The brothers, Joseph Brooks (1802–1835), George (1805–1875) and Edward (1814–1893), founded their establishment at Otago Heads in 1831, the first enduring European settlement in what is now the City of Dunedin.
Members of a wealthy land-owning family from Folkestone, Kent, they moved serially to Australia, partly to alleviate Joseph Brooks Weller's tuberculosis.
[1] In the meantime George had already left England and arrived in Australia in March 1826, where he bought a 479 ton vessel, the Albion[2][1] By 1830 Joseph Brooks, Edward, George and his new wife, Elizabeth (formerly Barwise), their parents, Joseph (1766–1857) and Mary (née Brooks) (b.1779), and two sisters, Fanny (1812–1896) and Ann (1822–1887), were all in Sydney.
Relations with Maori were often tense, the establishment being ransacked and the Wellers keeping Māori hostages in Sydney,[3] reverberations from earlier conflicts (Sealers' War).
The Wellers' ships sailed beyond Australasia and they tested the tax regime preventing direct shipment of whale products to Britain.
In January 2020 Te Runanga o Otakou, the Dunedin City Council and the Department of Conservation joined forces in a project to protect the site from degradation.
[8][7] The song has been performed and remixed, with over ten recorded renditions between 1967 and 2005, including by British band The Longest Johns in 2018 and Scottish singer Nathan Evans in 2020.