The Runaway Settlers-An Historical Novel for Children by Elsie Locke.
 
This classic story, about a real family, begins in Australia in 1859.
Mary Elizabeth Small, unable any longer to endure the brutality of her husband, decides to run away. With her six children, she sets out under an assumed name, to make a better life for them all.
Chance leads them to New Zealand, to a tiny, bare cottage in a colony only nine years old. Undaunted by poverty and hardship, Mary Elizabeth and her family start their new life. They furnish their cottage, make a garden, acquire a boat and raise cattle. It is the cattle that induce Mary Elizabeth to make an epic journey through the mountains to sell the herd profitably at the gold diggings.
Mary Elizabeth it is who holds the family together, but Mary Ann, restless Bill, Jack, Archie, Jim and the gay baby Emma, all play a part in this true adventure of pioneer days.
 
Illustrated by Antony Maitland.