Records indicate that Covington landed in Sydney in 1840, and he married Eliza Twyford who lived at Stroud, a small town in northern New South Wales. Eliza Twyford was from London, and had traveled to Australia with her family in 1832 on the ship Princess Royal as a free settler. Covington was able to draw on his naval connections to find employment, and by 1843 was working as a clerk at the Sydney coal depot of the Australian Agricultural Company. Around 1844 the family, with their first two sons, accepted the invitation of Captain Lloyd and moved to the South coast property at Pambula, which Lloyd had been given in lieu of a pension from the Royal Navy.