with his development of Mana. Wright had found it difficult to farm there profitably, but Vella, with his native skill in handling boats and his newly acquired experience of farming, was able to manage the island farm very effectively. In 1894 he visited Dalmatia and on 3 September that year married Elizabetta Caterina Tarabochia at Lussinpiccolo on the small island of Lussin (Lošinj) in the Adriatic Sea. The couple returned to New Zealand, and for the last part of their voyage travelled from Sydney to Auckland on the Wairarapa. The ship was wrecked on Great Barrier Island on 29 October 1894 with the loss of 121 lives; Mariano and Elizabetta reached the shore but all their possessions were lost. The head-lease of Mana expired in December 1893 and when a 14-year lease was auctioned in 1894 Mariano Vella was the successful bidder, as he was again in 1908 and in 1922. He and Elizabetta (known in New Zealand as Elizabeth) raised a family of two girls, Mattea and Antonia (Anne), and two boys, Giovanni (Jack) and Mariano junior. Such was Mariano Vella's success as a farmer that in 1909 he was able to retire. He and Elizabetta returned to her home on Lussin, on a visit that lasted six years. Mattea went with them and attended school there and in Gorizia, Italy, before the family came back to New Zealand in 1915. The family then moved to Plimmerton and lived in a large two-storeyed house close to the sea. Andrew and William, the two eldest sons, both farmed Mana for a time but eventually the management and the lease passed to Andrew who held it until his death in 1951. The lease was transferred from the Vella family to John Gault in 1953. In June 1972 three scientists from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research visited the island and made an inventory of the fauna and flora on the island. In 1973 the government purchased the lease from the Gault family in order to allow the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) to establish a branch of the Ruakura research station on the island. The intention was to use it to undertake research on imported exotic sheep breeds (which could be kept quarantined on the island) with the objective of improving the quality of the country's sheep flock. More than $2 million dollars was invested in the construction of