schooling was cut short to run the house due to her mother's frequent absence as a local midwife.
[2] At the age of 15, Salmond became the first female settler in the Rees River Valley area, as she took up housekeeping duties for her brothers George and David, who had decided to establish a farm there.
As an adult Salmond campaigned for a memorial to this event, which was finally unveiled in 1953, when at age 88 she unveiled the plaque reading "From this site a transit of the planet Venus across the solar disc was observed on 1874 December 9 by an American scientific expedition which came to Otago in the ship "Swatara""[3]Salmond died in 1856 in Ross Home in Dunedin.
During her final illness she read both the Bible and a religious astronomical text The Heavens Declare by Hector Carsewell MacPherson.