[2] They married at the Friends' meeting house, Liscard, on 1 March 1871,[1] and left for Adelaide the same year, arriving by the barque Corrientes in August 1871.

He overcame the usual problem of low prices during times of surplus when he, like George McEwin of Glen Ewin fame, began producing dried fruit, jams and conserves, which found a ready market throughout the year, and won trophies at the Adelaide Show.

Robson successfully grafted caprifig twigs to his Smyrna trees, and proved the theory by artificially transferring pollen between the two species with a pipette,[9] but had many failed attempts at importing the wasps.

His supplier, George C. Roeding, of the California Nursery Company, took eight years of patient experimentation before in 1899[10] establishing a wasp colony in the USA, where there was not the additional challenge of alternate seasons from the source country.

[13] For many years, he acted as a steward in the flowers and pot plants section of the exhibitions held by the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society.