[1] Stephen Carkeek joined the Navy (possibly after attending the Royal Naval College) and in late 1837 came to New South Wales as the first officer of a convict transportation ship.

[2][3] He then worked for the colonial administration in Sydney and was appointed first officer of the revenue cutter Ranger, a coastal patrol vessel that enforced tariffs, on 21 February 1838.

[2][3] He also transported government stores and officials around the Bay of Islands and Auckland, confiscating stolen or indebted ships and returning runaway convicts to Sydney.

[3] Carkeek resigned his position in Sydney and was assigned the government brig Victoria on 18 March 1841, transporting Māori chiefs to Mahia, goods to the Marsdens, and George Cooper and his family from Russell (then known as Kororareka) in the Bay of Islands to Auckland.

[3] The customhouse was set up on Wakefield Quay, and Carkeek began collecting duties on landed goods and intercepting alcohol being smuggled ashore, which made him unpopular with the settlers.

[3] By 1843 Carkeek was harbourmaster and member of the board of management, taking over responsibilities for the postal service as well (again at no extra pay); he was also on the Committee of the Nelson Literary Institution.

When Governor FitzRoy abolished Customs on 30 September 1844 (a six-month free-trade experiment which contributed to him being recalled), Carkeek continued all his other duties, as one of the town's only civil servants, on just £92 a year.

[1] On 14 July 1849 The Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle noted:[5]The Government brig, when she sailed last week, took from us our late and much-respected Collector of Customs, Harbour-Master, Postmaster, and Sub-Treasurer.

He took up numerous other responsibilities: postmaster, magistrate, Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, firearms licensor, running the Interprovincial Steam Postal Service, and arranging the re-roofing of Wellington's first Government House.

[1][11] The Wellington Independent noted at the time:S. Carkeek, Esq., Inspector of H.M. Customs for the Colony of New Zealand has resigned his appointment, and after a service of many years retires into private life.

[11] In early March 1871 the observatory was well established, as The Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle noted:[12]The stream which comes from the Rimutaka [Mountains], forms the eastern boundary of Mr. Carkeek’s garden.

This rose so high as to flood the house, in which there was at one time nearly three feet of water ... Mr. Carkeek had just had his observatory refitted, and shelves with valuable books raised from the floor, the outsides of which became covered with mud, but fortunately the insides are very little damaged.

The garden has a great deal of mud left upon it ...Both English and American astronomical groups visited New Zealand to observe the 1874 transit of Venus, and Carkeek's observatory was mentioned as one facility that might be used, but he did not in the end participate.