After this, it was nearly 18 months before there was any further official investigation of Canterbury as a site for organised settlement. In the interim, a small group of enterprising Wellington settlers, of whom William Deans was the first, decided that the risks and the hardship of isolation involved in settling in the south were preferable to the slow frittering away of their resources in Wellington, where the uncertainty concerning the New Zealand Company's land claims and the hostility of the Māori made it virtually impossible for all but a few to obtain possession of land. By the beginning of 1843 William Deans was ready to move from Wellington to the site he had chosen on the Port Cooper — the same site that had been occupied in 1840 by Harriot and McGillivray. His brother had come out to Nelson in 1842, but was soon convinced that Port Cooper offered better prospects. While John awaited an opportunity to go to Sydney to buy sheep and cattle, William used the schooner "Richmond", chartered by Captain Sinclair and Hay, which sailed from Wellington on 10 February 1843, taking William Deans and his two farm workers and their families to Banks Peninsula. Hay accompanied them to look for a place to settle. They put in at Port Levy, where European whalers were living among the Māori, and left the women and children there, while Deans went on to Akaroa to notify the resident magistrate of his proposed occupation of part of the plains. Before leaving Wellington he had asked the Administrator to approve his venture. He was given an assurance that there was ‘no objection to his “squatting” on land in New Munster not occupied by or in the immediate vicinity of the cultivations of the natives. After his return from Port Levy, Deans went along with Manson by boat to Sumner and up the Avon River. Alongside the Putaringamotu Bush they built a long slab house for the cattle and sheep that John Deans was bringing over from Sydney. The families of Gebbie and Manson were to move over to the plains in May 1843. Deans named the site Riccarton, after his native parish in Ayrshire.